Putting ‘The End’ on a book is always exciting and a relief. This is especially true for a book that has taken years. Finishing “The Little Spider” is one of those.
I wrote the text draft years ago. That was the easy part. Picture books require illustrations. That was the hard part.
Getting Picture Book Illustrations
When the text got written, I did no drawing. I wrote. Period.
So I talked to several people who did draw. No one was willing to take this project on. So the text sat on my computer, moved to two new computers, waited.
Then I ended up doing the illustrations for “For Love of Goats”. Finding anyone else was not really an option as I wanted good illustrations for half a dozen different breeds of goats. They may all be goats, but they don’t look alike. It’s like both an Arabian and a Quarter Horse are both horses, but they don’t look exactly alike.
Gaining Confidence
After finding I could really do the illustrations, I got brave. I tackled the illustrations for “Waiting for Fairies”. The different animals weren’t that hard. People are hard to draw. I’m glad little children are so forgiving about illustrations.
So now I’m finishing “The Little Spider” illustrations. Actually all of them are done now. There are two things left.
One is a border for the last page about spider ballooning, the topic of the story. I could leave the text on its own, but a little border of the little spider running around the text would be fun.
What should I put on the cover? Obviously, the little spider goes on the cover. I haven’t decided what the spider will be doing or how the title and author name will go around it.
The Final Steps
Once I have those two things done, I can start the process of getting the book printed. Although there will be eBook versions, the conversions seem to distort the images. I don’t know how to fix this problem.
One thing is certain. Finishing “The Little Spider” will open up some writing time. Of course that is already filled with three other projects.
