write and illustrate a children's book

about selling a picture book as an author/illustrator. It appears that this is not as difficult to do as it used to be—a successful author/illustrator says, “Publishers love author/illustrators. If you look at the Caldecott winners over the years, the vast majority are from the individual author/illustrators. The slush piles are clogged with text-only picture book manuscripts.” Very encouraging!

However, for professional presentation I need to learn some technical skills, mainly for creating a dummy. So I have just ordered a book to help me (Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books by Uri Shulevitz). That should be a nice change of pace for my train commute reading!

1. Send proposal to No. 2 Publisher. An editor friend told me that an acquaintance of ours is now an editor there; it would be appropriate to address the submission to her. Cool. I’m going to set myself a deadline of January 15.
2. Schedule photo shoot with my little model. She & her family just visited us Dec. 31, so this is fresh in our minds. Deadline: January 10 to call & set an appointment, January 31 to do the shoot.
3. Do two-page street scene. Deadline: February 16.
4. Explore Children’s Writers & Illustrators Literary Marketplace for agent possibilities, so that I can turn the manuscript around quickly if No. 2 Publisher says no. Deadline: March 1.

That’s the plan.

No. 1 Publisher said no to my submission. My self-addressed manila envelope was awaiting me when I went to our mailbox just now.

Just a form letter was enclosed—no personal signature or note.

I am disappointed but not devastated. I’ve gotten enough positive feedback on this project to know that it is publishable. Some company is going to like it very much. So my focus now will be to research other good possibilities.

to the office this morning so that I could weigh it on a postal scale & figure out exactly how many stamps were needed on the outside envelope & the SASE.

But before stamping & sealing it, I took the images to my colleague’s office. She’s the former Cricket Books editor (& children’s book author) who had responded so positively to my text back in May or June. Having not yet seen the sample illustrations, she was curious.

She opened the two-page spread first. “Oh Ruth,” she said, “this is magical!” In the next image she pointed to the cat batting at the curtain tie (which the first image showed to be also an angel’s belt) as the kind of detail editors really like.

I spent most of my train ride this morning praying for God’s blessings on this submission. It’s a momentous occasion because (1) even though I have published other things, this would be the first publication of my visual art, & (2) when I was a little girl I dreamed of writing & illustrating my own books for kids—so it’s one of my primal desires.

Now I have to release the submission & let my heart be light as it goes to be evaluated by No. 1 Publisher. I’ll be mailing it from home because we’ve never had problems with our local post office, whereas the one near my workplace is notorious for losing things.

I’m very glad I have the music/poetry garden party to turn my attention to this weekend!

I took the touched-up illustration to Kinko’s, & it happened that the young man who waited on me was the same one who corrected the printout of this same image last time I was in. I explained that I needed it rescanned, saved to CD, & printed out, & he proceeded to do all of that on the spot, so I don’t have to drive back there tomorrow evening, AND he charged me only for the CD image ($5)! He remembered the image & said it was easy to take care of. Still, it took 20-30 minutes of his work time.

I decided that if the book gets published, I’m going to present him with a free copy to show my appreciation. :-)

Tomorrow evening I’ll run through the manuscript one last time, print out a clean copy along with the cover letter & bio/list of pubs, & put it in a sturdy envelope to mail on Thursday!!

I feel more confident about the two-page-spread illustration now. A splotch & a mistaken line have been dealt with, & the blanket on Adriana’s bed looks so very soft & warm. I do love getting the pastel colors deeply saturated on the page.

I’ll be able to piggyback essential errands tomorrow. After dropping this illustration off at Kinko’s, I’ll stop by Trader Joe’s, in the same neighborhood, to get wine & appetizer fixin’s for the music/poetry garden party this weekend! (See my poetry readings goal.)

& my bio/list of publications has been updated. I feel very good about both.

Next: touch-ups to one or two of the illustrations, then new scans & printouts.

By August 31 the packet will be in the mail!

by posting about this: Since finishing supper cleanup I have continued working on the query letter. I’m not quite finished, but I’ll sleep on it now & then work on it again tomorrow. I think I’m achieving a good tone, showing that I know what I’m doing, what appeals to young readers, how my project fits with the company’s ethos.

I went back to the submission guidelines on the website. I think they have been shortened/simplified since I last reviewed them some months ago. It’s very encouraging to see that the editors are specifically looking for books that celebrate cultural diversity & “relate to current issues,” since mine does both.

Before I send off the packet, I will probably touch up one of the illustrations & get a new scan & printout of it. I’m nervous about the images since that part of the process is new to me!

drafting the query letter. I’m determined to get the submission sent off before the end of this month!

my scanned images to send to an artist friend I reconnected with last weekend in California. She has designed & illustrated several books for children; they aren’t picture books with an image on every page, but she definitely knows more about this whole business than I do. I am consulting her about whether a couple of flaws in my images (which are more visible in the smaller versions) can be smoothed out with Photoshop or something.

I’m going to spend the rest of the evening clearing off a good-sized area of my worktable for working on art. I have a feeling that I’ll be continuing to post about my progress pretty frequently here on 43T. Somehow it helps me to record all the steps I take under this goal, no matter how small—I guess because this is my most challenging goal.