Rejection and Rubbish Are the Essential Stuff of Creation • by Natascha Biebow

I have been reading this book:

 

How to Fly A Horse: The Secret History of Creation,
Invention and Discovery by Kevin Ashton

 

Ashton is a technology pioneer, whose own personal journey as an inventor proves his point. It was only as a result of tens of thousands of hours of work, filled with failures, mistakes and flashes of inspiration, that he was able to build ‘the internet of things’.

 

He debunks the myth that creativity is the remit of the few and that geniusus create in a dramatic moment of ‘eureka’ inspiration. According to Ashton, there are no tricks or quick fixes, just hours of ordinary to reach the extraordinary.

 

The title is intriguing, isn’t it? It comes from the story of the Wright Brothers’ process of inventing a flying machine. They were the first people to fly, not because they were the first to build an airplane (many people had similar ideas!), but because they problem-solved how to make it fly step-by-step, rather than in one big leap. They observed how birds flew, but when they tried to replicate this, they noticed their contraption moved erratically like an 'untrained horse'. Solving the problem of air gliding plus balancing when dealing with a ‘bucking horse’, required failure, lateral thinking and resilience until they eventually put all the parts together.

 

The Wright Flyer airborne during the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, United States of America, 17 December 1903. Orville Wright is the pilot while Wilbur Wright runs alongside.

What does his have to do with being a picture book writer? Lots!

Here are some of my take-aways:

 

Ahston argues that creativity is innate, as much part of being human as walking, talking or eating. People are not equally creative, just like we are not all equally athletic or mathematical thinkers, but everyone can do it.  

 

• Creation is the result of many small incremental steps: when we look carefully, we can see that every innovation has been built on the foundation of what has come before us. So, we are building on the sum of the work of authors and illustrators who have preceded us, across generations, continents and cultures. There is always room to innovate further.

 

So, when we look at the competition and feel overwhelmed by all the amazing books already out there, or when we think someone else has already covered a topic about which we'd like to create a picture book, we can take a deep breath and continue.

 

• Everything you start with will probably be rubbish: what we first produce will not be as good as what we can create once it’s been reviewed, fine-tuned, refined, or even thrown out and begun again. So, start we must.  

 

“Good writing is bad writing well edited”  Ashton writes.

 

 

So it’s important to just start, repeat and repeat again. Stretch ourselves to power through the nay-saying voices in our head and the temptations to get way-laid by interruptions (coffee, email, researching randomia, the washing, the dog . . .). Just work!

 

• Rejection is essential: everything is created by the process of failure to foundation.

 

When we look around and admire others’ amazing work, we often do not see what was thrown away, what failed and what didn’t make the cut. Rubbish is the foundation for innovation. Something to remember, too, when we receive those rejection letters when submitting - it's an opportunity to try again and do better!

 

“Innovation is whatever remains when all our failures are removed.” 

 

In every picture book I’ve ever edited, there is a whole process that unfolds behind the scenes, but you wouldn’t glean any of the frustrations, micro-decisions, re-thinks, and amends that go into each spread from looking at the finished book. Which is how it should be! Here is just one example of this:

 

From Cotton Cloud Refuses to Rain by Elizabeth F Hill and Hannah George (published by Five Quills)

 

Figuring out how to show this turning point moment where Cotton Cloud is upset, thinking her rain might have made people sad was tricky. To give it more impact, we suggested zooming in and deleting the detail on the ground. The editor, designer, author and illustrator collaborated closely to solve this problem. (From Cotton Cloud Refuses to Rain by Elizabeth F Hill and Hannah George)

 

The final artwork highlights the characters' emotional turning point with much more impact and draws in readers into the moment. (From Cotton Cloud Refuses to Rain by Elizabeth F Hill and Hannah George)

The next spread needed adjusting too. (Picture books have an annoying habit of when you fix one thing, another unravels, but ultimately the end result is so much better!) Here, we see how Cotton Cloud's rain has brought joy and growth to the parched landscape, animals and people. This early rough was a great starting point, but we wanted to add more expression and emotion to this key moment. (From Cotton Cloud Refuses to Rain by Elizabeth F Hill and Hannah George)

 

 

In this new rough, the characters are more prominent and Hannah's signature and delightful details draw in the readers with their stories. The author and I discussed amending the text to accompany the revised image - see final artwork below. (From Cotton Cloud Refuses to Rain by Elizabeth F Hill and Hannah George)

 

(From Cotton Cloud Refuses to Rain by Elizabeth F Hill and Hannah George)

We each bring our point of difference, our unique ‘us’ to our work. It’s important to create prolifically, building on each other’s creativity in order to innovate.

