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

Bringing the picture book retreat experience back home by Juliet Clare Bell

I’m just back from a wonderful week away writing in the middle of nowhere in Yorkshire. 

(The only downside, I had a Kate Bush ear-worm all week...)

It was fantastic for recharging my batteries and writing, but possibly the best part of it was time and head space to think about writing and how I can change what I do at home in order to write better.

Here are some things I’ve learned…

[1] Computers

Until now, when I’ve written, I’ve always used a computer. It’s my default. If I’m going to work, I open up my computer. I type faster than I write and I’ve got really used to writing straight onto computer. But for a picture book, with very few words, how much does that actually matter? After spending way less time even within sight of a computer on retreat, my default when working on picture books from now will be with my laptop out of sight. I’ll use it when I need it.

[2] Facebook

I had over a week without looking at Facebook. Did I miss the thing that I feel compelled to check many times a day whilst writing at home? Not one bit. Because the vast majority of my Facebook friends are children’s writers and all of the groups I’m in are children’s writing based, I’ve tried to trick myself in the past that there’s more of an element of work about it than there is. So, I have now banned myself from Facebook during the day, during the week. I’ve given myself permission to check it in the evening for a maximum of half an hour if I really want to. But since I’m way more drawn to it when I’m struggling with some writing and want a quick distraction, I think I may be about to have a much more casual relationship with Facebook.

[3] Writing big –and messy

I love using lining paper to get ideas down onto but I can go months without doing it sometimes. Not any more. I bought rolls of wallpaper lining paper to the retreat –and I used it. Lots of it. It feels like such a happy, creative way to work.  

One of the best uses I found for it was for ten-minute brainstorms, where you take an idea for a picture book and then just brainstorm –big- for ten minutes, setting a timer, and then stopping and moving onto the next one. It’s like speed-dating for ideas. You realise very quickly if you might be onto something. I’ve done it before with hour-long brainstorming sessions for each idea, but what I found on retreat was that I probably got almost as much out of a ten-minute session as an hour-long one, and certainly, it’s an easy, fun and -now even quicker!- way to work through all those hundreds of ideas (think of all those PiBoIdMo ideas generated every year!) that in my case at least, rarely go beyond the initial idea.

[4] Type 2 fun…

My daughter has recently started referring to Type 2 fun to describe something that you’re really satisfied with after the event, but you don’t necessarily enjoy it wholeheartedly at the time. She was talking about an adventure course in a forest, high up. She really wanted to do it with her friends but doesn’t actually like heights –definitely Type 2 fun.

Whilst I was away, I decided to take apart the process of how I create a picture book and divide the stages into Type 1 and Type 2, with a view to seeing if I could make the process as fun as possible. It was really useful -and quite challenging…

                Type 1 fun: the bits I enjoy when creating a picture book (at the moment):

Brainstorming  -it provides instant visual gratification (since I don’t do the pictures, I have to get my visual gratification where I can!); it feels really creative; there's no censoring; it's empowering; messy; stress-free, and slightly magic (at the end of a short session, you’ve come up with loads of ideas that didn’t even exist just ten minutes before)

Research - (often only a small amount is needed in a fictional picture book, but I’ve needed to do loads more recently as I’ve done more non-fiction) it's fascinating; I learn loads; and there's the exciting challenge of getting it across in a really lyrical and accessible way

Structuring – turning the free and easy brainstorming into something that works within the many constraints of the picture book form

Questioning my characters –discovering their motivations; getting to know why they’d do certain things and how they feel about what’s happening. I am inherently nosy (I used to be a psychologist and I’m fascinated by people, including characters). Until now, this has often happened after the event, where I go back over drafts and ask those questions and discover new things about my story’s characters. Although I will still do that at a later time, I’m now incorporating it more into the structuring of the book)

Critiquing –I do a lot of critiquing of other people’s manuscripts, both professionally and as part of critique groups. It turns out I really enjoy critiquing my own manuscripts as if they were someone else’s. It’s very freeing. What I’ve also discovered works well for me is taking other people’s critiques of my manuscript, reading them carefully and then doing a full critique of my own manuscript. The points that fellow writers made which I really agreed with are all incorporated into my own critique, but in my own words

Making rhymes work well

                

                  Type 2 fun –the bits I’ve discovered I’m not enjoying so much at the moment

Starting the actual writing – for whatever reason, I’m finding this bit stressful at the moment.

