Yesterday I received an e-mail of acceptance from Little Hare publishers of a picture book manuscript.
Now, once again, I need to practice patience as I wait to hear who will be illustrating it and when it will be published.
It’s interesting that people still constantly ask me, “Have you written another story yet?” If only they knew… I am constantly writing and sending off manuscripts left, right and centre. It’s been 7 years since I’ve had a story published and in that time I’ve probably written over a hundred stories and poems. And now two are being published…so that’s a strike rate of one in fifty over seven years. That’s why I keep my day job!! Actually, in that time I have had some stories and poems published in The School Magazine, but they are a one off payment, so you have to have a lot of them published to keep you in the style to which you are accustomed. Which is why next year I am reducing my teaching time to just two days a week, so that I can have more time to write and do school visits.
At Writer’s Week I heard Nick Bland query the payments that illustrators and authors get for picture books. He was saying that illustrators should be paid more than the authors because authors can knock up a story in half an hour. Not this little black duck. I am still working on an ending to a story which I started over a year ago, and have been tweaking ever since, to make every word count.
It is an interesting question though. No author…no story for the illustrator to illustrate?