 

“There are more people creating, so there are more tools in the tool chain . . . so we have more time, space, health education, and information for creating.” Each creator is essential – and there’s room for all of us.

 

I found Ashton's book fascinating and I’d highly recommend it for the curious creator.  More importantly, reading its stories provided me with an uplifting sense of the possible in what I might create, renewed confidence and hope. 

 

_________________________________________________________________

 

Natascha Biebow, MBE, Author, Editor and Mentor

 

Want to level up your picture books? I am launching a new course!

Natascha is the author of the award-winning The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola Crayons, illustrated by Steven Salerno, winner of the Irma Black Award for Excellence in Children's Books, and selected as a best STEM Book 2020. Editor of numerous prize-winning books, she runs Blue Elephant Storyshaping, an editing, coaching and mentoring service aimed at empowering writers and illustrators to fine-tune their work pre-submission, and is the Editorial Director for Five Quills. Find out about her picture book webinar courses! She is Co-Regional Advisor (Co-Chair) of SCBWI British Isles and was awarded an MBE for her services to children's book writers and illustrators. Find her at www.nataschabiebow.com

Are There Any NEW Book Ideas Out There? • by Natascha Biebow

Are there really any NEW book ideas out there . . .? When you have a book idea, do you go online and search if anyone else has done it already?

For example, say you wanted to write a book on the topic of TREES. Here are just seven different ways 'in' to the topic that you might find:

Trees to Spot by Kirsteen Robson and Sam Smith

The Tree Lady: The True Story of How One Tree-Loving Woman
Changed a City Forever by H. Joseph Hopkins and Jill McElmurry

Tree by Britta Teckentrup

Trees: A Lift-the-Flap Eco Book illus by Carmen Saldana

Little Tree by Loren Long

As an Oak Tree Grows by G Brian Karas

The Wisdom of Trees by Lita Judge

So, arguably, most of the time, the answer is yes – in some shape or form - someone will have already written a book on 'your' topic. Why?

People are often asking the same questions – we’re curious by nature.

Everything reminds us of something . . .

It can be dispiriting, sometimes, to find yourself almost halted by this kind of obstacle before you’ve even really started.

 

But  . . .

 

Here’s a glimmer of hope: most ideas HAVE already been done, but they haven’t already been done by YOU.

 

So, how can you figure out your fresh, new take on an idea, your uniquely YOU story?

 

Writing coaches and industry professionals will often say:

 

“Write from the heart.”

 

“Write what you know.”

 

“Share what you’re driven to share.”

 

Yes, if you do this, your writing will come from you and your experience.

 

But the key here is to find a connection with readers that feels fresh and new. How?

 

You have to find a way to make your idea resonate with readers in a uniquely YOU way.  

 

How?

 

You have to make them say a-ha! or ahhhh!!! or aw! or WOW!  

 

To understand this, we have to delve into where any ‘new’ ideas come from.

 

Humans are driven to be creative and innovate. It gives us a boost. But . . .

 

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.” ― Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

Our ideas are in all kinds of combinations, in a 'mental kaleidescope' 

So how do we make ‘new and curious combinations’ that are amazing and feel fresh and new? How do we create something that feels AUTHENTIC?

 

GENERATING NEW IDEAS:

 

To create new ideas, we often start with what’s come before, then question the defaults in order to innovate. In an article for the Smithsonian Magazine, this is summed up perfectly:

“Across the spectrum of human activities, prior art propels the creative process . . .

