Tag, You’re It! (Part 5)

How to Get Your Children’s Book Published
Step #5: The Book Process

Con­grat­u­la­tions! If you’ve read the first four arti­cles in this series, you know WAY more about the pub­lish­ing indus­try than many oth­er poten­tial authors going in (and buck­ets more than I did when I start­ed)! That knowl­edge will serve you well once your sto­ry is on its way to becom­ing a book. So how does that hap­pen, exact­ly? This arti­cle will focus on the pub­lish­ing steps of a children’s book from the author’s perspective.

The only pre-step is to make sure you have read con­tem­po­rary books in the genre that you intend to write. As an edu­ca­tor, you are prob­a­bly well ahead in this depart­ment. I read hun­dreds of pic­ture books before I start­ed, you should at least go for a few dozen in the genre you intend to write. It’s dif­fi­cult to cre­ate sell­able work if you aren’t famil­iar with today’s books.

Idea
FIRST: AN IDEA

If you don’t have one already, one day you will get an idea for a children’s book. How? By lis­ten­ing to the way you (or the kids around you) think and where you (or they) stop to won­der. That idea can come from any­where: the play­ground, an old pho­to, an inter­net arti­cle, con­ver­sa­tion, eaves­drop­ping, mem­o­ries, a dream, your wild imag­i­na­tion. Some advice? 1) Con­sid­er whether young peo­ple will find your idea com­pelling. 2) Don’t fall in love with your idea yet.

Why not? Well, there are two schools of thought on ideas. One is that writ­ers should run with any idea that pops in their head and just start cre­at­ing. That’s a great strat­e­gy and can result in some tru­ly won­der­ful work. If that seems like a good approach for you, then go ahead and work that way. Every writer is dif­fer­ent and works accord­ing to their own heart and mind.

How­ev­er, I am a pro­po­nent of the sec­ond strat­e­gy, which is to first make sure that idea doesn’t already exist as a children’s book. At this point in life, I am too aware that pub­lish­ing is a busi­ness; I sim­ply won’t waste writ­ing time on ideas that are not sellable.

So, say you have an idea for a sci-fi mid­dle grade nov­el about a young female rein­deer herder in the 1980s who saves her Sámi people’s way of life when she meets a crea­ture raised on anoth­er plan­et. Great. Cool. I know it seems unbe­liev­able, but make sure no one has writ­ten it (or some­thing very like it) recent­ly. Hunt for books on that same idea/topics on Ama­zon; check the CLDC data­base at a library, some­times I will even read through the past year’s recent sales in Pub­lish­ers Week­ly. Look for rein­deer books, check the sci-fi and indige­nous books, look for books on inter­plan­e­tary friendships.

It is rare that edi­tors will buy a very sim­i­lar book even though your take on it will (of course) be dif­fer­ent. This goes dou­ble for new-to-the-busi­ness authors. Your pic­ture book about quit­ting crayons (for exam­ple) is unlike­ly to get much atten­tion because The Day the Crayons Quit was such a hit. My own ratio of ideas to drafts is prob­a­bly run­ning around 10:1. I have ten ideas that don’t pan out for every one man­u­script that I fin­ish. On the oth­er hand, the books I do write, are sell­ing very close to 100%. But our rein­deer herder idea still seems pret­ty great, so let’s move on.

RESEARCH

Whether writ­ing non­fic­tion or fic­tion for kids, almost all writ­ers do some research. That can range from teach­ing your­self about rein­deer herders from scratch (rig­or­ous trav­el!) to learn­ing about space suits on the inter­net, to hav­ing a gen­er­al han­dle on the times (1980s) by read­ing old news­pa­pers in the library — that is unless you real­ly were a 1980s rein­deer herder who had an extra­plan­e­tary friend­ship. Research is its own week­end sem­i­nar top­ic, so the best I can do in this space is to share some arti­cles to get you think­ing: a gen­er­al one for nov­els and one for non­fic­tion pic­ture books.

Research goes hand in hand with draft­ing. You may start writ­ing the man­u­script and go on for a few pages or a few chap­ters, then real­ize what you don’t know, stop to do more research, and then go back to writ­ing. You may also real­ize that if you are not part of an indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty, maybe this isn’t your sto­ry to tell. Or you may real­ize that the sto­ry would make a bet­ter pic­ture book than a mid­dle grade nov­el. Research is learn­ing about the sub­ject, but often results in know­ing how to bet­ter tell the story.

