To Facebook Fan Page Or Not To Facebook Fan Page?

Back in August, I posted on my Facebook Fan Page that I was considering shuttering it:

 See that big blue "Boost Post" button? That's why. I don't have anything new to add to the chorus of voices decrying this "feature," but I did experiment with Boosting a Post, and $20 and 5,000 reaches later, I had no new likes on the page, and not a single one of the people reached actually clicked the link. Thanks, but no thanks.

The only reason the above screenshotted post had reached 83 people is simply because it's been the most recent post on that page for so long.

Yet, I hesitate to flip the kill switch on the page. After all, when I get to a place in my career where I would actually need a fan page (I'm presumptuous, heh heh), it will be awfully convenient not to have to start from zero likes all over again. For now though, the Fan Page is a cobwebby, ineffective time suck, and I find using my personal page to share my art is much more gratifying.

Speaking of time suck...

...you know this is coming...

...as much as I appreciate the three loyal followers of my blog (I really do!), are writing the updates that are probably kinda boring to anyone who is not invested in my career development really the best use of my time? I felt that the blog was an important thing to have online for potential agents to read so that they could see I wasn't crazy, but now I have an agent. (yay!) I'm not sure how far an editor is going to feel compelled to dig now that I have someone on the inside to vouch for me.

I've considered, now that the landing page of my website doesn't connect to blogspot at all anymore, completely removing the blog, and just letting my art and my submissions speak for themselves.

It's a conundrum!

But again, I hesitate to do anything permanent. Does this mean I'm a webpage hoarder? Are they going to have to call up that reality show Hoarders and clean out my web browser with a shovel? What if I want this blog up at some point, no matter how embarrassing the years-old entries are to me now? It shows my trajectory, my improvement, my dedication to the craft. 

It's not like I would delete it forever, it just would no longer be available for public consumption.

At some point, if I'm lucky, that blog page on my new website will be used for announcing book launches, signings, and tour dates, and there won't be room for all of this personal angst anymore.

Until I get to that point, though, I guess I'll keep updating the blog.

But forget that Facebook Page, haha! ;)

I GOT AN AGENT!

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“The definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

I don't know who said it, but that quote was circling around and around in my head these last few months as I once again wound myself up to take on a new picture book project and see it through to the querying phase.

While I was busy bellyaching about the querying process over the years, quite a number of my peers have noted that they finally got signed just when they were ready to give up and quit trying. But I couldn’t even think about giving up…I had no answers as to what I would do if I did quit – making books and art is all I want to do! But, being the practical semi-New Ager that I am, I figured intentions were important: so I began fibbing to the universe, threatening to give up and move to a commune. I even made a Pinterest board called “Life on the Commune.” I was hoping that my research into better living with mason jars was enough to sway the cosmos in my favor, because I didn’t really picture myself becoming one with the goats.

And maybe this intention intervention worked, because, after what felt like quite a number of eons, I finally submitted to the right place at the right time. It was quite serendipitous. Because who knows why it happened now after five years of being skunked? (But really, we all know it had to have been thanks to that Pinterest board…right?)

Imaginary magical Pinterest board juju or not, the facts are: I got my agent’s interest when she was forwarded the dummy I had just begun querying to agents. Just begun, as in that very week. I definitely believe my “cutthroat” (see previous blogpost) strategy of networking really made the difference there.

Before the (at the time potential) agent and I spoke on the phone, I emailed her the two other picture book dummies that I had completed in the last year. Since agents can either sign you on a project-by-project basis or on your potential career as a whole, I figured showing her that I wasn’t a one-book wonder could lead to an offer of career representation – which is what I wanted. I was seeding the clouds.

And BOOM.

The agent and I clicked on the phone, and it was a whirlwind from there. I let all the other agents I was out with know I had an offer, and gave them a short window of opportunity to respond, but really, I already knew. Two days later, I accepted her offer of representation.

And all of the sudden, a whole chunk of my daily routine – researching agents in order to personalize my query letters – was no longer relevant. It was a very strange feeling, and a good one. The absence of an onerous duty. I could finally focus on my art, and not scrounging around trying to get someone to pay attention to me, looking for connections that weren’t there, etc.