Before 1908, building a new car was laborious. Each vehicle was custom built, with different parts assembled in different places and then painstakingly brought together. But Henry Ford came up with a critical innovation: he streamlined the entire process, putting the manufacture and assembly under one roof. Wood, ore, and coal were loaded in at one end of the factory, and Model Ts were driven out the other. His assembly line changed the way the cars were built . . .  Ford later said, “I invented nothing new. I simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work.” 

 

So, authors must Start with the BUILDING BLOCKS of our world and our lives and seek out the new. We must be curious. This is why we must look around us – really LOOK.

 

We must do RESEARCH: listen to people around us, read lots of books, watch movies and documentaries, view art, search for problems that need solving in new ways, get involved in pursuits that are unrelated to writing for creative inspiration. Spend time with our young audiences.

 

We must ASK QUESTIONS: our writer ears must be attuned and open to possibilities. We must look for adventure and explore.   

 

Then, we must CHANGE THINGS UP, push the BOUNDARIES of our everyday and knowledge, and look for NEW ANGLES on existing solutions and ideas beyond what we already know.

We must make creativity a habit!

 

BE PROLIFEROUS

In his book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant suggests creatives should generate a lot of ideas to find the original. 

Originals: How Non-Conformists
Changed the World by Adam Grant

Surprisingly, he shares that William Shakespeare wrote his famous plays MacBeth, Othello and King Lear at the same time as quite a few ‘un-exceptional’ plays. Similarly, Mozart and Beethoven composed more than 600 pieces in their lifetimes, and only a handful were masterpieces. Picasso painted thousands of paintings and Edison registered over 1000 patents, but each are remembered and revered for a handful of achievements.

Grant also says that most people make the mistake of generating only a handful of ideas and ‘then obsess about refining them to perfection.’ Sound familiar?

So, to create new, innovative ideas, we must push ourselves to generate more of them and think big.

FINDING THE EXTRAORDINARY IDEA

So, now you have a pile of ideas . . . but here’s another problem – how can you figure out which ideas are the ones to pursue? Grant says that as creatives we are too close to our work to evaluate it successfully, which is why we are either often too positive about something (we love what we’ve just made!), or unable to see its faults. The solution? To ask fellow creators because they are “open to seeing the potential in unusual possibilities” and they often don’t have a stake in the outcome of our ideas in the way we do.

So, find a reliable critique group partner or, if you’re lucky enough to have one, listen to your editor, agent or art director – they know what they’re talking about!

REMEMBER! IT TAKES TIME to percolate to have the thought in the back of our minds long enough to come up with creative and unique idea.

 

Let's take another evergreen picture book topic (New babies in the family!) and look at some examples of how different creators have approached it and innovated to create a ‘new’ book idea that felt fresh and new and connected with readers:

There's a House Inside My Mummy
by Giles Andrae and Vanessa Caban

15 Things NOT to Do with a Baby
by Margaret McAllister and Holly Sherling

The Baby's Catalogue by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

Waiting for Baby by Rachel Fuller

The NEW Small Person by Lauren Child

Wolfie the Bunny by Ame Dyckman and Zachariah OHora

There's Going To Be a Baby by John Burningham and Helen Oxenbury

How to Be a Baby by Me The Big Sister by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Sue Heap

Mr Bear's New Baby by Debi Gliori

Mummy Laid and Egg by Babette Cole

On the Night You Were Born by Nancy Tillman

Mommy, Mama and Me by Lesléa Newman and Carol Thompson

Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell

So many ways 'in'! You can change up the target age group, fiction vs. non-fiction, flip the point of view, turn the voice on its head, innovate the structure and so much more!

Even if you don’t come up with a brand new idea, by adding your unique take on it, you could add a new perspective or spin that might feel new and connect with young readers. And THAT is valuable!