DRAFTING

Draft­ing is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant step in a “can’t win the lot­to if you don’t buy a tick­et” way. Draft­ing is get­ting your ini­tial idea down on paper as a com­plete sto­ry. Draft­ing can take a long time, is often frus­trat­ing, also excit­ing, and in gen­er­al feels like a big mess. The sto­ry in your head will most prob­a­bly not be that great once you put it on paper for the first time. Do not wor­ry. Just get it done. Anne Lam­ott calls ini­tial drafts, “shit­ty first drafts.” And says, “All good writ­ers write them. This is how they end up with good sec­ond drafts and ter­rif­ic third drafts.”

How­ev­er, no one can make you take the time to write. No one else knows your oth­er oblig­a­tions in and out of the class­room. But, if you real­ly want to write a children’s book, the best advice I can give you is to make your­self a sched­ule with goals. I will write 100 words a day toward this project; I will write 5 days a week between 8 and 10 pm; my first draft will be done by the end of the sum­mer. Ear­ly on, I got up at 4:30 am (before my kids were up at 6:30) and those two hours were my writ­ing time. I wrote at 4:30 every day of the week (and many week­ends) until my first books like Fear­less and The Camp­ing Trip that Changed Amer­i­ca (plus a few that didn’t pan out) were draft­ed, fit­ting in research dur­ing the day as best as I could.

You intend to write a children’s book, so for­mat real­is­tic, spe­cif­ic writ­ing goals that fit your life.

Revisions
REVISIONS

Now let’s say it’s six months lat­er and you did it, you have a draft of the rein­deer herder book. CELEBRATE! 81% of peo­ple want to write a book, only 3% do it. You are a writ­ing hero! CELEBRATE MORE!

Then, give it to some­one to read. This per­son should not be your spouse, your child, or your moth­er. Ide­al­ly you will share your draft with some­one who is writ­ing for chil­dren also, maybe a children’s writ­ing group (see your local SCBWI), or any oth­er per­son who knows children’s books and will tell you the truth. Then lis­ten to their thoughts and opin­ion even if it’s very hard to hear. If they say, “it’s per­fect,” they’re wrong, find some­one else.

Because we all think (like our stu­dents do!) that our drafts make sense, don’t have gaps or leaps, are engag­ing and have relat­able char­ac­ters. We are wrong. If you want to pub­lish a book, you must learn to ask for, lis­ten to, and yes, even wel­come, hon­est crit­i­cal feed­back. Though it’s always grat­i­fy­ing to hear what’s right about your sto­ry; you need hon­est read­ers to tell you what’s wrong.

And then you revise. Revi­sion means chang­ing your writ­ing, often dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Revi­sion is not mov­ing around a few sen­tences and fix­ing the punc­tu­a­tion. Revi­sion is re-look­ing at the man­u­script. Should it start where it starts and end where it ends? Why is this char­ac­ter friends with the oth­er char­ac­ter? Can you see, smell, taste and feel the set­ting? Does the lan­guage sound real for the character’s ages and sit­u­a­tions? Is there action? A LOT of action?

Revi­sion is ask­ing your­self ques­tions of your own work over and over, week by week, until it’s as per­fect as you know how to make it. Then read­ing it back and revis­ing again. I have thir­ty-sev­en drafts of the man­u­script that became The Camp­ing Trip that Changed Amer­i­ca, all writ­ten before I ever sub­mit­ted it to a pub­lish­er. Is that a lot? Yes. Is it the most I ever heard of for a pic­ture book? Not even close. Revi­sion becomes the air a writer breathes. And even though the process is dif­fi­cult, most of us learn to tol­er­ate (if not love) it, because revi­sion is how our sto­ries blossom.

Until one day with con­sis­tent work your revised draft begins to gel. The sto­ry is log­i­cal, the writ­ing is smooth, the action is clear, and any read­ers you’ve been lucky enough to find have way more pos­i­tives to say and hard­ly any neg­a­tives. Con­grat­u­la­tions! Your man­u­script, Jupiter’s Rein­deer, is ready to meet the world.

NEXT MONTH, THE REST OF THE PROCESS

We’ll pub­lish the sec­ond part of Bar­b’s “The Book Process” next month, includ­ing “Sub­mis­sion,” “Edi­to­r­i­al Com­ments,” “Art & Revi­sions,” and “Print Production.”

More from this series …
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