Writing the Story Before Drawing the Story

I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was thinking about my children’s picture book. I thought, “This is tough going. It’s not flowing the way it should. My stylus feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. Am I losing it?”

The answer eventually came — I had broken a promise to myself. The promise was, “Write the story first, then do the painting.” I was avoiding the writing by telling myself that I had it all in my head. I resolved to put the story down on paper. Then I was able to sleep.

I feel weird writing. I haven’t written a story in 25 years. I’ve been writing almost every day for the last 20 years, but all of my writing has been about technology. There’s nothing personal in that stuff. I have to ask myself, “Can I still write a story?”

There was a stretch of decades when I continuously wrote fiction and even published a few things. I was going to write the Great American Novel, but I had a big problem: I couldn’t finish a book. I’d get off to a flying start and put years into a book, but with the end in sight, I would become hypercritical of my writing and lose all desire to soldier on to the end. I’ve been hauling my manuscripts around for years. They’re all huddled together in a cardboard box downstairs, just waiting for me to get my head on straight and finish them.

It turns out that writing the story for my third children’s picture book is as hard as any writing I’ve ever done. But this time, it’s fun.