Plucked from obscurity, that’s how it feels.

While I am VERY aware that even with an agent, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be published, I am SURE that, just by having a reputable agent, I am a trillion times closer to being published. It’s like I finally got to the top of the first, very tall mountain, and while there are a whole bunch of mountains in the range, at least I’m up there and working my way across the Pacific Crest Trail or whatever, and not back at sea level just dreaming about hiking.

Wow. Talk about an overextended metaphor.

Long story short, I am now represented by Lara Perkins, of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. 

I have finally arrived to a place where I can finally arrive. ;)

The SCBWI-LA Summer Conference –OR-- Swallowing My Pride

 

This was my fifth year at the conference, and I’ll admit, I was getting frustrated at the lack of forward momentum. While I wanted to get the most out of the opportunity, I decided ahead of time to prioritize giving myself enough time to rest and spend time with my friends. Otherwise, I’d once again be so exhausted by the end of the weekend that I’d need to be a hermit for the next few weeks just to recover. Not overextending myself meant choosing fewer opportunities to make contact with agents and editors, so the onus was to work them more effectively. Which meant…networking. Schmoozing. Which always has felt gross to me. It’s not like I did something amoral – it’s just business! – but I always felt weird developing and using connections. Maybe it was a byproduct of growing up in LA, amongst a hive of insincere people namedropping and using others as stepping stones.

It was time to reek of desperation. It was time to swallow what remained of my pride in one big gulp.

While I had joked on Twitter about printing my dummy on toilet paper and handing it under a bathroom stall to an editor, I didn’t go that far. But I did take a risk. I got cheeky. When I saw that I had my manuscript consultation with Steven Malk, (thank you, SCBWI angels!) I took a deep breath and jumped…

It all felt slightly inappropriate on my part, or at least presumptuous, but getting paired up with Steven Malk was kind of like getting an interview with admissions at an Ivy League School, and I couldn’t squander it by being chicken. Soooo…instead of just going over the manuscript I submitted, I got out all my dummies and my portfolio, and I had him look at everything during those 20 minutes. Check and check. All was proceeding smoothly. I had one last step…I asked him which agent(s) he thought would be a good fit for me.

To me, this felt really scary and forward. But I had taken my very first children’s book class six long years ago, and for the past five, worked on my craft full-time, so I was absolutely not a dilettante. Everyone around me was scratching their heads over why I didn’t have an agent yet. I knew – KNEW – that all it took was one yes, and all those years of contorting myself into a box that people could understand would be over. And I knew Steven Malk’s opinion carried a lot of weight with agents and editors. He is known for spotting value in work that is different, and using his name would get people’s attention. If he understood me, others would make an effort to understand.

And, yes, I knew if all went well, the best realistic outcome would have been the ability to use the kind of gross, self-aggrandizing name-dropping stuff that I usually hate:

“Steven Malk said you’d be a good fit for me.”

Maybe you’re thinking, What’s the big deal about that?

I don’t have an answer. It just feels gross to me. It feels like not getting chosen by virtue of my artistic merit, but through campaigning for myself. But was that a bad thing? Was I just making things harder for myself by resisting it? After all, I would be stating a fact. It’s not like he was saying it because he owed me something. It wasn’t a lie. After all, I had paid my dues! I AM a good artist! If this could get me in front of the right eyeballs, I had to do what was best for my career.

So I had to do it. And with that decided, the rest would all depend on my delivery of that heaven-sent sentence, “Steven Malk said…”

If it worked, the hell of querying would be over. I didn’t have much to lose besides my pride at this point. So, that was it. I risked sounding like a total jackass and jumped off a cliff . . .

. . . and . . .

. . . luckily, I didn’t meet a bloody end smashed on some rocks at the bottom of said cliff.

What does that mean?

. . . Next time on the blog: I GOT AN AGENT(!)

HOOTS! are LIVE!

May’s post already talked about the product, but: The HOOTS! have gone live! 

