I’ve had the pleasure this week of looking over a couple of friends’ fantastic picture book manuscripts. Since picture books are my life right now, what I’m reading, what I’m writing, even what I’ve been dreaming about, it’s been a bit of a greedy endeavor.
It’s wonderful to be presented with delicious stories and get to dream alongside the creators. I don’t have the stress of actually having to come up with the ‘right’ solution. I don’t have to judge the worthiness of my ideas. I just hand them over to someone else who has to do the tough stuff. It’s brainstorming without consequences.
The experience has taught me a lot about my own revision process. The pressure and restrictions I put on myself to ‘solve’ my problems. Now, I hope to bring some of the freedom and creativity that I felt on the sidelines into my own work.
One Comment
Hi Sara,
I love the notion of “brainstorming without consequences” – and it made me think about how sometimes when I’m trying to solve a problem in a story, I can come up with a solution – but if it’s the first solution, it might not be the best – I usually try to think of at least one more before I decide which is best. I bet if I forced myself to come up with MORE, like five solutions, I’d have a really inventive, unexpected one in there to use…
That’s the great thing about revisions – you can really take it to the next level.
And with the picturebooks especially, you get the chance to make every word count. (Okay, okay, I know I need to make every word count in a novel, too) – but you get where I’m going with it, right?
Write On!
Lee