Sunday, June 1, 2014

Picture books? Me? Does this even make sense?

The idea of writing a picture book has honestly never entered my mind. I'm a novel guy. It takes me 150 pages just to get going. 

But between unsuccessful novels, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea: I was gonna become the next Shel Silverstein. I know--a humble little thought. But I've been a songwriter all my life. I write shortform works all the time for my other project, Beautiful Angle (in partnership with Lance Kagey). I can go deep, but I still like a good poop joke. So I spent a few weeks and about 40 of these bits of funny poetry flowed out of me. 

So I picked out about 20 good ones and sent them to my agent as a sample of my Grand Idea. 

She was less than excited. 

Abigail said, "Perhaps if you're the poet laureate, you might have a slim chance of getting a book of kid poetry published."

But then she said that a couple of these ideas struck her as good picture book texts. 

Since then, Abi has been sending one of them back to me for edits. The other one, she just started sending it out edit-free. And we've already started getting some encouraging feedback. Rejections? He'll, yes. But encouraging rejections from some serious big shot editors. Weird. 

So, all that to say that I might try a few more of these picture book things. 

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