The One-Hour Picture Book -Be More Quantity by Juliet Clare Bell

There’s an anecdotal story told about surrealistphotographer Jerry Uelsmann and how he tried to motivate his BeginningPhotography students at the University of Florida:

(c) Giuliano De Portu

He gave half the class a quantity assignment, wherethey were to take photos and their grade would be based solely on quantity: 100photos at the end of the semester would get an A; 90 would get a B, and so on. Andhe gave the other half a quality assignment. They only had to submit onephoto and it would be graded according to its quality. At the end of thesemester, Uelsmann found that the best quality photos were actually from the quantityhalf, where the students had experimented and learned along the way through thepractice of actually taking multiple photographs.

This has been described in Atomic Habits by James Clear, andless accurately in Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

(by their own admission) but howeveraccurate, I know that if I’d been in the quality group, I’d have taken that onephotograph so seriously and the thought of it not being amazing would have weighedso heavily on my mind that it would have massively stifled my creativity. My takehome message from the story is clear:

·         * Stop feeling pressured about an individualproject you’re working on

·         * Don’t think of yourself being a picture bookauthor as being someone who produces one book every so often (or not so often)after months of hard graft

·         * Don’t take yourself too seriously

·         * Sit down and get on with it

·         * Practise the form again and again and again

·         * Don’t worry if lots of your manuscripts are terribleand wholly unworthy of being sent to publishers/your agent

·         * That’s kind of the point.

·         * Just do it.

·         * And then just do it again.

·         * And then just do it some more…

·         * so you’re so used to the practise of sittingdown and turning up to write that you’re going to come up with far more reallygood manuscripts/germs of an idea than you would by treating the production ofideas as wholly organic and the turning of the idea into a book as supercomplex

·        If you treat each idea like it needs to be executedperfectly from the start then you’re not going to get nearly as far as youwould -even with the same idea- as if you’re freer and prepared to play andexperiment rather than treat it with kid gloves

·        And there will be some gems, or at least gems of an idea, that you would never have if you were treating each idea as if it were etherealand fragile.

 

I said the take home message for me was clear -not concise. Andthat’s part of the issue. If I don’t set constraints, then I over-write,over-think and procrastinate wildly. I make it way more complicated than itneeds to be. In fact, it can be concise:

·        Be more quantity.

 

A few years ago, a small group of us picture book writersand illustrators, high on the excitement of a weekend spent together at apicture book retreat

                           SCBWI British Isles Picture Book Retreat 2023 (c) Tita Berredo               (wrong year for the story but everyone from the 'Two a Month' group is in the picture)

decided that we should try and mimic Jerry Uelsmann’s practice.And for a while, we committed to focusing on quantity over quality in picturebook creation (as an exercise) andagreed to show up once a month online with two completed picture book drafts,however rough (the point wasn’t to get critique on the manuscripts but to keepeach other accountable for creating more, and really regularly). Whilst itlasted, it was really helpful and we were all more productive -and without activelytrying to come up with even more ideas, I was coming up with way more ideasthan the two drafts a month. But as is so often the case, life got in the wayand we were all busy with other commitments and deadlines and we stopped.

It was a good attempt at channelling Jerry Uelsmann, and theconstraint of writing two a month and knowing that we were celebratingconsistent quantity over quality was helpful, but perhaps the constraints weren’tquite enough for me and I needed to constrain my parameters even more…

Constraints

I’ve always loved the constraints when writing a picturebook (every word matters, twelve to fourteen spreads, making use of the formwith page turns and reveals etc.). Constraints can be extremely helpful, especiallyfor those of us who are prone to distraction (you’ve caught me mid-sentence,scratching away at my tab key as I try and type, but seriously, how did it getthat grubby…?)

I’ve recently written a series of early readers for apublisher and the construction of the books is full of constraints -very low wordcount, restricted word choice, reduced spreads, specific characters, etc.. Andbecause it’s for a series of educational books, the deadlines are closetogether, there’s a quick turnaround between handing the first draft in,getting feedback and editing before handing over the final draft, and it’s wayharder to procrastinate… Research for the level and the individual books takesa lot of time but by the end of the series of books, I’d got into a half-decenthabit of quickly mapping out and writing the actual first draft.

