These types of updates with be sporadic rather than weekly, only happening when new and interesting things in relation to creativity occur.
Past
When my little boy got sick and we were all home together following the hospital stay, one of the things that we did as a family (short of collectively not sleep due to the fear of low blood sugars happening through the night) was draw and colour A LOT. It was a low effort activity, and contrary to the fact my son had taken a huge interest in art before ever getting sick, I still hadn’t picked up my pencils in years. We would do a lot of “how to draw videos for kids”, or make fusion monsters from his growing card collections. That’s when my son commented on liking my art and started asking me to draw him things.
Eventually my son was well enough to go back to school so I tried going back to work but between the constant calls from the school about his disease management and my inability to stay on task in the office, it didn’t work out so well (understatement of my year). So I went on stress leave so I could focus on my sons needs as well as my own.
We got into a rhythm and learned our new normal, but since I had so much time during the day (when not catching up on lost sleep), that’s also when I started writing stories for my son each night. He would give me some ideas of things he wanted in a story (type of monster, names of characters, types of fights or adventure they would have), and I would expand those ideas into a short story. I would also draw a cover page for the story to bring the characters to life. Every day I would write him a new story, and every night we would read it together at bedtime. We quickly made a full notebook of short stories and he became a little agent with tight deadlines who wanted more and more each night. Short stories turned into a full chapter book (a chapter written each day), and quick sketches turned into full colour pages or comic style interactions of the characters. Writing and drawing in this way was a lot of fun (and often exhausting).
Present
I can’t recall the exact moment when our little bonding activity turned into the personal goal of illustrating and publishing, but once it entered my brain, it stuck. I didn’t have the excuse of not having time anymore, and I wanted to prove to my son, and myself I could do it. I chose one of the slightly morbid stories that we created because I really like the ending, and knew it would be fun to draw. The key points my son gave me to work with in case you were wondering were:
“a shark girl is the main character, she fights a dragon, someone dies in the end”…
Since a children’s story with a twist of darkness is my favourite kind, I was able to zip through all the sketches pretty quickly. I’m now in the process of figuring out a colour palette and honing my dusty tablet skills to do the line art and colouring. I have a loose storyboard that I will have to hone in and some editing to do to the story but I have full confidence I can complete this goal and get this book published in the foreseeable future.
Future
My original goal was to self publish by the end of the year (2026), but if I can get the colouring to my liking soon, I will submit the story and art drafts to a few agents and see what their thoughts are. I’ve learned a bit about positivity in the last few months, but I’m also not so naive to hold my breath on any of them taking on a book geared towards 6/7 years olds with death in it – but since you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, I’ll give it a go and let you know some of the responses (if they even bother replying).
Sincerely,
Sammy