Author: It's All About the Story

People like to ask me, "Where do you get your ideas?" This is a little bit the same question as, "How do you write your stories?" As I said before, I don't write my stories in words and I don't imagine words in my mind. It works like this:

I get an idea. The idea is a picture. I get ideas from movies, books, video games, dreams, classical music, jazz music, rock and roll music, hearing stories about real life, hearing stories in history lessons, doing story-problems in math lessons, and even from looking at other pictures I have drawn and other stories that are already done.

I sit down at my studio and draw the idea, the picture, in my mind. That picture tells a story. There is action and characters. That first picture, the idea, leads to the next picture and more and more pictures until finally all the pictures connect and a whole story is there.

I don't know the whole story when I begin with the first picture. It is very exciting for me to start because I never know what will happen. I control what will happen but I don't know what I will decide. Sometimes when I'm half way through with one picture I see the picture that needs to come next and I draw very fast to get to that picture. If I get one detail wrong from the idea in my mind, I rip out the page and crumble it up. The picture has to look just like the idea in my mind.

I get the best ideas when I'm working in the big black hardback books. But they are very expensive and so we don't always have those. Then I use other books.

I can wait months and months after I draw a story to write out the words. Once the story is all drawn out I know all the words automatically. I never forget them. Finally I tell the story to my Mama Jenn and she types it. Mama Cris is going to start typing my stories, too, then I'll have lots of my books published. I'll use my royalty check to buy big black hardback books.

I want to have my books published. I was thinking about it one day in the Barnes & Noble. Mama Jenn was showing me books at the Barnes & Noble that Windstorm had published and some books that Scholastic had published. People who were strangers were buying the books. I wanted strangers to buy my stories and read them because then everyone will know who I'm talking about when I talk about Baby Squirrel. I said to Mama Jenn and Mama Cris, "I wouldn't mind if people all over the world bought my books." Mama Cris said, "Okay." And Mama Jenn picked me up and hugged me.