 
Quick recap: Around the end of March, my friend from business school contacted me about creating a series of “stickers” for the online messaging app, LINE. As he explained to me, LINE is a powerful communication tool which works like What’s App meets Facebook Messaging meets Skype. The app was hugely popular globally, with almost 500 million users.

And I’d never heard of it.

See, most of those half a billion users are in Asia. Great! I thought – I’m huge in Asia, according to my website’s Google stats. (P.S. That’s a joke. I’m also due to inherit the estate of a Nigerian prince, right?)

Anyway, the folks at LINE were opening up the market for freelance illustrators to augment the shop’s selections. It’s an interesting pricing model: premium prices for “namebrand” stickers (trademarked), a second tier for those offered by LINE, and then discounted pricing for the audience-created product. It reminds me of self-publishing, too, as very quickly it becomes clear that you need a platform to really move any of your product before it gets buried by the competition.

So at the end of the second day the stickers were available, after my partner and I informed the social media world of our appearance on the scene, my HOOTS! sticker set was rated #23 most popular out of almost 5,000 (at the time) audience created sticker sets. I had convinced my closest friends to download the LINE app so I could at least send the stickers to them, and they, of course, nice as they are, bought the set themselves (it was only 99 cents!) But that only accounted for 8 or so sales! Number 23?!?

 I thought I was an international sensation.

But after my meteoric rise to the Top 25, I plummeted hard, disappearing into obscurity within a week. Moral of the story? I guess when you’re no longer on the “new” page, you fade into the masses. And though I’d spent a month working on the things, I definitely wasn’t going to get a good return on my investment.

The good news is, this was like a beta run of what would happen if I self-published a book. I’d get a bunch of my friends to buy it, and it would artificially inflate the rankings enough to show up on stranger’s radars, they’d buy it, and then it would fade away as soon as the rankings slipped. I've always asserted that self-publishing isn't the route for me, and this experiment confirmed that.

But then again...

I only pimped it out that very first day, and haven’t mentioned it since. I feel like it would be annoying if I did, since no one I know had even heard of the app before I started talking about it, (Ah, the hipster life, amirite?), so I’d have to convince them to download the app first. And I don’t want to become a shill for an app that’s not mine! I gave my one pitch, and I feel like that should be it.

Now, if it were something like What’s App, I’m sure I would pimp it a whole lot more, since people in my extended social circle already use it. But still, people besides me would have to start talking it up, no matter was “it” is, in order for there to be sustained sales. There would have to be something new to say about it to merit blasting to my entire network again.

It’s not like I could post reviews or do a blog tour to sell my stickers on an app, so maybe the experiences are not as similar as I originally thought. And maybe I would have a better result with something I self-published. Maybe. But what it does boil down to is visibility. It seems obvious, but this was a good reminder. I need eyeballs to see my product if I want those eyeballs’ wallets to open. :)

BeaverMAYnia

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Since a month of toil is never enough, after a month of working on the owl LINE Stamps, (now called Stickers, for the US Market, I suppose), I then started messing around with finding a new character, and deciding on a beaver.

He was so cute, I decided, “Hey, why don’t I draw 40 of him, and use 'doing an in-depth character study' as an excuse and come up with a picture book about it?” You know I can rarely do things for less than two rationalized “reasons.”

 

Drawing 40 beavers was fun! Even though it took me forever. (I was going through a lot of personal drama with multiple pet death and stuff, so it took me longer than it should have). Then it took me a month to color them. But don’t get me wrong – in the meantime, I was writing and revising a beaver-based picture book. It evolved from something really quite terrible to something that got the high praise that it “makes sense and could work.” High praise, indeed! Well, that was the second draft. The first draft was a nightmare of Julia psychoses. (I told you, I was going through personal drama).  Anyway, a few drafts later, I was ready to thumbnail the story (okay, I lie, I thumbnailed from the first draft on – it helps!), and then sketch out a first draft of the dummy. Gotta have a dummy for the big SCBWI conference in August!