When we were talking at our local SCBWI at the weekend

                                       Our local SCBWI Central West group this weekend

another picture book creator talked about needing to stop taking her work soseriously and I mentioned the quantity vs quality story. I also said how we’dtried a two-a-month group, how we’d previously done speed-dating with picturebook ideas generated in Storystorm month (if you want to know how, here’s a guest blogpost I wrote for Storystorm 2019, we remembered how we’d done a ‘picture book in a day’ session a yearearlier in one of our local meet-ups and I mentioned how I’d been mapping out andwriting my first draft  stories for theearly readers really quickly. I said it was amazing what you could actually doin a hour if you really focused…

So she called me on it. Why didn’t we write a picturebook there and then in an hour (without any preparation -and for me, at least,any idea of what I’d write about)?

I spent the first ten minutes brainstorming and identifyingwhat I might write about (what issues have been on my mind lately that might resonate with young children) and then drew out twelve spreads and wrote thestory.

Did we finish a scrappy first draft in an hour?

    Yes. We both did!

Were we surprised?

    Yes. Extremely!

In fact, by the end of that hour, we’d even both managed alight edit.

Was it our best manuscript to date?

    No. But that’s not the point. We both created a whole(scrappy) manuscript in an hour, a whole story that had not existed just sixtyminutes earlier.

Was it helpful that the other person was there, bodydoubling, to keep up accountable?

    Absolutely.

Would it be replicable back home, alone?

    It turns out, yes… I tried again yesterday, specifically forthis blogpost, and I managed it. It's not as interesting as the first one (which I'll definitely do more editing on and see how it goes) but that doesn't matter at all...

 

Memory

My memory is terrible. As someone who is perimenopausal ontop of ADHD and aphantasia (where I can’t visualise, see https://picturebookden.blogspot.com/2016/03/picture-yellow-square-rotating-towards.html)I need all the help I can get to remind me that I’m a picture book author. I literallyforget almost every day -like I literally forget we have a garden for most of theyear because we can’t see it from the house as the windows don’t overlook it.And in the way that I actually have a picture of me looking happy in the garden,displayed prominently to remind myself that we have a garden and I love beingin it, I need prompts to remember I’m a picture book writer. Making myselfwrite picture book drafts really regularly is a very practical way of helpingme remember that I am actually a picture book writer. 

Why not have a go? 

This could be for you if you

·        Take yourself too seriously

·        Take your writing too seriously (to the pointwhere you stop taking risks because you don’t want to get it wrong)

·        Struggle to start writing

·        Struggle to finish writing

·        Forget that you’re a picture book writer (andwant a really regular reminder)

·        Have ADHD and need the dopamine boost of a super-quickdeadline

       Just want a fun challenge

 

I try loads of different strategies all the time to make memore productive and procrastinate less. I’m really keen to getthis going and I’ll be doing another tomorrow at our local Society of Authorsmeet up where we’re writing together for one hour (perfect timing!) After that,I’ve got hundreds of tiny ideas from various Storystorms and in general. I’mgoing to write each one on a slip of paper, put the slips of paper in a jar andpull one out at random at least three times a week to create at least twelvepicture book first scrappy drafts in the coming month. I write for an hour eachmorning at 6am anyway as it’s my best time of day so I will just be moreorganised in what I write during those times. I can certainly afford to spend threehours a week working on something new (three somethings new) and out of thosetwelve there might even be one that’s worth pursuing. And if there isn’t? Hasit been a waste of time?

Absolutely not. I’ll be strengthening my picture book muscle,getting better at ignoring my inner critic and absolutely remembering that I ama picture book writer. My new motto:

Be More Quantity.

(The quality will follow.)

Are you up for trying it out? Do you have any tips for non-precious writing? If so, I'd love to hear in the comments. 

Juliet Clare Bell is a children's author of over 35 picture books and early readers. www.julietclarebell.com