Do you like to outline and plot ahead, or are you more of a stream-of-consciousness writer?

Most definitely I write in a stream-of-consciousness. Many times I have no idea what is going to happen next. It is as big a surprise to me as it is to the characters. Often, a scene or line will pop into my head and I will have to write it down. If it works, I send the story in that direction and if not, I put it away to use somewhere else if I can.

Once I was at work and wrote a scene where a party of dwarfs had set up camp in a clearing. Their bellies full, they were settling down in the swirling snow for the night when they were set upon by a pack of wolves. Unfortunately, I wrote it on a terminal and there was no way to save it anywhere. It ended up being accidentally deleted before it could be written down, but those who saw it thought it was great.

The funny thing was I wasn’t trying to write a story about anything at the time. I was bored and the scene just came to me. When that happens I have to write it down or it will bounce around in my head all day.

We hear again and again that picture books are incredibly difficult to write. Why is that?

When writing a “regular” book the author has at his disposal a myriad of techniques and, more importantly, space to work with. Describing a scene in detail is possible when writing a regular book. This is not the case with picture books. With picture books, the author is limited in the words they use as well as their length. For instance, let’s look at the following:

Bill stumbled into his bedroom. Sloughing off his filthy clothing he collapsed into bed, pulling the threadbare sheet over his aching body. He closed his eyes, the exhaustion of the day slamming into him like a tidal wave, pummeling him into an unconscious state of fitful slumber.

This is fine for a regular book, but it is clearly not appropriate for a picture book. The words themselves are beyond the comprehension of the target audience of a picture book and the imagery is also most likely beyond their ability to understand.

Billy climbed into his bed...

This is more on the level of the target audience, provides the reader with almost the same concepts as the first paragraph, but also provides the reader with an idea that Billy has been somewhere really cool! Billy is tired, dirty, and going to sleep. But there is more. Where has Billy been, did he beat the pirates, escape from the men from mars, were the robots friendly? Hopefully this sparks imagination. You need to be able to convey ideas without taking up too much space or using words outside the reader’s level of understanding.