Brain wrecks!...

Ha ha - people go on a lot about silly folk whose lives are like train wrecks but this week I am suffering from brain wrecks. I visited the lovely town of Thames on wednesday, reading to children from Thames South School and their parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles in the morning, and then conducting a workshop with adults in the afternoon. Thank you to the kind and welcoming staff of the Thames Library, especially Rachael who made me feel like one of the gang. Gorgeous place.

Friday, I was co-visiting author and official co-library opener with Kyle Mewburn at Owairaka Primary School in Mt Albert. Again I was made to feel so welcomed and staff and children, who had dressed up as favourite characters in some pretty amazing costumes, were wonderful. And to chief organiser Angela, congratulations for organising such a wonderful event. But today I suffer from brain wrecks - the poor little old melon is sucked dry.

Here are some juicy snippets that caught my eye this morning....

1) From today's Weekend Herald - in a review of Cut and Run by Alix Bosco (a pseudonym), reviewer Paul Thomas says, Ego, as revealed by a greater interest in recognition than achievement, often fuels the drive to be a published writer... Wow, thats a bit snippy. There are about a million easier ways to feed one's ego; a million ways over which you have more control, with much better odds of succeeding. Sure, having a publisher say yes or seeing a book with your name on the front cover are ego boosters, but there are many more ego deflating moments than there are ego boosting ones. Your average writer spends most of their time surviving with the aid of something much less fragile. And suggesting recognition rules over achievement - grrr don't get me started...

2) From Graham Beattie's blog posted saturday 24th, Patricia Wood, author of adult novel Lottery, takes a different, and I think very wise view of the relationship authors could be building with booksellers. She suggests it is useful to go past the book signing/launch type deal and the 'do you stock my book and how many copies have you sold' kind of interation, and find ways to help booksellers get more buyers (of any kind) in the shop. If bookshops survive, more authors might survive too, and in the great karmic wheel of life, what goes around, comes around.

3) During my workshop on Wednesday several people asked about how you go about getting an illustrator for your picture book manuscript if you are not an artist. The short answer is, you don't. Check out the latest post at Editorial Anonymous where she discusses this very topic. If you have not submitted a picture book manuscript before I can see how you might believe it essential to have illustrations to accompany your text. I can even, at a pinch, understand how you might wonder that the publisher will see the illustrations as you would like them to be. But folks, this is why they are professionals. They are in the business of producing books that sell (although they aren't always successful at this but it is still their goal) and they know what picture books look like, how they work and 98% of the time they will see the pictures your words suggest. And they know lots of talented and skilled artists/illustrators who will do a fab job. I did not meet the illustrator for The Were-Nana until the book launch but she knew exactly what I was trying to say. So it is best to submit your manuscript by itself. You do not need to attempt your own pictures or find someone to do it for you. If they like your story the publisher will try and find the right illustrator for it.

So thats how illustrating is done...

Another school visit today. Remuera Primary in the midst of their bookweek. I like bookweeks. I was impressed by the trouble the school and especially the librarian had gone to, to organise stimulating and exciting events for the students. The'd had a books-to-movie night the previous evening for the children, with any accompanying parents able to attend a talk for grownups. Brian Lovelock had visited earlier in the week and an artist friend of mine Sally Blyth had been along too. Today it was my turn and I was doing the talks together with the illustrator for The Were-Nana, Sarah Anderson. It was a treat for me to hear her side of the story. When I write I don't really envisage the pictures for each page. Someone asked me about this during my tour to Westport and I confess I muddled my answer. Probably because I don't imagine the visual images but I do have an idea in my head of how things look. These might sound like the same things but for me they aren't. My style of visual representation is an odd mixture of picture and description, words and images mingled and untangle-able. A result perhaps of the fact that I can't draw well enough to illustrate my words, so any image I have has to be helped by a verbal description.

On completion of a picture book story I send it off to the publisher and if they decide to publish, they arrange an illustrator. There is a large element of trust in doing this but I believe the publisher is as keen as I am for the book to succeed so they will be working hard to source the right images. With my two picture books so far I have not been disappointed - in fact quite the opposite. But to a certain extent the illustration side of the books production has happened magically and I have had little idea of the process involved in the illustrators work. With my first pb, Clever Moo, I was lucky enough to see the illustrator Malcolm Evans in action, doing free hand drawings of the main character Margaret - I even have one framed on my wall. I assumed that the process for the book's illustrations was just an extrapolation of this. So listening to Sarah today, describing (with power point presentation) how she took my story and created the pictures was wonderful for me. I loved hearing how she started by exploring the emotions of each page and then searched for the right look for each character by finding the right human representative to base her drawings on. Seeing how she planned her illustrations for the whole book with appropriate changes of colour palette and light and dark. Following the process of starting each frame with a rough concept and then adding detail through background, emotion and action. It was all fascinating. It will be interesting to see if this knowledge has any affect on the way I visually imagine my stories in the future.