Time to get writing....

Had supper with some friends the other night who asked: "How are your children's stories coming along?"

"Um, they're not. Well, that's to say I've written two that I think are quite good but all the others need work on them. "

So, it should be pretty easy, shouldn't it, to sit down and polish these picture book texts? I really need to class this as one of my client's copywriting projects and schedule in a set time each week. Otherwise, I know it will never happen.

Writing, what writing?

It's now September and over the summer I've been busy writing.

I've written posts for this blog, posts for my cat's blog and posts for a new business blog I intend to launch later this year. I've also written copy for my clients: websites, brochures, e-mail campaigns and the like. But I haven't written a single word of a children's story.

So I'd better print off the four stories that I thought had something going for them. I'll work on two of them over the weekend.

Can I pull it off?

The course finished at the beginning of July. What had I learned? Well, one thing was definite: I wanted to write picture books.

And there were three rather important things I had discovered about picture books.

1. A lot of picture books are pretty average and I really don't know how they manage to get published
2. A good picture book appears very simple but is deceptively difficult to pull off.
3. The best picture books are very clever, highly entertaining and extremely imaginative.

Mmm, could I turn my ideas into something truly excellent that would interest a publisher? I started the year thinking that this 'writing for children' lark was a piece of cake. I now know differently.

Still, I make a good living by writing marketing copy, so why can't I earn money from writing children's books, too?