LINE Stamps

I had my cohort of owls…or whatever a group of owls is called…was called to active duty after a few years sleeping in the barn rafters. A business school friend contacted me about an opportunity for freelance illustrators to submit “stamps” for an instant messaging app that’s popular in Asia. To be more specific, they have over 480 million active users. At 10% of $1 a set of 40 stamps, multiplied by some unknown fraction of the active user population…all my brain was doing was saying mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money.

Not really. I realize the likelihood of making any actual money in a marketplace that was sure to be flooded with worthy competitors was next to impossible. But a girl can dream. And since I already had the majority of the drawings necessary for a set of 40 already done, all that remained to do was draw a few extra owls like basic emoticons, and then color them all in. Easier said than done. It ended up taking me about a month to color them all in and reformat them according to the LINE specifications. It’s all in Japanese, so my B-school friend has to be my liaison. We agreed for all his translating and submitting work, he could make 10% of my 50%. We'll see how it goes!

An Introverted Extrovert’s Overview of Networking Trials and Tribulations

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Or is it an Extroverted Introvert? Either way, for some reason I get oddly shy around agents and editors. And I am not a shy person usually. So why? Why, why, why? My attempts at self-analysis have revealed that it is probably because I’m afraid I will offend or scare them with my sense of humor.

Bring An Invisible Friend

If I were introduced to an editor or agent in a group in which I had a friendly face or two, I could at least get some banter going with someone I know will respond, but I need that sort of intro or else I may come off as weird. It’s like I need to bring a human example with me to show the stranger that I am not scary.

Deviating From Center

I just make jokes…even when I’m nervous. I can’t help but make jokes (I mean, I can hold it together at a funeral, but in general, I bring humor into conversations as a way to break the tension, so I can go from heavy to levity on a dime). It’s a fine line between quirky humor, and just plain scary/unpredictable, and I’m constantly pushing it, reading the person to see if I can take it further. I ramp it up fast, and some people are just too surprised or they don’t dig my brand of humor, but I just want to get through the uncomfortable part of winning someone over as fast as possible. It might be a weakness, but in situations like a conference, I feel an overwhelming need to be liked, and I start blathering in an attempt to keep strangers engaged and amused. I guess this is my inner stand-up comedienne rearing her head.

On A Scale From Bore to Loon, I am…?

But talking to an agent or an editor one-on-one, and I get so worried that I’ll say the wrong thing and I’ll make the most disastrous first impression, that I shut down, and I have to remind myself every three seconds to just be myself. But at the same time, I have to network and be agreeable, which is tough when all I want to do is banter. And it starts to feel unnatural if I don't tell jokes. I’m sure there are agents and editors out there who can pick up what I’m throwing down, but I think their defenses are so high when they meet a stranger at one of these events, that I might read as a “false positive” on their loony meter. (At least that’s what I’m telling myself, haha).

The Solution!

Okay, this may not actually be a solution. And okay, this might just be a lame punchline. But, here goes anyway: Maybe I should just wear a label that reads: “WARNING: May Tell Lame Jokes Unexpectedly.”

Because, notice I didn’t say I was funny . . . I just said that I tell jokes.

*badumdump*

Bring on the rotten produce - I'm here all night, Ladies & Gentlemen!

SCBWI Winter Conference – NYC 2014

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Below are my personal experiences during the SCBWI Winter Conference in NYC. Beyond recommending that you work hard to get your money’s worth, I’m not offering any advice, just recounting my time. Do with it what you will. J

JET LAG up the wazoooooo

Just came from New Zealand, was home for 36 hours, and then headed to New York for the conference. My internal clock was on the fritz. Tried to go to sleep at midnight EST, ended up awake, staring at the ceiling at 5am. Needless to say, the next morning, I was not bright-eyed and bushy tailed.

Friday – Illustrator’s Intensive

This sold out intensive began with a live interview of Tomie De Paola about the importance of composition, a topic that woke me right up out of my jet-lagged stupor. Being a visual person, I especially appreciated the accompanying powerpoint presentations with Tomie’s work illustrating each point he was making. The other speakers were engaging as well, but I don’t remember them as clearly, since their topics weren’t as pressing for me.  

