I’m not exactly sure of the year, but somewhere around 18 years ago, after I had finished library school, I took a class at Otis College of Art and Design (formerly the Otis Art Institute) on how to write a children’s book. I took that class at that specific school because I had met the teacher at UCLA, when she lectured in Prof. Michael Cart’s Children’s Literature class my first quarter there. Her name is Deborah Nourse Lattimore, and I was intrigued by her because she was unusual in that she both wrote and illustrated all her books, which is a tough thing to do in an industry that wants to decide for itself what illustrations are appropriate for your story.

I was also a fan of her work, mostly because of the quirky spin she brought to folk stories, fairy tale retellings, and works of historical fiction, especially those about ancient civilizations. Although I have enjoyed many of her 39 published books, I think my favorite is I Wonder What’s Under There: A Brief History of Underwear, a “lift-the-flap” book in which the undergarments of the Egyptians, people of the Dark Ages, the aristocrats of the French Revolution, and more are explained and shown. When someone in class asked her what made her want to write the book, she told a story about going to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) with her grandmother, who commented that she wondered what a woman in a painting was wearing underneath her voluminous dress. The question stuck with Deborah, and surfaced many years later as this book.

Although I made good use of the class to work through some ideas I had for children’s books, my subsequent career as a teen librarian proved so taxing that I never did follow through. But at one point I took inspiration from my cats—specifically, Beatrice (the lead character) and her brother Dante and sister Miniver, and worked hard for a while on a book about them. I completed chapters one through seven, and then synopsized what would happen in chapters 8-14 (although I subsequently decided that those chapters should comprise book #2). At a later date, when I was doing some extensive journaling, I also jotted down ideas for at least four sequels.

A few years after that, someone broke into my house and robbed me; and they stole the computer on which my sole copy of these story beginnings were stored. I thought that they were gone forever, and was so discouraged that I never sat down and tried to recreate them; but just a little while ago I discovered a paper printout of all of it, neatly typed and stapled, stuffed into the bookcase in my bedroom between two large picture books.

Two days ago, I decided that I would re-key the manuscript onto my current computer (and copy it onto a flash drive, which I would put away in case of further depredations by burglars!), and the act of typing all the scene-setting and conversations between my furry protagonists made my ambition come alive again. I finished typing it today.

I’m having a little bit of a challenge with it, though, because I haven’t written anything beyond blog posts, book reviews, essays, and grants for so many years that there is a native reluctance to dive back in, perhaps to discover that I have lost the plot and can’t follow through.

Also, the fact that I have pursued an art interest/career for many years now means that I am currently more visually motivated, and my brain immediately jumped away from the writing process to dwell on what style of illustration would best go with the story. I have, so far, four ideas about that, but am holding myself back from working on them because I feel like the writing needs to take precedence and that I am perhaps participating in classic avoidance technique by turning away from the writing to the art.

But…perhaps each can feed the other? Anyway, I just keep asking myself, How cool would it be if you finally wrote, illustrated, and published a children’s book before you die? Or a series of six chapter books? or pulled out that story you wrote about your dad as a boy, or the princess who loses her voice, or…?

(I debated sharing this over on my other blog, The Book Adept, as a more appropriate venue; but I spend so much time on this blog talking about negative and discouraging news and information that I thought, Say something positive here for once!)