June 2007 – submissions

Hi y’all,

I am not doing what needs to be done. If I want to be a published picture book writer, I need to submit my pb manuscripts to editors. I haven’t been doing so. I sent out a bunch in late January or so, but since then, nothing. I cured that June 29th with sending off mss to 19 publishers. Again, I stress these are well targeted submissions. I think there was a total of 8 mss which I send off simultaneously. A few were queries and others were unsolicited subs. I also sent a requested ms to Dutton and a revision request of Buck-a-Bye Baby to Putnam. It was requested back in March and has gone through three re-writes.

I currently have 39 subs out to 34 publishers and 1 agent. I have been very lax in writing and subbing the past few months because I’ve been working on Purple Ducks, a memoirish type book which explains some Chrisitan concepts, especially our need to belong. I have about 210 pages finished in it. I’m really frustrated with it because I have so many doubts about this foray into adult writing. I know I can write picture books. I write some outstanding ones, but as for my adult type writing, I’m not clueless, but I just don’t know how to make it all work together. I sometimes think I just have 30 or so essays that are not so brilliantly connected to one another. If something good doesn’t happen with Purple Ducks,  I’ll feel I’ve wasted some good picture book writing time. Oh well. May God bless my Purple Ducks. Please.

Brian

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SCBWI Meeting

I attended a SCBWI meeting in June. I seem to only attend the critique meetings. I love them so much. I was inspired to do more with my writing. Praise God for SCBWI and other writers. Without others, I’d probably never write or submit. I’ve been getting on the Verla Kay site more now and have begun to get some mss ready for submission. It’s only a matter of days till they’re in the mail box.

Brian

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Busy writing month

I wrote 8 picture books this month. I just wanted to write. I remember one of these books began by writing the following words on a blank word document:

“Written By Brian Humek”

I just sat there looking at the computer screen. I wanted to write. I just didn’t have any inspiration. Then it struck me. I’ll write a story about a boy who loves to write. He especially likes the part that says “written by.” That story became Written By Weander Wojihoitzki. This story is about Weander, a boy who loves to write but struggles to finish his next elementary school writing assignment. Weander lives in the big city. His entire life is “big city” but he is assigned the topic, Living in the country is…

Inspiration can be crazy. Sometimes it’s an almost blank word document.

Oh yeah, of the 8 books written in April, three of them are still making the rounds in Feb 2007. It was both quality and quantity writing time.

Reading to my son

After moving to Irving, TX for preaching school, I began reading more books to my son. The library had a larger selection and I had a blast reading the stories. There are tons of readers who say, “I could do that,” after they read their children some picture books. I can’t say for certain that thought didn’t enter my mind. I can say for certain that I had a burning desire to write similar books. I was inspired by these writers. I loved their creations and wanted have some of those 32-page creations myself.

Some of the earliest inspirations:

Sheep in a Jeep

Farmer Mack Measures His Pig

The Cow That Wouldn’t Come Down

The Cow Buzzed

Farmer Brown Sheers His Sheep

I’m sure I’ll think of some other books that were quite an inspiration.  

- this memory is from late 2001/early 2002

Lesson learned: I love reading to my son. He is indeed my God-given inspiration.

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The Beginning of it all

I don’t know what made me do it. I’m not sure why I was so inspired to begin writing picture books. Recently, I found the story, the one that began everything. It’s called The Lonely Sprout. No, it will never be published. It will never even make it close to a mail box. It’s awful. I had written it in a spiral notebook. I went back and typed it up and filed it with all my “real” stories. The most interesting thing about the story is not its plot, but the little note near the title. It spoke about what I was doing the night I wrote it. 

It read:  

Dec 8^th 1998 1256 am watching Dick Van Dyke Show after best night of our marriage, talking politics, etc.

(She was interested in things I was interested in, so great)

 I think it was knowing that my wife is supportive and is interested in the things I do that caused me to finally write a story and finish it. I actually didn’t finish it until May, 1999. When I finished, I wrote one more book called Tim and Tom. That one was even worse. It was not for a couple more years until I wrote again.

Lesson learned: My bride really loves me!

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