Picture book

I have been trying to slog through my third revision of my novel recently.  I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to finish it! I feel like everything is coming together in this revision, but it's been torturous to write new material for it.  I feel like my brain currents are moving through peanut butter every time I open that document.  Argh.

I think I'm just burnt out.  I've been working on this novel for three years.  It needs to go away for a while.  But how can you put something away in the middle of a revision.  It goes against every fiber of my being to stop in the middle of something.

On a somewhat different train of thought...I've been thinking about picture books for a while now.  I read them all. the. time.  With three young girls (and two English-major parents with a penchant for collecting literature) they are always lying about (or being eaten, depending on which child gets ahold of them). Some of them are just so awful it is painful to read them.  (These, of course, are the ones checked out from the library, not the ones in our collection.) And these people somehow not only convinced someone to publish them, but got libraries to buy them, too!  Every time I read a book like that, I think, "Why can't I write a picture book? I can write better than that."

But the ideas never came.

Until yesterday.  A gloriously fun idea popped into my head while pondering what my girls were doing and how that could make an interesting story.  So I wrote a picture book yesterday.  And it was so fun!

Of course, it sucks.  It will take refinement and re-writing and revamping, I'm sure, but it's 200 words.  As compared to 200 pages.  Cake walk.

I may have to change genres for a while.