           

Live critique of WIPs

After the break, an editor (Arthur Levine of Arthur Levine Books at Scholastic), an agent (Holly McGhee of Pippin Properties), and an art director (Melissa Manlove of Chronicle Books) all critiqued illustrators’ art on the fly, as our images were projected on the screen. My submission was chosen to speak about, and I didn’t hear a single negative word about it. Arthur Levine claimed it had “European sensibilities.” (ooo la laa!) and that it was telling that the first two rounds of remarks had gone by and not one person had asked why the dinosaur was doing yoga, which meant that the image had done its job successfully.

“Homework”

In the next phase of the intensive, participants were made to sit around large tables at which one faculty member would individually review each participants’ “homework” assignment. Which was to illustration a scene from Snow White. He said mine was a good start, and that I needed to do another round with more cohesively themed details, but that would come in the editing process. So nothing bad about the art itself. Wow!

In fact, Arthur even sought my portfolio out to review the next day at the portfolio showcase (he didn’t throw a contract in my face or anything, but it was still a step in the right direction!)

Faculty Party (to which I was not invited)

That night, SCBWI threw a faculty party for which they invited all the local agents, editors and art directors. All the Illustrators’ Intensive participants were allowed to leave their portfolios out for review by the partygoers. I wasn’t allowed to attend, but boy, did I want to see what they thought of my portfolio! All I know is that they must have liked it, because I didn’t have a single postcard left by the time I was allowed to pick up my portfolio after the party! (The number of postcards left after a show is the only way to gauge what people thought of your work, as comments and critiques are no longer part of the process. So for the cards to have all disappeared before the other attendees even had a chance to take any was a VERY, very good sign.)

AWKWARD!

Lest I sound too much like a braggart, you should know that there were awkward moments too: Trying to get to know an agent I’d been researching and just getting nowhere (more on that in another post); knowing so few people at the gala party that it was hard to get introductions to other people so they didn’t think I was just a weirdo showing up and introducing myself; eating lunch by myself because I wasn’t included in any groups’ plans. I did feel like a “new girl,” trying to navigate preexisting groups of friends. It was definitely tiring, since I am not a robust extrovert. But, the rest of the conference was spent getting inspired by authors and illustrators who had “made it to the big time” and solidifying fledgling friendships, and I left having gained experience and a little fact time, so all in all, it was probably a worthwhile expenditure IF those funds are readily available. AKA, this “fun” trip was NOT cheap, so I’d recommend really forcing yourself beyond your comfort zone during the conference to make the most of the investment.

SCBWI’s FEBRUARY FEATURED ILLUSTRATOR! --> (ME!!)

Holy wow, that's me!

At the end of January, I heard from the main office of SCBWI (my professional organization, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) – I had been selected, out of I don’t know how many members but it’s gotta be hundreds, to be the Illustrator featured on the home page at www.scbwi.org during the month of February. I literally squealed when I read the email, and forced my husband to get up and read it too. He was entirely unsure what it meant, but I KNEW. I’d had my eye on that Featured Illustrator spot for a couple of months, and been wondering what a person had to do to get featured. Well, I still don’t know the answer to that, but boy, do I feel lucky that I was chosen. Within an hour of announcing my selection on Facebook, I had received an offer of representation from an agent(!)

But I've had my heart set on the short list of agents I’d been cultivating for almost a year. If ever there was a time to contact them, it was now. With two picture books under consideration at two different major publishing houses, PLUS this feather in my cap, I hoped I looked good enough to merit a deeper look. I had momentum! A real, verifiable source vouching for me! What an honor. Now it was just a matter of striking while the iron was hot: go to the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York wearing an invisible sash which reads “Miss February” and which gives me indomitable self-confidence! 
Barring that fanciful idea, at least sending off mailers to agents, art directors, editors – anyone who still accepts things via US mail. But I still kind of wanted the sash...New York was calling.

The small hitch was that, long before I’d even heard of the SCBWI Featured Illustrator splash page, we had planned a two week trip to New Zealand. In the middle of February. Then I found out the page wouldn’t be updated until the first Monday of February – the day we were leaving for New Zealand. How was I going to properly take advantage of this opportunity? Of course I should go to the NYC conference….buuuuut….it started less than two days after our scheduled return from New Zealand.

