I’m trying something new this year: writing for children. I have two of my own you know, and I read to them a lot. To give you an idea, every two weeks we check out about 20 books out of the library, plus we have our own collection. Currently they’re stored in rectangular laundry baskets because my son is really a monkey and the bookshelves were a sure-fire way to land him in the ER.
For years, I’ve been wanting to write children’s stories. I’ve had niggling ideas here and there and I jotted them down someplace safe, but lately I’ve had a lot more hitting me. Some of them have difficult to work with, the older the idea, the harder to implement. My newer ideas are much easier to work into story form. Maybe that means my brain has processed which ideas are actually going to work or not. Either way, I’ve been writing.
I wrote two the other night, and what’s interesting to me, is my process is different than writing adult speculative fiction. My spec fic process is all written, either on paper or on the computer. My children’s story writing is verbal. I mesh an idea around in my head, talk it out in story form for my daughter, editing as I tell it, and based on her reactions, I then write it down.
Granted the stories aren’t perfect, but I like them. The weekends are turning into my time for working on the children’s fiction because of the time I spend with my kids. I think it’s a good process. It’s working.
And for those of you following my Write1Sub1 progress, I’m not including my picture books in that count only because I’m not ready to submit them. I need a lot more practice. I’m participating on the Absolute Write forums since there are more picture book writers there than on my home base Forward Motion. I don’t have time to join another critique group, so this is the closest I’m going to come. I can exchange a few crits there as I post my own stories.
It’s good to try new things. And it helps when that new thing is enjoyable and possibly something I might be good at.
Have any of you written picture books? Or, tried something new lately?
DAWN BONANNO 
That sounds like lots of fun and I hope it pans out. I took a first step towards publication for my children’s book by talking to our children’s librarian and checking out some books of similar reading levels to see how they’re formatted, how long they are, etc. I can see how my story fits (or doesn’t fit) into that framework and start tweaking. I’m hoping to start submitting it sometime this year. Good luck on yours!