Authoring vs Illustrating a Children's Book - Documenting a Creative Journey

To illustrate or not to illustrate? This is one of the questions that has been haunting me for the last while. In many ways, life would be MUCH simpler for me if I decided not to illustrate my story of The Blue Jackal. When I first thought about writing books for children I pictured myself happily and easily authoring and illustrating books in perfect harmony with understanding publishers who would somehow support me in this venture with money up front.

Man, was I wrong! Maybe if I was already famous, I could arrange a sweet deal, but why would a publishing house, who is likely struggling already in this economy, want to take a gamble on a newbie like me, when I might produce hideous drawings in the end? Basically, I have to do the whole thing - manuscript and illustrations - before I submit. This is not the usual process in making a picture book - usually there is a separate author and illustrator. Now, I'm starting to see why.

Unless you are landed gentry or have a LOT of free time on your hands, good luck trying to author and illustrate your own book as a neophyte and get it published, because you are going to need to have that page-turning story and amazing illustrations in almost finished format on your own to get a publisher to take your bait. Well I'm not independently wealthy, and as a working mom of three, I certainly don't have a lot of time, but colour me crazy, that is what I am doing anyway. Below is some more detail on the different pathways to authoring and illustrating a book for children, and I've chosen the road less traveled on.


When You are Just the Author

What if you just write and don't illustrate? For an author that has a picture book manuscript selected for publication, as mentioned, it can take up to two years to finally see that book in print. Picture books are largely image-driven, so to get your book to sell, a publisher has to match it with the best images to bring out your text, (and don't expect to be consulted much during this process), the images that will help sell your story.

That's when an illustrator would normally come in, an illustrator hired by the publisher, not one chosen by the author (unless you are very persuasive). So, typically, once an author has a manuscript accepted and edited, the bulk of the work then falls into the hands of the publishing house art director and the illustrator of their choice.

When You are Just the Illustrator

Illustrators are usually sought out and hired by publishing houses for a particular story, based on how their style meshes with the story. To get in the eye of a publishing house as a new illustrator, you basically need to make some art work on your own, get a website, and send postcards of your work to a publishing house, but that's a long story in itself that I will not go further into right now. Rather, what if you have been solicited by a publisher to illustrate a story, what then?

As an illustrator, the first step I would take would probably be to make a thumbnail storyboard, and develop that into something that could be submitted to the art director. Once the storyboard is done (usually with a couple of more final looking drawings), I would send it to the art director of the publishing house. This would commence the lengthy back and forth process towards the creation of the final illustrations which includes:

• determining how many large vs. smaller images to make
• figuring out which images to use or not
  
• making changes to existing illustrations
• determining sizing, colour scheme and placement of images
• coming up with cool extras to catch the eye and make the story one-of-a-kind
• working in any gimmicks such as lift-the-flap, pop-ups etc. that would fit the story
  

When You are the Author AND the Illustrator

Inspired by the greats like Dr. Seuss, William Steig, Jan Brett and Maurice Sendak while I was growing up and taking art classes as well as writing, it seemed only natural to me to both author and illustrate a book. I didn't realize (in spite of most books au contraire) how this was certainly not the norm in the real world.

It is important that an author be aware of these steps in the creation of an illustrated children's book, especially if they are the illustrator too! Like my Blue Jackal, Kabou, the creator of a story needs to become skilled at making friends along the way in their publishing journey - working well with others - because publishing a kid's book is bound to be long adventure, one you will likely need help and support with along the way.

In my case, as the author and illustrator of the Blue Jackal, I need to create both the story manuscript AND the illustrations ahead of submitting to a publisher....yes, that means that I pretty much have to write and illustrate the entire book without pay! But not just a rough storyboard either. As a new author and illustrator, a publisher wouldn't just want to take a chance on me procuring the goods. So, I need to clearly demonstrate that I can deliver top finished quality from the start. This means that when I send in my manuscript to a publisher it may even contain what is called a "Dummy Book". This means not only creating roughs and one or two good drawings, but working out some beautiful finalized illustrations as well, and putting them into a mock up of what the final story would actually look like. So, for someone like myself, trying to do the manuscript as well as the illustrations for the first time, and only a rough story board under my belt, I still have a long road before me.

What do you think? Should I bother to try? Or should I just work on my manuscript and forget illustrating for now? Any words of advice you can give me in the comments?

In his journeys, Kabou meets a snow leopard, a wise elephant and an upstart monkey

Click to enlarge.

If you liked this post and want to share, you can retweet @marialavis by clicking the following button:

Storyboarding - Documenting a Creative Journey

This post is a continuation from this previous post on finding creative inspiration.

