I was a voracious reader from the days of Nancy Drew and The Bobbsey Twins. I was fascinated with books. It seemed ominous to my nine year old self to make a book. Authors, to me, were rockstars. Writing a book was just something so unattainable – like trying to be an NFL star quarterback. The idea of writing so many words and telling a great story was something I couldn’t ever imagine myself doing.
When I went to college for teaching, I fell in love with children’s books. The best class was my Children’s Literature class with Dr. Haller. She instilled in me my love for picture books and my deep appreciation for a story gently and brilliantly told. The best ever assignment was writing our own picture book. Back then I had to use a spiral bound sketch book and construction paper. I still have the book. The idea of me even attempting to publish a real book grew even more remote, even though I always wanted to create the same kind of beauty I found in picture books.
When I became a teacher four years later, children’s books and teaching through literature was the heart of my classrooms in both fourth grade and kindergarten. Teaching children to write their own stories and create there own books was at the center of my curriculum. With the onset of computers in the eighties, my fourth graders were among the first to create writing on a word processor and print it out. My kindergarten classes, in my last four years of teaching, each wrote and published a hard cover book.
“Book making” had come a long way from my sketchbook and construction paper mode, but still, the idea of ever seeing anything I wrote or illustrated in any kind of print whatsoever was not even on my radar. Four years ago when I retired and decided to resume my own writing once more, that world of getting published was even more unattainable. Millions of books get submitted to publishing houses each year. The slush piles are huge. I had a better chance of winning the lottery.
Now, four years later, here I sit in an e-publishing class seeing my book on a kindle. The moment was one of awe. The best part is my teacher was so awesome that I am confident I can get both novels and picture books up on Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook and do it all by myself. The first two days of the class moved a bit slow and involved a lot about marketing. Today we got down to the business of “book making” and something that was so unattainable for most of my love affair with books, is now at my beck and call – sitting at my fingertips, waiting for a few keystrokes, and voila! It’s a book. Up on Amazon for purchase. Wow.
And so, as another day goes by, in its small way it was an epic day in the journey from sketchbook publishing to e-book publishing, and… I have written.
Coming soon!
I want to order one!!!