Tara Lazar

Novem­ber is here, and that means it’s time for Pic­ture Book Idea Month. So far, I’m two for two: woohoo!

Remem­ber the Howdy Doo­dy theme song? Did you ever notice how PiBoId­Mo has the same num­ber of syl­la­bles as “Howdy Doo­dy?” Now that I’ve noticed, I can’t get it out of my head. So, I thought I’d share my lit­tle ear­worm with you here:

It’s PiBoId­Mo time.
It’s PiBoId­Mo time.
Tara and her great crew
Wish PiBoIds to you.
Let’s give a rous­ing cheer,
Cause PiBoId­Mo’s here,
It’s time for books to grow,
So here we go!

I love PiBoId­Mo. Some­times it’s a strug­gle to come up with ideas (okay, most times), oth­er times they seem to flow faster than I can write them down (okay, rarely, but when it does it’s awe­some!). Either way, it feels good to have those ideas tucked safe­ly inside my note­book, ready to blos­som when giv­en a chance.
And yes, even non­fic­tion writ­ers (like me!) can par­tic­i­pate in PiBoId­Mo! Christy Peter­son has a great blog post on how to do that. I rec­om­mend read­ing it here (even if you write fic­tion!). I usu­al­ly come up with about half non­fic­tion ideas and half fic­tion ideas, and I use all of the meth­ods Christy men­tions in her post.

This year I’ll also be using a new tool that just arrived (per­fect tim­ing!). My friend Deb Lund is a tal­ent­ed author, teacher, and cre­ativ­i­ty coach. She’s made a deck of cards, called Fic­tion Mag­ic, which fea­tures prompts to inspire writ­ers as well as a handy guide­book on how to use them. I drew one card today, played around with it for a while, and voila… I had two new ideas! You can get your own set of Fic­tion Mag­ic cards here.
I prob­a­bly should­n’t be doing PiBoId­Mo at all this year. I have too many projects call­ing to me at the moment, and the last thing I need right now is more ideas! But, PiBoId­Mo is about so much more than the ideas for me. It’s about cre­ativ­i­ty, play­ful­ness, free­dom, and fun, and every year I end up redis­cov­er­ing why I decid­ed to write for chil­dren in the first place. In those ways, it’s good for my career. PiBoId­Mo also reminds me to look at the world through a lens of dis­cov­ery and curios­i­ty, won­der, grat­i­tude, and empa­thy. In those ways, it’s good for my soul.
I may not love all of the ideas I come up with dur­ing PiBoId­Mo, but I love what PiBoId­Mo does for me. If you want to write pic­ture books, I hope you’ll give it a try, too! You can reg­is­ter through Novem­ber 7th at this link.