Like most writers I have a real-life job that makes most of my ‘days in the life’ pretty dull to read about! And even on weekends writing is squeezed in amongst the multitudes of other time-chomping tasks. But very, very occasionally I get a few days in a stretch where I can sort-of focus on writing. So I’ve cheated and I’m going to tell you about a ‘week in the life of’. Specifically, the week in which I wrote, illustrated and published ‘Little Hoglet’s Egg Race’, which won second prize in the children’s picture book section of this year’s Words For The Wounded.
As I also write novels (‘Wyrm Gold’ was Highly Commended in this year’s Words for the Wounded) which take a year plus to write, it’s great to have a much smaller scale project to work on. The ‘Little Hoglet’ books have a much quicker turnaround because the time required (if not the mental effort!) to write them is much less.
Having already published ‘Little Hoglet’s Christmas’, and written and sketched out ‘Little Hoglet’s Bonfire Night’ (yet to be published), I already had a few ideas about a Spring story for Little Hoglet (I planned one story for each of the four seasons).
On the Saturday afternoon I sat down for a few hours and played with a few ideas. What did I want to see in a Spring story? What amazing things did I want to introduce children to? Spring, of course, means eggs, and a story naturally came about where Little Hoglet was looking for friends to play with and met a succession of birds and their eggs. And whilst sketching a couple of scenes, a couple of eggs developed legs, and the EGGS WITH LEGS! concept found its way into the story.
A simple beginning, but it took a few hours to pin down the specifics of who Little Hoglet would meet on his journey (the last egg layer is a butterfly, for example, as a little surprise after all the birds), and how the story would end. Happily, of course, but how? It’s really fun to come up with the answers.
On Sunday I sketched out the scenes very roughly and tidied up the text so I had a solid foundation to work from. Children’s writing is very much like writing poetry – minimum words with maximum impact.
Monday to Thursday I drew the illustrations in pencil, which gives a lovely soft children’s book feel. This is also a fun part of the process.
Friday I scanned in all the pencil drawings into the computer and added colour.
Saturday I formatted the book ready for publication, and then in the evening submitted it to Createspace (Amazon’s publishing platform). This part is less fun but not as unfun as you might expect.
Sunday I made corrections, checked the online proof, and resubmitted. In the evening the submission was accepted and I pressed the button to make the book live. Within an hour or so I was then able to go onto Amazon and order a copy which arrived a couple of days later!
But was is it any good…? Well the Words for the Wounded prize certainly helps. As do the ten 5 star reviews on Amazon, along with comments like: “What a gorgeous little hoglet, having fun and making friends, beautifully illustrated, “a lovely little tale”, “fun for both my 2 and a half year old to be read and also my 5 year old who can read it aloud himself”, “the story builds to a conclusion that will warm the heart and keep you wanting more from the next one.”
Ok, so that’s encouraging. I’d better find some time to start ‘Little Hoglet’s Summer Holiday’!
Richard Middleton’s books can be obtained from Amazon.co.uk in paperback and e-book.
www.wordsforthewounded.co.uk