This past weekend ended daylight savings time (or began it? I forget), and our household "fell back" an hour, earning (one would think) an extra hour's sleep. But we have preschooler twins, so our extra hour turned into a just as early but extra long morning. And I have to say, it was sublime. Spending time with brand-new or nearly new people is a fantastic way to see the world with renewed eyes. It's also completely exhausting, but despite that exhaustion, new people are inspiring, and my new people are making me better at the things I thought I was already doing kinda well.
Case in point: The PiBoIdMo Challenge. Once informed, I immediately said, "Yes! I will do it!"
What is the PiBoIdMo Challenge? Well, for real and specific details, you can check out Tara Lazar's site where she explains it. In short, the goal is for participants to come up with 30 ideas for 30 children's picture-books in 30 days, making November a kind of national Picture Book Idea (PiBoId) month (Mo)! I also find it a wonderful "keeping-writers-motivated-through-the-holiday-grind" challenge, and I can't thank Tara enough for sending out the mass invite.
My twins inspire a great many picture book ideas, and they often enjoy telling me lengthy yarns of their own, more often than not featuring their "brothers" Iron Man, Superman, and Captain America, and their sisters (or sometimes alter-egos) Hello Kitty and her twin sister Mimi (also "Boxy" in our house). It's spectacular, and fun, and the cruelty of it is by the time they're in bed or I have access to a pad and paper, I'm so bleary-eyed from the day I can hardly remember my name (or to take the keys out of the front door lock, or to take the milk out of the cabinet and put it in the refrigerator where it belongs), let alone recount or even short-hand the cool, funny, and remarkable sayings, ideas and tales of the day.
Tara's great gift to me this November is to commit me to writing at least one down. I wake up in the morning with that goal in mind, I hold onto it like a lifeline in raging waters throughout the day, and when an idea--ANY idea, as with a goal of 30, they don't all have to glow in the dark!--solidifies enough to form words, I scratch it down so at the day's end I can decipher my harried scrawl and translate it to an actualized, fully-formed book concept.
Today is the fifth. So far, I have not missed a day. While I began this blog with the intention of posting once a day, then once a week, then blinked and months sped by, I do believe I'm up for this 30 day November challenge. And with a recently received writing rejection under my belt--a real one that took energy to apply for and months to receive--I believe in myself as a writer. And with remarkable twin preschoolers lighting up my days, I simply believe in me. Today, at least.
To extra-hours and longer mornings.
To exhaustion by preschoolers.
To 5 down and 25 todays to go!