Kabou learning about the world - click to enlarge

Creating a Children's Book - A long and Winding Road

Any book with images for children, from picture books for the little guys to first novels with illustrations, takes a long time to create from inception to finish. Leaving out the duration it takes an author just to imagine and write out a story, it can take up to two years get a story published - even after a publisher has accepted it!

Forget watching a kettle boiling, if you are an author it can be an excruciating process waiting for your book to be published. One of the main reasons for this obscene wait is the time it takes to do the illustrations. If you have the same author and illustrator (as in my case), you can likely whittle this time down. Otherwise, a publisher has to 1) find a suitable illustrator, 2) the illustrator has to agree to do the project, 3) the illustrator has to finish up the contracts they are currently working on, and then 4) the illustrator has to go into the lengthy process itself of creating the illustrations for the story. The first of step in this final process is usually to create roughs for a preliminary storyboard.

The Storyboard

Most people have heard of storyboards in connection to the display of scenes in a movie or a comic book, but storyboards are also used to organize the scenes of children's picture books. Depending on the illustrator (and their experience working with a particular publisher), sometimes thumbnail storyboards in very rough form are created, with about four larger developed images. Other illustrators will choose to make their first storyboard images all relatively large.

As mentioned, I am creating my own illustrations for The Blue Jackal. This means I may be able to cut down on some of the time to get my story published, but it is still a time-consuming process. If I was making a picture book, there is usually a total of 32 pages that I could work with for images. Since mine is a chapter book rather than a picture book, I have a bit more flexibility with how many images I can make, but colour plates cost more money, so there may be limitations with the number of colour plates vs black & white drawings that could be put in the book.

Below is part of my preliminary storyboard for The Blue Jackal. I have shrunk the images down so you can get an idea of the storyboard format, but you can click on the "Full Screen" button in the top right of the embedded document then use the zoom tool to better see the images within the file.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Creative Writing childrens book

Not knowing how many pictures you will end up with can throw a bit of a wrench in the works of the creative process, but what I did is just go with the basic picture book format, and start sketching away. An art director would probably suggest changes no matter what I do, so I just dove in without worrying too much about details in the initial phases.

Before making the above sketches, I made a couple of pages of tiny thumbnail sketches that were really rough, and then I proceeded to make a second set of larger images. Each image is actually the size of the image of Kabou at the start of this post (click to see actual size). Although larger, I still consider these images to be preliminary roughs, and it took me abnout a weekend of marathon sketching to get them done. I'm looking forward now to developing these images as well as diving into my manuscript. I hope that you are as interested as I am in seeing what the future holds for Kabou.


If you liked this post and want to share, you can retweet @marialavis by clicking the following button:

Finding Inspiration - Documenting a Creative Journey

As mentioned in a previous post, I am chronicling my path through the woods of becoming a published creative writer. This post is on the ephemeral topic of inspiration.


Finding Your Passion (aka Bliss, Love)

Is inspiration a special gift, granted to the lucky few like Orpheus, Mozart and Shakespeare, or is it a faculty YOU can cultivate and develop? My own view is that it is a bit of both. You have to first have some sort of talent, and then dabble -- be a creative dilettante -- until you find that talent, that thing that kindles the flame to your innate passion.

I believe that everyone has some sort of creative fire, but for different things depending on their temperament and talents. It makes me sad when I hear people who deride their own creative abilities, saying things like, "I don't have a creative bone in my body." I disagree. I believe that all humans (unless they have some sort of brain injury or condition) have creative capacity, but likely have stronger aptitudes for some fields over others. In order to see this about oneself, one has to first have the chance to discover that talent though, and then develop it. The lucky ones have parents who help foster experimentation for them as children, enrolling them in various classes until they find something that sticks. For the rest of us, the process of finding our bliss can be a life long heroic journey of believing and following where the still small voice within leads. While I myself had parents that encouraged and helped me try things as a child, I've found that the latter process has still been the primary driving factor in my own creative life.

Regardless of being talented and privileged or not, I've experienced that the fundamental underlying source of any creativity boils down to l♥ve. If you love a kind of music, a style of painting, sculpture, a scientific or philosophical topic, a genre of literature--if it SPEAKS to you in a deep and resonant way--then you're half way there. Finding a way to develop the love you have for something is the foundation for not just enhancing your enjoyment for the artistry of others, but in becoming more creative yourself.

Finding a Muse, Finding Your Bell

Love of the art, any art, is not just the doorway to creativity, but to finding a reliable key to that doorway -- the creative muse. While the muse was once taken seriously by poets and bards through the ages, her status has diminished. I think it's time we put her back up on the pedestal where she belongs. I myself have a few personal techniques to invoke a muse that helps me to write, and I'd like to share something of the tradition with you.

