Picture this

I'm in awe of picture book writers. How do they do it....tell a story with so few words?

I guess I'm just a novelist by nature. I tried to write a picture book a few years ago.

It was called Four Fine Friends at the Sleepy Time Motel.

It was set in the Smoky Mountains (at a motel - duh).

One of the main characters was an old lady named Aggie and her dog Willy.

I failed.

My editor said it was "most promising."

Then came the BUT (you know how you're always waiting for that word - like the other shoe dropping).

"But there's something that keeps it from being completely satisfying...."

She gave me some specifics and some good questions to ponder and left me to figure it all out.

I couldn't.

I tried and tried but I just could NOT fix that picture book.

So here's what I did: I took that dog Willy and wrote the novel How to Steal a Dog - and I took the character of Aggie and put her in the Sleepy Time Motel in the Smoky Mountains and wrote the novel Greetings from Nowhere.

There! Fixed it!

(But, um, why is it so much easier for me to write MORE words.....?)