No seriously, stop laughing. For as long as I can remember, my best motivation has been an approaching deadline. In college I would generally wait until a day or two before a paper was due to start writing. The 20+ pagers could get a little hairy, but I can’t remember ever missing a deadline. My ideas just seem to come together better at the last minute.

That’s one of the drawbacks of writing children’s books in my free time. It doesn’t matter to anyone else how long it takes me to finish and submit a story. But the longer it takes, the more unsolicited manuscripts there will be in the slush pile (at least in my mind). It’s a ridiculous thought, I know.

Luckily, I do have an actual deadline coming up that will help motivate me. I need to submit a story for critique on August 21st for my Gotham class. That will be my second submission. For the first, I posted my “third grade” story. But since I’ve pretty much flogged that thing to death with critiques, I’ve decided to write a draft of my second story to submit. At this point, I’m still a little more excited to work on that one since I believe it has a better chance of being published.

So what am I still doing typing here? I need to get started!

I’m glad I let my story sit, even if it was just for a few days. I’ve decided to switch my main character from an elderly man to a 5-year-old girl. Each time I sat down to create his character profile, I had trouble visualizing him and ended up just making stuff up. It was an inevitable change, really. I had no child character and more than a few of the critiques I received suggested I should have one. Besides the change in character, I will also change the tone and voice. I’m a little sad that it won’t have much in common with the original 3rd grade story, but I’m getting over it.

Thankfully, I’m still going strong with the two other projects I have in the hopper. Tomorrow I’m off to New York for a photo outing. I’m excited about all the shots I’ll get, but my main objective is to get the last shots for my photo essay. Hopefully, I’ll be able to put the finishing touches on that piece this week and get it submitted soon. Then it’s time to focus on my two picture books.

So much work, so little time!

The first book I started (my “baby” so to speak) is a picture book. But I’m considering finishing and submitting a different project first instead. New writers are told repeatedly that picture books can be the hardest to get published because of the piles of picture book submissions that flood publishers’ offices.

That fact wasn’t daunting to me when I started, but now I’m beginning to question my current plan. The story’s current draft is ok, but it’s missing that spark. I fully understand that publishers evaluate a manuscript’s marketability, and I know the types of “hooks” they’re looking for. The problem is that I have several ideas for drastic shifts to the story, and I just don’t know which road to take.

I have received critiques from about 10 different people so far. Everyone has given me great feedback, but I need to sort through what I want to change and what to keep.

I may let this one simmer for a while longer and shift back to working on my photo essay.