S. McPherson's Blog: On my way to being a writer - Posts Tagged "children"

I was on strike! Burn the pages! Smudge the ink! Forget writing! I like to teach and I'm good at it, so there! The End... The end? Not likely. As you may have guessed, my childish outburst was short-lived. Though I tried to ignore it, the heart wants what the heart wants and mine was filling my mind with flashes of dragons, elves and talking frogs.

My classroom book selection was growing old so one day after we'd read Julia Donaldson's 'The Gruffalo' more times than I can count, I decided to launch into my own made-up tale.

My story, teaching the importance of perseverance, told of a little girl who was being kept awake by her partying pet fish. Random? Yes. But since children's minds are as nonsensical as mine, it was very well received. Their positive reaction inspired me to dabble in the field of self-publishing. Now, queue 'Jaws' two syllable soundtrack.

1 dash of innocence
2 cups of hopeful
1 tablespoon of insanity
1 KG of creativity
1 bucket-load of drawings

This was my recipe for self-publishing my first children's story. I started with the bucket-load; the longest but possibly most fun process after writing. First I drew them. Then I photocopied them. Then I coloured them. Then I scanned them. Then I decided I didn't like the colours I'd chosen (because why not make life more difficult?) so I did it again and again and again.

Finally I realised that the look I wanted, I didn't quite know how to get, so I went on a mission to find someone to digitally edit my images. Let's call this someone, The Tool; the thing I used to get the job done. The Tool digitally remade my images, slapped on a hefty fee and voila, they were ready to go; or so I thought. Hindsight is always 20/20.