Thursday, November 19, 2009

Got Arc?

Darcy Pattison has posted two great pieces about story arc for short picture books, here and here. (Her Fiction Notes blog is one of my writing favorites.)

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Dept. of Miscellaneous (Good) Stuff























Hmmm... haven't been posting much art lately. There's just not enough time in each day to do everything, and I've been working on making progress with a new picture book idea. Slow going, this one, with lots of bits and pieces to puzzle out, but it's coming along.

Also still forging ahead with NaNoWriMo and PiBoIdMo. They've become part of my beloved early-morning-with-coffee routine. I'm up to 11,571 words for NaNo-- way behind the count needed to hit 50,000 words by the end of the month-- but still possibly more than I've ever written on one project in my life, so I'm feeling pretty good about it. More on that another time.

And in the Department of Good News: Can't say too much yet, but I've been commissioned to illustrate the cover and B/W interior of a new middle grade novel! Happy dance time!

Thursday, November 12, 2009

New Map! The Iditarod Trail

















Here's a new piece for the November/December issue of ForbesLife Magazine.

(Sheesh, how did it get to be November already?)

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

NaNoWriMoPiBoIdMo

November is:







National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

and





Picture Book Idea Month! (PiBoIdMo. Read more about it here.)

I'm doing both. (Or trying to, at least.)

Why not? I like deadlines. I need deadlines. I especially need deadlines when it comes to writing. We'll see if I can keep it up for the whole month. But even if not, writing something is better than writing nothing. And though I never write nothing, I can always write more. Right?

(Of course, once I committed to giving these two worthwhile activities a shot, a Department of Freelance truism kicked in... lots of good things are sprouting around here. Busy, busy, busy. Just the way I like it!)