_________________________________________________________________

Natascha Biebow, MBE, Author, Editor and Mentor

Natascha is the author of the award-winning The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola Crayons, illustrated by Steven Salerno, winner of the Irma Black Award for Excellence in Children's Books, and selected as a best STEM Book 2020. Editor of numerous prize-winning books, she runs Blue Elephant Storyshaping, an editing, coaching and mentoring service aimed at empowering writers and illustrators to fine-tune their work pre-submission, and is the Editorial Director for Five Quills. Find out about her new picture book webinar courses! She is Co-Regional Advisor (Co-Chair) of SCBWI British Isles. Find her at www.nataschabiebow.com

The gift that keeps on giving: how to keep a picture book retreat going at home and in your head when it’s over… by Juliet Clare Bell

 Last month, I went on a picture book retreat 

        

Spot the five Picture Book Denners! -Pippa Goodhart (back left) and Garry Parsons (second from right, second row) -who led the sessions; Clare Helen Welsh (third from left, second row), who co-organised it; Natascha Biebow, joint Regional Advisor of SBCWI British Isles (second left, third row) and me (with red hair behind Natashca's shoulder) (c) Tito Berredo.

After a long pandemic break (the previous one had been in 2019), I was keen to try and stretch the benefit as long as possible beyond the actual retreat. Whilst the place looks lovely

                         

                                                   (c) Clare Helen Welsh

     

                                                               

                                                                                      (c) Clare Helen Welsh

as someone who doesn’t picture things, I don’t get to close my eyes and relive the lovely gardens or misshapen old rooms like some people (I’ll take their word for it) do. My three big takeaways from the weekend (other people will have come away with other ones, I know) which I was keen to smuggle home so I could incorporate the retreat life into my own were:

 

                                                             PLAY

                                               TUNING INTO YOU

                                               ACCOUNTABILITY

 

PLAY -I was already trying to get into the play mindset before I left for the retreat and even packed my Michael Rosen Play book to get me in the mood:

 

                                                                                      (c) Michael Rosen

And there was plenty of it there. It was particularly relevant in the Picture Book Den’s very own Pippa Goodhart’s sessions on different forms of picture book. We discussed concept books, interesting use of flaps, holes, books where the pictures are doing something quite different from the text (my favourite kind)… And we spent time playing around with ideas of our own.

I’ve always loved picture books that do things a bit differently, especially wordless books and those with few words. And I feel like I’ve been given permission (or given myself permission) to go back to a form I’ve always loved reading and writing. Pippa’s examples of different books that played with form, or where pictures play a particularly crucial role -and crucially, which publishers might be interested in them- really sparked ideas… including going back to old manuscripts of mine that I’d abandoned because they were a hard sell…

                               Books bought for research post retreat for potential new projects!

            Books from home that fit with the themes/concept/style I got excited about at the retreat

                                                           

                                              And more.... Who doesn't love a retreat that gets 

                                              you excited about your own bookshelves again?

  

and Pippa's and Nick Sharratt's You Choose, one of my all-time favourites. I've lost two copies so far (the first, my children loved so much that one of them cut it up to use the individual pictures) and the second, I've used in schools so much with reluctant readers that I've mislaid it and need to get a third copy... I would encourage everyone who knows children between the ages of one and seven (though my children used it way beyond seven) to have a copy of this book...

TUNING INTO YOU

I’m not great with yoga. I find it really hard to do the breathing at the same time as moving, and I find following any kinds of instructions pretty difficult so it’s usually a frustrating experience for me. But we had our resident yoga instructor/fellow author/illustrator, Gary Fabbri, there and for those of us who wanted to (and I did want to give it a go) we started our days with yoga before breakfast. 

                                                                                      (c) Imogen Foxwell

Whilst I struggled doing the actual movements and breathing the first day, I loved that we were doing something outside and communal, but quiet, to start our day. The second day, Gary went for a simpler session, particularly useful for writers and illustrators who sit for long periods of time. And I loved it! In the evening, we did a yoga meditation (yoga nidra) where we set an intention, a question we’d like to ask ourselves relating to our writing/creating or our lives. Whilst I couldn’t do the imagery side of the meditation, I entered into the spirit of it, got hugely relaxed with the gongs, and allowed my unconscious mind to do what it wanted. The outcome? A semi-interesting answer to my own question to myself (about my current work in progress) but something else, too. It brought to mind a manuscript I’d written paying homage to another book many years ago but that couldn’t be published at the time (for copyright reasons), so I’d changed it and changed it until it was hardly recognisable. But now, seven years later, I suddenly remembered that I’m free to go back to my original one! And I’d completely forgotten its original form until that session!