Yes, I’d have to do it.

When SCBWI's updated website went live, I was already in New Zealand! See the "Telecom NZ"?

We had a trip of a lifetime in New Zealand, and I tried really hard not to worry about squandering this opportunity. I would just need to make up for it during the rest of the month. 
So, two weeks later, I was home for just 35 hours before I had to go back to the airport and fly across the country. By the time I arrived at JFK, I was having trouble speaking complete sentences, I was that jetlagged and travel-weary. And I had to wake up at the equivalent of 1am New Zealand time to go to the illustrator intensive. It was not ideal.

But I did it.
Maybe I was awkward and overtired, but I was there.

Five days later, I’m typing this while flying home. Every single one of my postcards was picked up by industry professionals attending the private portfolio showcase and cocktail party the Friday night before the conference officially started. We’ll see if any of those seeds sprout anything. I hope my fellow attendees didn't think that I was just horribly unprepared when I ran out of the small cache of business cards I had brought with me as backup!

an assortment of my postcards printed by moo.com for the same price as printing a single image. I brought 100 postcards to the conference. All gone!

A full breakdown of the conference to come in the next post. For now, thanks for letting me toot my own horn!

Drawing-A-Day-December

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After Inktober (in October) and SkaDaMo (in November) passed me by because I was too busy with the latest picture book dummy and then my NaNoWriMo novel, I decided to do a drawing a day in December. I had an anemic Tumblr page that I was eager to fill up with doodles and sketches. I’ve read and heard that art directors et al appreciate seeing an illustrator’s sketching style as well as their finished work, and since I had been working so intently on my picture book dummies, I hadn’t been able to share as many of my drawings as I would have liked to. So, also in an effort to distance myself from my latest picture book as well as the new NaNoWriMo project, as well as to make the December scheduling madness more manageable, the drawing-a-day-December was born. Once I had announced my intention to my friends, they spread the word, and pretty soon we had formed a nice-sized group page on Facebook. We brainstormed a long list of prompts and set up a schedule, so that the day’s topic would be automatically tweeted every morning at 8am.(#drawingadaydecember)

After the first few days, I was seriously wondering if the group was going to make it through. Many participants dropped out after the first day, or hadn’t even submitted at all. But, to my surprise, my friend’s mother-in-law was steadfast and stuck it through with me. Newly recovered from a brain implant, she was experiencing the pleasure of having control over her limbs again after spending many years suffering from Parkinson’s. This was her outlet. And what a joy it was to see how happy she was to be doing what she loved once again, not to mention providing me with positive reinforcement to keep going with the daily drawings, even if it meant I would have to miss out on some social activities.

After 31 days, I had 31 drawings. Not all of them were fully realized in color, and obviously not all of them were good, but I had completed a challenge I’d set out for myself. Check them out on the "Sketches" tab on this website.

Other positive outcomes:

I also learned to approximate the time it takes to do a fully realized drawing. If it’s at all complicated, it will likely take more than one day (hence the unfinished ones)

I’d managed to grow my Instagram following slightly. (it’s still paltry)

And, last but not least, I began to receive a lot of kudos from my fellow illustrators. To this day, I’m still hearing, “Oh, you work A LOT.” Which is sort of one of the best compliments you can give me, since I’m always terrified I’m being lazy when I need to stop work to process things or whatnot.

So, YAY!

NaNoWriMo and the Angst That Goes With It

A quote from my journal while in the midst of NaNoWriMo:

<< Why do I do this to myself? Why do I sign up for something that is so herculean that I burn out a week into it because I’m simply not used to writing the sheer amount of words required to fulfill the 50,000 word challenge? Part of it was peer pressure, that’s for sure. Part of it was that I so badly want to have this draft done because I feel like a charlatan having come up with the idea back in February, and having only written 7,500 words of it. So here I am, at around 20,000 words, feeling burnt out and uninspired (it is the week 2 slump, after all), but I still have to write 30,000 more words! And to be frank, I don’t even know if this story has that many more words to write to get finished. So, it becomes a futile exercise of putting characters in a room and having them talk about their personal thoughts and emotions – which is not very realistic, having all my characters be open books. Most people aren’t that emotionally available. Oh well. >>

Luckily after the two week blues, I was able to turn things around and get a draft in and “win” NaNoWriMo (writing 50,000 words in a month). Now that draft is going on the backburner to simmer for a few months. It’s time for me to get back to illustrating!

