This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
Welcome to Story Over Everything, Episode 12 for February 31st, 2023.
And the topic here is, what did I learn sprint writing three children's picture books?
And yeah, that's the question I'm asking, so I'm not talking about anything pertaining to like a writing topic in general.
I'm specifically talking about my grow book books and my experience writing three, four, and five in about three and a half weeks, maybe four weeks, depending on how you slice it.
So anyway, I'll just jump right into it. I don't have any questions for you as an audience, unless you're a writer and you found yourself writing things at a sprint or in spurts very fast, how that's gone for you.
Do you advise against writing in spurts or sprints, or do you advise for it? And what's your best word count? What's your best creativity?
That kind of thing, I would be curious to know. Those sorts of things. So if you have that input, then go ahead and leave a comment for me, but I'll leave it at that and I will get into the topic.
Yeah, I for a while, maybe over a year, probably over a year, I had a script written for one of the grow book books. Then as time went on and life moved on, maybe it was two years actually, my wife and I said, or my wife told me, hey, you should do a book for this kid.
And you shouldn't have two girls in a row in these books because I was going to do three or four. I don't know.
And then I got the bright idea to say, okay, well, I'll just switch it up. I'll start with a boy, then I'll have a girl book, then another girl book, then a boy book, then a girl book. Or is that how it goes?
Anyway, it doesn't matter. I think it's a boy, three girls, then a boy. Yeah, that's how it goes. And I figured that's fine because we didn't want it to be a girl series. It's a boy and girl series because it's good for both types of kids because it's universal.
It's about not being afraid of the dark. It's about dealing with hard, scary things as a kid, being brave, having courage, being able to adapt and deal with things and getting over your own emotional hangups.
That's what the girl book series is about basically. And I'm using magical guardian angel books and Tokusatsu type stuff to translate that.
Just as a quick aside, one of my favorite seasons of Kamen Rider is Forze, which takes place in an American style high school in Japan. It's like a magnet school or something like that. It's a weird, different school. It's experimental on purpose.
And they've got crazy cliques and it's extreme. It's designed to push the already hormonal and emotional teenagers to the max by putting them in an American style school, which is kind of a funny conceit because it is partially admitting how awful the Prussian style of schooling is.
But I won't get distracted by that and I'll just say it's very interesting because these young people get a taste of power and it allows them to turn into monster people basically. And they're able to use their abilities as monster people to seek out their own petty revenge over various things.
And at some point the power becomes too much. It takes over them and it turns them into a husk of themselves and the monster becomes the dominant individual and they will die and just become a monster and be a shell of their former selves for the rest of, well, forever if the hero can't save them.
And the hero does save them by transforming into a, if you were to make a man into a spaceship, but it was a, if you were to make a man into a ship, if you were to combine the idea of a spacesuit, an actual spacesuit and a rocket ship and combine that into one thing, that's what this guy is.
His head literally looks like the top of a rocket with little wings on it. Anyway, very funny, very interesting. It is very funny. Anyway, this guy actually beat up the negativity and the heartlessness of his fellow schoolmates until he was able to destroy that thing that came out of them and was able to kind of clear the air and help the people come back to themselves and make amends with the people who they hurt and be able to move on and get back to living a normal life as a teenager.
And as a good productive person who doesn't hurt other people because they're hurt. Incredible stuff. So I'm kind of taking that and combining that ideology or that perspective with this series of books that I read for my children at one point.
So it's the way I feel series of books and it's basically how can a sci-fi fantasy adventure teach kids how to deal with their emotions or show kids other kids feeling with their emotions by having empathy and compassion for others and things like that.
That's what the series is about. So it was originally just going to be a couple, but I expanded it and I said, I'm going to go hardcore. And I just sat on the ideas. I had, I wrote a second book and a second book unexpectedly, which really was the third book that I wrote.
And then I went back and I finished book number two as part of this sprint into writing the remaining three books of the set of five that I have.
But it's a little confusing, a little hyper-technical, but basically I wrote the books out of order and I had been sitting on the ideas for so long that I decided one day early late in January, maybe mid January.
All right. In the month of February or March, I am going to write one book a week. It was in February. I decided I'm going to write one book a week in the month of February and I'm just going to get these books done.
And what happened when I decided to do that? Excuse me. I'm coughing. I'm talking so much.
What happened when I did that is I pushed myself to basically finish one book a week. The goal was for the manuscripts to be about a thousand words. One of them clocks in at two thousand words and the others are around a thousand.
I don't know, a thousand fifteen hundred, that kind of thing. But one of them is two thousand. So I got to go back and maybe trim some things down.
But then again, I'm self-publishing, so maybe I can do it in whatever format I want. If it's more verbose, one book than the others, then you know, that's what you do.
You just know when you're reading them to those kids of yours, this is the long one. We can't read it tonight. We can't read these two back to back.
It's got to be the middle book that we read and then whatever. I'm distracting myself.
But what I learned was that I can just push myself to put words down. And I wasn't going for word count. I was going for story content. So what I did was I took a day or two and I mulled over my idea.
I came up with a theme to wrap this theme to be the core of the story, the emotional core of the story. I did theme. I was going to do goal motivation and conflict.
I started with that originally. I did it with one of the three books and then I just said, now I'm not doing that.
I'm going to state my theme and I'm going to have everything centered around that theme.
And after I have the theme stated for myself, the next thing I'll do is I'll just say in one sentence or a couple sentences, what's the beginning of my story?
What's the middle of my story? Then what's the end of my story?
And then because children's picture books are typically 32 pages or 16 spreads, as I like to refer to it because I like to have the image on one side or an image on either side and then text either on the opposite side of that or text under both.