 Keen to build on the ‘trusting your own mind and body’ and allowing your mind some time and space to flourish, and bearing in mind that I had really enjoyed the early morning yoga, I decided to start doing something I’d not done for years when I got home: waking up at six o’clock to write. It’s absolutely the best time of the day for me to write (but I’d somehow managed to ignore that) and I enjoy it way more than I enjoy writing at other times of the day (I ignored that, too). It turns out that my inner critic prefers a lie-in and just doesn’t show up at that time of day. I don’t get out of bed, I’m often not 100 percent awake, I sometimes don’t even put on my glasses so it’s not even in focus, and I’m just happy to be creative and let it flow.

The final take home was about ACCOUNTABILITY. I already have an accountability partner with whom I meet once a week on skype -and this year she was at the retreat, too. When it came to writing our postcards to ourselves for six months’ time at the end (we all write down on a self-addressed postcard what we hope we’ll have done on the writing/illustrating front in six months’ time and then the organisers -which included Picture Book Den’s Clare Helen Welsh!- collect them in and send them to us in six months),  we addressed them to each other rather than ourselves so that the other person will hold us accountable to what we’ve said we’ll do by that time.  But the accountability didn’t stop there. On the way to the station, I was chatting with a few retreatees and we were talking about experimenting, playing and being less precious about our work and how we should just get more written, quickly. And we decided that we’d each commit to writing (and in some cases, illustrating) two really rough stories per month with a monthly deadline and online meeting the next day. They would have to be new stories each month (no editing and resubmitting the same one) and we wouldn’t critique them but we’d all have a quick read before we met and say one nice thing about them -but no critiquing). The idea is that if we get less precious about our writing/illustrating and our ideas then we’ll free ourselves up and write/sketch quicker and that at least some of our new ideas will be ok. We’re not thinking we’re going to create 24 good stories in a year -but there might well be some good ones in there that may never have happened were it not for this new process.

 And keen to merge this new (or re-remembered) trust with play, I’ve been committing my morning writing slot to new story ideas whenever I have them so that I am being playful every day first thing in the morning. If I actively want to work on my current (serious) work in progress at 6am, then that’s fine but priority goes to being playful with new ideas. What it means is that I’m no longer feeling like I have to finish X before I can even think about any other projects, which takes away some of the positivity about the current work in progress. Now I’ve created what feels like magic free time (six till seven), I can do whatever creative projects I feel like in that time and I’m feeling more enthusiastic about all my projects because I’m feeling creatively fulfilled by playing every morning!

I even did some (relatively) early morning outside writing on holiday in Orkney just recently, including sitting on my mum’s grave

                                   

overlooking Scapa beach

 and at the beach

          where I came up with an idea which will be one of my 'two a month' rough stories I'll try out

                                                                            at Scapa

                                                        at Weyland Bay at the end of my mum and dad's old road

After getting a little nervous last week that I was losing my taste for the early mornings before discovering I actually had covid and my body just needed a lot of rest, I’m excited to start back again in a couple of days’ time. Although I’m better with quiet than I was before the retreat (which means I’m having more interesting thoughts and ideas, too), I still play birdsong as I write, but that all feeds back into recreating the retreat early morning soundscape anyway.   

It's a retreat I'll remember for a long time (huge thanks to organiser Paul Morton, who spent months preparing. It was great to meet fellow 'Denner, Garry Parsons at last, and it was great to be in the company of loads of lovely and interesting creative people). I know everyone will have come away with different 'take homes' but here's to listening to ourselves, being accountable and having fun!

If you have any tips or stories about being more creative, getting more done or trusting yourself in your creative practice, please do share them below in the comments section. Thank you!

Clare is a children’s author of more than 35 books and is now on a mission to have a playful year of writing…

www.julietclarebell.com