PICTURE BOOK DUMMIES – THE INTERNAL PROCESS

Since right after the 2013 SCBWI Summer Conference, I’ve been deeply entrenched in creating a new picture book. I’ve taken two versions all the way to fully-realized dummies - because I couldn’t tell if they’d work or not until I saw them on the page. This is not a very efficient way to work, considering that, at least for this book, it took me a month of solid work to complete each of the dummies.

So is there a way to streamline my process? Is it even worth trying to do, since I’m still learning about my own process? Shouldn’t I be focusing more on the final product itself, and doing whatever it takes to get the best possible book out there? I don’t have an answer. I suppose if there was an unceasing demand for my books, then yes, I’d have to work on streamlining my process. But right now, so much of my work feels like new, untested experimental methods, and it’s only at the very last minute that things start to feel rote – and when I say very last minute, I truly mean when I’m taping the printed out dummy together, and only concerned with trying to line the pages up right against each other, and I’m no longer thinking about the art.

Even cleaning up the art in Photoshop or laying in the text feels experimental, like I’m still figuring it out and scared I’ll mess it up. I guess that’s what keeps it exciting for me.

At any rate, two months in, and I have a third version of the story (to say nothing of the countless drafts and attempts that didn’t make it past the thumbnailing stage). I’m really hoping this is the one. The goal was to have the dummy done in time to submit to agents before the holiday slowdown, but now that looks unlikely, since I have to redraw everything, do final art pieces, and refine a query letter. It’s possible, but because I was foolhardy and signed up to do NaNoWriMo for a different manuscript, and I have a revise and resubmit request from an editor for another picture book. Honestly, I’ve got my hands full. I guess that’s better than the alternative, which is not having any ideas at all. But every time a new story idea pops into my head now, I meet it with a bit of trepidation because I know how overextended I already am.

If this sounds like complaining, forgive me. And please believe me: I know how lucky I am that this is what I get to do with my life, even if I don’t yet have an established career. Or maybe that makes me even luckier, since I’m STILL able to practice at it, and not be defined by inferior work in the marketplace. I’ve heard that there’s a better opportunity for a debut author or illustrator than there is for one who is midlist (i.e. Didn’t earn out on their advance).

The Responsibility of Adding More Diversity in Children's Literature

I read an interview of two children’s book agents in which they discussed diversity (or lack thereof) in children’s literature. http://blog.leeandlow.com/2013/11/06/literary-agents-discuss-the-diversity-gap-in-publishing/ One agent made mention of the fact that the vast majority of children’s book authors are well-educated, white women with enough of a financial cushion in their lives to be able to dedicate the time and money to pursuing an extremely financially unrewarding … well, some are looking at it as a career, others as a hobby, I suppose. Anyway, this agent was not surprised that so many books were about white middle class children, because people tend to write what they know. 

And that’s the default setting. I find it in my own writing, and even in my drawing – the kids I draw may have wider noses on the whole than the average white kid, but for the sake of color variety, I often give them blond or red hair, when the vast majority of people on this earth have dark hair. So it’s not representative. Worse yet, when I’m in “the zone” painting (and thus, not really thinking intellectually about diversity in children’s literature), I have a default go-to skin color, which is so disappointing of an impulse of mine. There I go again, mixing up a creamy peachy pink on the palette. Please. My skin isn’t that color, so why am I painting with it? I’m going to make a concerted effort to draw more diverse faces in my future sketchings. Captain Obvious here, but people of all types should be adequately represented in literature. The fact that this sentence must even be stated is a sad state of affairs indeed. /end soapbox

Pinterest: Time Vortex or Mind Expander?

