In which I tried to write a picture book ...

I have made a lovely new friend who writes and illustrates amazing, wondrous picture books. 

Meeting this super dooper person has given me the confidence to try something I have always been too afraid to (in a manner that I have never been when I have met super dooper surgeons, triathletes or raw foodists).

I have begun my first ever picture book.

Many people think writing picture books is easy. Heck, if the Prime Minister can whip one up in his spare time, why can't the bust lawyer/doctor/five year old produce at least ten a day? Easy money!

Not so!

The REASON I have been too frightened to ever embark on this project before is that a) I have verbal and writerly diaorrhea, which is sometimes too ... ummm ... diaorrhea-y (erk), for even novel-length works. 60,000 words? Pssshhh! Easy Peasy.

500 (as it turns out): REALLY FLIPPING HARD!!!

So I have a great story, about alley cats in early Tasmania. It is poignant, funny, quirky and sweet.

It is also - at this stage - far too long.

My lovely new friend is being very understanding and patient with me as my story gets slowly shorter, and as I start to get the concept that the old "show don't tell" maxim does not apply in picture books. The pictures tell. The words are only PART of the story.

I hope I can make this thing work (after all, if K Rudd can - with a generous dollop of help from a very talented sidekick writer), while "running" the country, surely I can do it ... eventually ... with a LOT of hard sloggy work.

Whatever the case, I'm going to stick at it. I refuse to fail at something KR has achieved. Except maybe speaking Mandarin ... and grinning all the time and ...