An evening class in illustrating children's books

I chose four agents' names and sent off my package in turn to each one. They all rejected my text. By now, it was May 2007.

Somehow my picture book project got put on the back burner. I did nothing further with it until April 2008, when I chanced upon an evening class in Hammersmith: "Illustrating Children's Books". The teacher was the children's author and illustrator, Nicholas Allan.

Maybe this course would get me back on track with my book? And, even though I wasn't an artist, I could surely pick up some useful stuff about illustrated books? The first class of the term started the following evening, so I didn't have much time to enrol. Luckily there were two spaces left.

Everyone on the course - apart from two of us - were people who could draw. They wanted to learn how to apply their skills to illustrating children's books. I knew this class wasn't really for me but I stuck with it because it was fun. And I was learning a great deal about the whole subject of picture books. But, most importantly, Nicholas was a great teacher.

I even did the homework assignments - despite the fact they were pretty feeble compared with everyone else's more talented efforts.

The next step: finding an author's agent

A friend of a friend put me in touch with someone who used to work for a major children's publisher. I've been a marketing copywriter for many years but the publishing world was brand new to me, so she kindly spent an hour answering all my questions and helped me see things with a publisher's marketing and business hat on.

We discussed the possibility of turning my story into a series. "Publishers like series," she said.

This ex-children's publisher - and others - advised me to go down the agent route, because sending in unsolicited manuscripts direct to publishers would mean my work ending up (and unread) on a mountainous slush pile.

The Society of Authors was extremely helpful, as it sent me a list of children's agents. I also bought a copy of the Children's Writers' and Artists' Yearbook and drew up a list of possible agents who specialise in picture books.

My next step was to buy 'The Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book Published' which told me everything I needed to know about getting my submission just right.

I was ready to write my letter and post off my picture book text to the first agent on my list.

Hearing it from the horse's mouth

It was all very well having written something I was proud of, but what would children make of it? After all, my story obviously has to appeal to my target age group. So l asked several friends to read it to their kids.

Luckily, 'what you see is what you get' with children, so at least I knew I'd get an honest opinion. To my relief they all enjoyed it - and they even laughed out loud.

Success! It was time to find a publisher.....

How I embarked on my journey

It all started towards the end of 2006 when I took part in a project which was a collaboration between members of 26 (a writers' group I belong to) and art students from the London College of the Arts.

Each writer was to team up with a student to produce text and illustrations for a children's picture book. The idea was that there would be an exhibition of our work in spring 2007, to which publishers and agents would be invited.

Hooray!!

With great enthusiasm, I bought a number of 'how to write children's books' and pored over the picture books in Waterstone's in Piccadilly.

Then, a great idea came to me and I wrote my story.

But the student I was paired with wanted to focus her efforts on her final year course work, so we didn't really get to the stage of illustrated spreads. Undeterred, I could still find another student who wanted to come into the project slightly late. And, if the worst came to the worst, I could always exhibit the text by itself.

But, the project organisers couldn't find anyone willing to fund the exhibition and the launch party, so the event never happened.

But, I still had my story. There was no way I was going to let it gather dust on my desk or fester away at the back of a drawer.