If you haven’t checked out Pinterest, part of me wants to tell you not to, in order to avoid the inevitable time suck that it will be. But the other part of me, the part of me that has benefitted greatly from having as a resource, is controlling my fingers in the moment. Yes, although if you look at my Pinterest account, you’ll see I have a ridiculous number of pins on “crafting” and “jewelry-making” boards, I also have an even larger number of pins on illustration and art boards.

http://www.pinterest.com/jujuco/

And that is what keeps me coming back. Never before has it been so easy to consolidate and sort visual imagery and inspirational material. My art seems to have grown and matured at light speed ever since I’ve been able to pull up certain pieces and analyze what it is about them that makes me tick. I’ve learned, for example, that darker scenes with in-frame light sources really get my brain bubbling – Mental carbonation being a good thing, in this instance. Another unexpected benefit is being able to analyze the visual appeal of certain images when quite small on a screen and surrounded by other images. It really forces me to consider what it is in an particular image that has grabbed my attention, regardless of whether or not the image is still successful when I increase the size and look at the technique. Basically, composition, composition, composition. If you haven’t already checked out Pinterest, and you’re feeling brave, go ahead and check out my illustration inspiration board and following a couple people I’ve been following. If nothing else, Pinterest provides a satisfying brain break from my own work when I need to stop staring at it for a while.

Post-SCBWI Conference Frenergy*

*Frenergy - frenetic energy, as defined by Laurie Halse Anderson, as in the frenzied feeling we all seem to experience at the SCBWI Conference. I like to think it has a dual meaning of energy gleaned from being with friends. Because I certainly absorbed a lot of that kind of frenergy this weekend.

Ah, memories...

Pre-SCBWI Conference Karaoke Night, in which I learned I am best suited for 80s songs sung by male vocalists...

Early evenings spent hanging on the hotel patio with the Circle of Awesome (now featuring: a fire pit!)...

 
Acting the tap-dancing fool in a homemade tutu at Saturday's Black and White Ball (I'm the one in the captain's hat)...

 Oh yeah, and acting professional and networking and stuff.

Somehow there aren't any photos of that.

Anyway, it's back to real life after 4 days of soaking up inspiration from industry luminaries, hanging out with old and new friends, and, in general, receiving affirmation that I'm in the right place in life. That's right, the SCBWI-LA Annual Conference is over and it's back to cleaning the litter box (read: working from home).

By the way, here's a picture of a unicorn:

No, not a real-life unicorn, though that'd be magical. It's a picture of my postcards, of which I have ONE left, and I guess that's only because I had left it at home to show my husband. As pathetic as I may sound by admitting this, strangers' willingness to pick up a free piece of art is one of the most concrete ways I've been able to measure the success of my images, since we don't receive feedback from the portfolio showcase. So the fact that they were all gone by Saturday evening is quite affirming.

The even better news is, I've already received quite a few emails from people asking me to illustrate a picture book for them. *fist pump*

The not-so-good news is that they aren't editors or agents. To explain, on day one of learning about the kidlit biz, I learned that one of the hard and fast rules is that you don't illustrate a book before you get a book deal unless you're willing to do it just to get paid up front, with no expectation of further momentum. But still, FLATTERY!!

And maybe some of these people have huge platforms and are committed to putting their feet on the pavement to make sales.

And maybe while my other projects are percolating amongst industry professionals, it wouldn't hurt to get a little more practice.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I have so much writing and art of my own that I want to share with the world, (plus that old litter box needs cleaning), I should probably stay the course with my current 5-year plan by finishing my middle grade novel and querying agents with my full range of offerings.

At the end of September, it will officially be five years since I took my very first picture book class at UCLA Extension, and was advised not to query agents until I had a least four projects under my belt. Well, with four completed picture book dummies (none of which I've discussed in any depth on this blog, as I'm superstitious), a slew of other PBs in the works, a YA novel, and a in-progress MG (middle grade) novel, I'm almost at the end of what I hope is the prepublished chapter in my origin story. Heh.

I'm ready to come out of the gate flying!