Yesterday around dinner time, just before I went back to my hermit life in Monte Frio, my twin sister was kind enough to let me print 90+ pages of my NaNoWrimo ( novel writing ).
My three year old niece and 6 year old nephew helped to grab the paper out of the printer and hand it to me, so I could add it to the pile. After some printing issues, my nephew gave up and focused on eating some soup, while my niece ( who had snacked too much through out the day ) kept focusing on this task, that was clearly more important to her than eating dinner.
The reason why I printed these pages - sorry trees, I'll make it up to you, it's gonna be a worthy cause - is not necessarily what I had in mind a month, or even two weeks ago. Lately, I had an inspirational thought. One that kept simmering in the background. Yesterday, while my twin sister and I were re-organizing her kitchen, I shared that thought with her:
I am considering to make a children's book out of the 50k words that I wrote in November.
I believe I added that I thought of releasing a children's book first of 'Hypersensitivosaurus' and possibly releasing a novel later.
As if she had read my mind ( she might, we call it twin power ), she replied:
Why wouldn't you? It's not like you need to write a novel. Perhaps this was all meant to lead to a children's book.
This was just the encouragement I needed. Let's be honest, It's not like I need to finish a novel per se. Nobody's forcing me to do so.
I usually tend to make things more complicated on myself. Right now, working on a children's book ( something that I have been pondering for over a decade ) sounds more fun, easier and - most importantly - like the right thing to do.
I now have 93 pages to dig through, to make notes on and to hopefully extract some smaller story / stories from that are suitable and fun for kids. I won't say no to a couple of books either.
I picture it to be a story for kids from about 4 years onward. One that can either be read by parents to their children or read by children who can read them self.
There will probably be some lesson(s) to be learned, without it being preachy. The main thing is to come up with something that is fun to read, fun to listen to and hopefully worth re-reading. I aim to make it unforgettable.
It would be awesome if my twin sister - who has a very cool drawing style - can do the illustrations. I think she's up for it ( we talked about this several times in the past but I never finished a book ), if she can find the time.
Just writing about this seems to bring back the excitement that I had lost somewhere last month. I take that as a sign to go for it. From now on, writing will be fun again and not a frustrating editing process that seemed to go nowhere.
TO BE CONTINUED
P.S. Creativity seems to be flowing again. Not sure if it has anything to do with the magical 2020. I don't rule that out.
If you haven't 'heard' it yet, I also finally started a podcast with my first ever Steemit buddy @whatamidoing You can find it on his or my time line or listen to it on DSound, YouTube or Threespeak