Writing –although this challenges my notion of myself as a writer, when I thought about it carefully, I think that I’m not massively enjoying the writing part at the moment. When it all flows and it feels Zen-like, I love it, but too often at the moment, there isn’t that flow and it doesn’t feel so good. A fellow picture book writer and good friend of mine said last year that she doesn’t actually enjoy writing her picture books. I was shocked –she’s completely dedicated to it, and I thought that we were really different in that respect. But I think she was just being more self-aware than me, and just saying what it’s taken me an extra year or so to realise of myself.

Actually making the edits once I’ve done the self-critiquing

So what can I do to make the writing process a more enjoyable one based on those realisations?

I need to re-remember that writing is way more than the actual act of writing the words. I enjoy so many of the other parts of writing, and I want to maximise the Type 1 fun bits and minimise the Type 2 bits. So I can fully justify spending plenty of time brainstorming and structuring before I write a single word of the actual manuscript –and that’s still writing. And since I don’t like starting, I need to make the writing part of the first draft really quick. Where I can, I need to get a first really, really rough first draft done in a single sitting. That way, I only have to start once for each project. This doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be completing a picture book more quickly, but it does mean that the bits I struggle to motivate myself to do are a much smaller part of the whole process.

And I haven’t written a rhyming manuscript for eighteen months, which I definitely need to rectify.

My decision to use a computer less means that I’m going to print out manuscripts more. In the last couple of years, I’ve written whole manuscripts through to final edits without once printing the story out. Now, I can do a lot of the final editing straight onto paper, which it turns out, is a nicer process (who knew?).

And actually, just getting on with it and doing it quickly means that I’ll get into better habits and some of those Type 2 activities may well move back over to Type 1 ones.

A writer friend of mine said recently “Writing doesn’t always look like writing”. It’s very true, but without having the option of Facebook during the day, more of the things I'm doing now that aren't physically writing are genuinely part of the "writing doesn't always look like writing" writing.

Use positive distractions. I know that I need to distract myself sometimes and Facebook has often been my distraction of choice, in the way that chocolate is my snack of choice if it’s in the house. But I know that I’m much better off having healthier snacks easily accessible and not having an unhealthy alternative available. My post-retreat healthy option distraction is a (non-story) book. I’m keeping it near me when I write, and if I really need a quick procrastinating dip into something, that’ll be it.

[5] More writing outside (Whoops, that last point was so long I forgot I was doing a list!)- I really enjoyed the opportunities I had to work outside –researching, brainstorming, structuring and actual physical writing by hand. 

It wasn’t often warm enough to be stationery outside for long but when it was, I was out, even when I had to be in several jumpers, a coat, hat and scarf and woolly fingerless gloves… 

I need to do that more. And now with less emphasis on my computer, I can –and will- do that.

[6] Make the most of the stillness. I loved it in the morning when I wrote before having spoken to anyone or listened to anything on the radio etc. I used to do this at home by getting up at 6am and getting an hour in before anyone woke up. And I’m determined to go back to that again, having reaped the benefits of the stillness of it on retreat.

[7] Recognise that this all happens in real life. I was able to go on retreat for a week but in real life, I have three amazing and highly distracting children who need to be loved, fed, played with and taken to, and collected from, school every day. I need to make all these changes within my real life and be more efficient whilst I’m working so that once they’re home, I’m theirs alone until they go to bed. More efficient includes using a separate (A4 hardback unlined) notebook for every project I do from now on, so I don’t lose any of my thoughts because they’re in one of twenty or thirty notebooks that are on the go at the same time.

I’m starting a reflection journal so I can work out what’s working well and what could work better. This is so useful for best practice, particularly with school visits, but I think it’ll be good for writing, too. And I think that keeping my computer out of view means that I can be much more present in work and life (and I hope it’ll help my children to grow up not thinking that on-line life is more interesting than real life).

And finally, I’ve found a way to recreate the retreat experience as closely as possible one day a week, when the children are not here. I will have a computer-free day where I don’t actually speak to anyone at all, in person, or on the phone or online from when I wake up until I pick the children up from school. No radio, no internet, no opening up a computer, no voices at all apart from my characters’. 

I made a plan whilst I was away and it still looks completely doable now I’m back. I’m going to stick to it. I’m going to take more risks and make more mistakes, and though I’ll make myself do some Type 2 fun every day, I reckon there’s going to be an increasing amount of Type 1 fun on its way.

A story, brainstormed, structured and written as a really rough first draft, mostly outside, and not going near a computer until I'd handwritten THE END, and all in one day...

Thanks to fellow writers, Ali and Annie, for a fab week.

What about you and your writing? Which parts of the book creating process are currently Type 2 fun for you?

www.julietclarebell.com