I've had this idea for a children's book in my head for years, and one night this idea wouldn't let me sleep. I ended up scribbling in a notebook I kept near my bed, with no light and no glasses; then promptly fell back to sleep. The whole thing felt like a dream, and the scribbles in my notebook looked like ancient hieroglyphs in the morning. I was able to decipher some, but I knew I was missing a huge chunk of my wonderful idea in the chicken scratch. I tried to remember what woke me up in the first place, but all I could think of was looking through the windows of houses at night from the street.
I had no idea how to go about writing a book, but the idea was haunting me. I did some research and purchased a 'how to' on writing and illustrating a children's book. I dove right into the book on writing, and I started thinking of my story in terms of pages (32 is the magic number). As a visual person, each page helped me flesh out my story and it started to evolve into something real. I continued to read through the chapters in my 'how to' book, and suddenly all my progress halted...character study...
Now I find myself with too many thoughts, yet nothing to put on paper. Writers block. As I sit here and write this, I realize my mistake was taking my 'how to' book so seriously and loosing sight of how I normally work; which is backwards and hardly ever following the rules.
I know this is only the beginning, and I have many more pages to write (and illustrate). I've somehow come up with the perfect ending in the middle of my story. Now my quest is figuring out how to get there...
