Laurel Snyder

A few years ago, Tara Lazar started hosting something at her blog called PiBoIdMo. This is like NaNoWriMo for picture book writers.  To play along, you just commit to generating a picture book idea every day for a month, during November.  One idea a day! For a month.

Now, I’ve done NaNoWriMo and I’ve done NaPoIdMo, and this year I’m not doing either, because my problem isn’t generating ideas, is focusing my energies.

I have folders full of “ideas” for books, and rough drafts of books, but what I really need to do is REVISE those ideas and drafts.

So here’s what I’m doing this year: I’m going to hang around the edges of PiBoIdMo, check in at Tara’s blog. But instead of generating new ideas, I’m going to commit to revising an idea or draft a day.  I may revisit the same work more than once, if it feels promising, because that’s the point of revision– you stick with it, return to it, redo it.

But each day I’ll dredge up some neglected idea, or a scrap of a book, or an outline, or a note to myself, and spend an hour– one hour– tinkering or fleshing out, or condensing, or whatever is needed.

And then, when it’s working, I’ll post a snippet, a little bit of the project, for you to see.

How’s that? If I’m lucky, maybe at the end of the month I’ll have one book worth showing to my agent…

We’ll call it National Revising Crap You Might Otherwise Give Up On Month!

NaReCrYoMiOGiUpOnMo!

Catchy, no?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2012 at 6:11 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.