I first started summoning a muse to help me write when I was a child and I truly believed in the spirits of muses, just as I believed in fairies, ghosts and Santa Claus. However, I've found that unlike the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, my muse has become more, not less, real in time. She has become a resonant soundboard and a strong ally in my writing. She carries a quill, inks of many colours, as well as a bludgeon to crack me open when I'm dull, procrastinating and obstinate. She is also as real as my flesh and blood.

"Whoa!" you may be thinking right now. Have I gone off the deep end? Am I crazy? The muse is REAL? Bear with me, and perhaps you'll agree that the case is really that I've inadvertently benefited from classical conditioning. I've conditioned myself to my muse, so that now, she is real to me. You could probably even measure the reality of my muse in my brain with an MRI.

Whether or not you believe in a god or spirituality or not, fostering a belief mechanism in a muse of inspiration is a way to actually achieve a depth of inspiration, creativity and ingenuity in art. This at least has been my experience, and I think that Calliope, the Greek muse of epic poetry (pictured below), would approve.


Now, I'm not saying that you have to believe in an actual spirit that comes down from Mount Olympus. (Although, if picturing it that way works for you, go for it.) What I'm really talking about is connecting to a "muse" as a mind tool, a methodology of getting in touch with your own creativity. And the muse is a lovely way to do just that -- not to mention that it is ratified by thousands of years of use by poets, sages and artists.

The nuts and bolts of what I'm referring to is finding a trigger to get you in a creative mind frame. If, every time you sit down to write in your journal for instance, you invoke Saraswati (depicted in carving below) or have an imaginary conversation with Kwan Yin to bring you wisdom and grace in your writing, then what you are doing over time is actually hard wiring your brain to associate this invocation to your creative process of writing, to your creative mind.

Eventually, you can even virtually eliminate writer's block with this method, because even if you aren't in the mind frame to begin with, focusing on your muse will quickly take you there....just like Pavlov's dog and the bell. The muse is the bell.


So summoning the muse may initially sound airy-fairy, and it can even feel far out, but it is also a rational and powerful process of association. It's strength lies in that, over time, it can have very real and lasting results. For instance, if you develop a technique of invoking a muse every time you veer into a creative head space, then you are also developing a way to make the pathway to creativity easier and easier to get to. Just like practicing piano makes playing a piece easier and easier, you are developing the initial paths into highways towards your own creativity.

The ancient traditions of invoking the creative muse is hence, a real validation on practical usages of ritual. Create your own and try it out. You just may be on your way to developing a mastery of linking to your own creative spirit. And you know, if you make friends with one muse, before you know it you may, like Apollo below, eventually find yourself surrounded by a whole host of sources of inspiration.


Continue reading to Part III, Storyboarding.

Getting Published: A Documentary of My Journey

How does one go about getting published? I've already chronicled my trepidation of starting a blog. Well, getting published by an actual publisher (besides yourself) is another matter, and way more intimidating!

I am actually in the long process of trying to get a book published--a children's book--so I thought I would share with you elements of my journey via my blog.

I have several character and story ideas that have been harassing my mind for years. They seem to have squatted in my brain, and claim they will not budge (aside from bouncing off the walls of my skull) unless I find them suitable room and board, green pastures and all. I've been pecking away for years at notes on these stories, as well as going through several tragedies (such as some stories being stolen with my laptop last year) as well. Fast forward to the present, and I am currently doggedly and delightedly dedicated to finding them suitable homes.

The character I'm currently working on a story for is my Blue Jackal character. His name as it now stands is Kabu, and his picture can be found on my twitter profile, as well as on my website in several places. Here is a recent sketch I made of him:


It is my intention to both author and illustrate my book about Kabu.

Will I do it? At this stage my most honest answer is "I don't know". Maybe I'll take Kabu all the way to manuscript or dummy-book form, but he wont make it through the publishing filter in the end. But at least I can say that I'll have given it my best shot.

It can take years to author and illustrate a book, and then get it published. It is also a labour of love considering that most authors barely make the five grand mark on a published book. And perhaps it is best that way, for the process forces the author through a quest of their own; forces them to know the lust for the intangible grail that lingers somewhere in the last chapter of their own story. A story that forces them through the dark woods of their own minds to see what lies on the other side.

Typically, authors and illustrators labour quietly in the night, not letting us see their creations during this long journey of a process until the very end, when they are preened and polished. Glossy and ready for our prying eyes. I've decided to take a bit of a different route and open the doors on my creative process, as well as my scrabblings for finding for that creation a professional publisher. It is that quest I will be sharing with you in upcoming posts, and I hope it can be of service to others who hesitate on the fringe of the still inviting woods on a long dark night.

Continue reading to Part 2, Finding Inspiration.