
It’s all well and good having a bunch of ideas floating around in your head, but getting the little buggers to flow out of there into a form that others can witness is a right pain.
I’m not sure if I have a novel’s worth of thoughts stuck in my grey matter, or just a bunch of scenes that might somehow clag together to form a cohesive story. Or a series of stories. It’s just hard to put stuff together in a cohesive form so that I can get them on paper.
Thoughts and ideas for more adult tales are mixed up with ones definitely more suitable for the younger audience. Which brings with it other problems… like the fact that any decent book for under-10’s needs pictures, and I can’t draw for toffee (or any other sugar-based snack). But, then I’ve seen kids’ books with really bad drawings in them that the author has done anyway and they’re quite charming. Or do I try to find a friend who doesn’t mind wasting their time slapping some paint down in exchange for getting a co-author / artist credit?
I’ve always thought that arrangement a little unfair as the author, generally, has the ideas but the time taken to write a 30-page children’s story must be far less than that taken to draw / paint the accompanying illustrations. However, the person with the word processor generally seems to win out in terms of both fame and financial recompense.
I’d like to say “back to the drawing board” but, as detailed above, that’s probably somewhat inaccurate.