Cabbages and kings

43,000 words into Daisy Danger Brown! Sure I know, some writers write hundreds of thousands of words every year, but 43000 in three months is great for me. And now I'm thinking that I'll need to write the entire first draft of all three books before starting in on rewrites for the first. Erk. Sometimes I question my sanity.

And today I spent time working on another picture book idea, which is really irritating because I have novels to write and I should learn by now that I'm no good at the picture books. I've written 7 or 8 I guess (not just written down an impression but spent weeks going over the text and fine-tuning) and they're all no good. I showed my favorite to my agent last year, and he said, "Nice try, but no." I finished another I'd been playing with for years and got the guts to show to my editor, who politely turned it down. I should know better, but I keep getting ideas, and whenever I have ideas I have to write them. It's nice for me to work on really short things, to play with the words, to imagine the pictures, to think like my son and wonder what things would interest his rapid-fire brain. Maybe someday I'll work up to being good enough for that medium, but for now I'll just think of it as writing practice.

The new picture book was about a cabbage. Because, you see, there just aren't enough cabbage characters in today's children's books. I'm sure you've felt the lack...