November is PiBoIdMo!

For many writ­ers, Novem­ber is Nation­al Nov­el Writ­ing Month (NaNoW­riMo), a month-long com­mit­ment to cre­ativ­i­ty where­in writ­ers turn off their inner crit­ics and pound out a com­plete 50,000-word nov­el in 30 days. I’ve seen the results, and it’s noth­ing short of amaz­ing. A self-imposed dead­line can be very moti­vat­ing, espe­cial­ly when shared with others!
Alas, how could pic­ture-book writ­ers join in the fun and enthu­si­asm? I sup­pose you could try to ham­mer out 100 500-word pic­ture books in a month, but writ­ing 100 dif­fer­ent sto­ries, even if they’re short, is a very dif­fer­ent beast than writ­ing just one long one. It may not take long to write the first draft of a pic­ture book, but it can take a very long time to find one real­ly great pic­ture-book idea (and we won’t even talk about revisions!).
Last Feb­ru­ary, I par­tic­i­pat­ed in a month-long pic­ture-book writ­ing marathon, where we chal­lenged our­selves to write 26 pic­ture books in 28 days, and it was a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence. In fact, two man­u­scripts from that expe­ri­ence are very close to being final drafts ready for sub­mis­sion. Of course, that means there were 24 that weren’t so great, rang­ing from “might be worth work­ing on” to “total stinkers” (lots more in that cat­e­go­ry, to be sure), but still, I feel it was well worth the time–and a ton of fun!
Per­haps an even bet­ter idea, and cer­tain­ly less intim­i­dat­ing now that I’ve done the pic­ture-book marathon, is Tara Lazar’s Pic­ture Book Idea Month (PiBoId­Mo). Sign up starts today, right here!

If you’ve ever even thought about writ­ing pic­ture books, I urge you to try this chal­lenge! So far, almost 300 peo­ple have signed up, so there will be cama­raderie. Tara will fea­ture dai­ly inspi­ra­tion and guest blog­gers to help keep us going. And, as if that was­n’t enough, there will be PRIZES: signed books, pic­ture-book man­u­script cri­tiques, orig­i­nal art by pic­ture-book illus­tra­tors, book jew­el­ry, hand-made jour­nals, vin­tage chil­dren’s books, and feed­back from one of three lit­er­ary agents!
I’ll hope you’ll join me, Tara, and hun­dreds of oth­er pic­ture books writ­ers for this year’s PiBoId­Mo. Please let me know in the com­ments if you’re participating!