And it's on both pages. I decided I'll just do 16 bullet points and those 16 bullet points will carry me through and give me the 32 pages that I need.
And it's basically a 16 point story. And what I was able to do was I took and I copied and pasted my beginning, my middle, my end, and I fleshed out my beginning into two to four points.
I fleshed out my end or my middle into a couple points or in roughly 10 points.
And then I fleshed out my end into a couple points as well.
So kind of the format that I came up with after or in doing that and I wasn't even realizing that I was doing that really is that my format was introduce the character, the character and the conflict sort of or their issue that they're having.
They're introduce the kid, the character and their personal issue that they're having.
This kid is angry. This kid is lonely. This kid is selfish. This kid is whatever. Right?
Then throw them into a supernatural threat or experience with one of these malicious creatures that the Grow Bug, the magical guardian angel thing is going to come and defend them against.
And then basically escalate the tension, make it tough, make it scary, make the kids struggle.
And as I'm doing that, work in somehow to bring the Grow Bug into the story and have the Grow Bug basically either make the kid face their fear or the crisis.
Yeah, the Grow Bug basically makes the kid face their crisis and helps them resolve it with encouragement mostly and a little bit of actual like defense and tactics because they are under attack from these these things that are either evil and malicious that have come to get them
or through their selfishness and through their immaturity.
They've basically put themselves into a situation where they are imperiled and the Grow Bug protects them from that.
But really, ultimately, the solution comes from the child having an epiphany and getting over whatever is causing the issue.
And then they're able to resolve it fairly quickly.
But still, you know, some of them, it's more work than others, but it's still it's they struggle, struggle.
They basically struggle through like 80 percent of the book and the last 20 percent or there's like an intro, then which is a tiny percentage of the book, maybe 10 percent.
And then they struggle for like seventy five.
And then the 15 percent left over is them overcoming it quickly and then having a resolution and then moving on from there basically and the Grow Bug leaves.
But that's been my my basic format.
And and there's going to be a lot of noise right now.
So anyway, that's the basic format.
So I've been doing that.
And then honestly, for most of the books, I didn't know where I was going.
I didn't know what I was doing.
And as I fleshed out my beginning, my middle and my end into those broader points, it helped me direct where the story was going.
And I was basically able to expand my middle into about 10 points and my beginning and end into three and three.
Let's just call it for simplicity's sake.
And I was able to say, well, these are my 16 points for the story.
And I just went ahead and wrote them out as best I could.
I usually like or I have liked in the past.
And it's embarrassing.
I have a project that I worked on for three years or more that I came up with all these ideas for these characters.
And I wrote a manuscript around that, a children's thing.
And then I totally scrapped it.
And I've rewritten that manuscript two or three times.
The third or fourth version of it.
I'm finally satisfied with and I will not be changing it.
If I ever produce it, I don't know that I will for sure.
I'll probably use that.
Actually, I might actually rewrite that because there's other things that have happened since I've developed and turned that, the germ of that into a bigger idea for something more.
A series of books, pulp novel type stuff.
But anyway, I won't get into that right now.
But like I made myself write three manuscripts where I didn't know key things.
Like I didn't know the characters names for the grow bugs specifically.
I was making up the children's names as I was going along.
Basically, I made the decision not to name their parents or any of their relatives except for the other grow bug kids because they all happen to be cousins and siblings, cousins or siblings.
They're all related.
And I made the decision to just call their parents, you know, so and so's mom or so and so's dad and just leave it at that.
And, you know, what are these enemies called?
I don't know what these enemies are called.
I know what it is.
It's a ghost like thing.
Or it's a, you know, it's a, you know, it's a monster inside of a video game.
I just pushed myself to just write.
And I was able to because I knew the theme, I think, I think because I knew the theme and I knew basically the emotional arc the kid was having.
I was able to write out the story and then come back to it and add more stuff in.
And in fact, writing like this, once I got to book five, I actually had to go back and rewrite book two because I needed to add an element to really put across what I was doing and what I was having the kids do in this idea of transformation that comes from Tokusatsu.
And that's, you know, something that's key to this whole project, this whole series.
And like I said, I had to go back and add it in and I'm glad I did and I'm glad I didn't push myself to publish the books one by one and I wanted to write them all together so I could unify them because doing this has allowed me to create the unity in them.
And I was able to go back and punch up that script.
And in fact, I went into books one and two recently.
This is like a week or two after I finished book five, the draft, the first draft of it actually was the second draft because I threw away the first draft and then like totally rewrote it as I was going through because I just wasn't satisfied with what I had going on.
At that point, I'd written like about a third of it and then I just I scrapped it and rewrote it.
But I've now since gone back and I'm plugging in.
I figured out how to name my grow bugs.
I figured out how to name some of the villains or some of the enemies that they face.
And I've gone back and I've plugged those things in and I really like it because I do have a consistency and I do have a unity.
It's almost like I plan the whole thing out from the beginning, but I didn't have to plan it all out from the beginning.
I just had to have a broad idea and go and write.
And then I learned that I can come back afterwards and insert that other stuff and I can come back afterwards and add those elements that were missing.
And it's OK because they're all in draft form.
And I don't know if that means like how with my other content, I'm planning to do stuff in advance and batch it and then just release it on a schedule if I need to do that sort of thing or what.
And that might be what I have to do.
And I think I'm willing to do that.
As I started, I think, yeah, as I was working on this project, it came to me that I should actually do a full on prose novel or novella or a middle grade or chapter book novel somewhere between a chapter book and a middle grade novel.
I think altogether I have 7000 words so far.
For the five grow books put together and I developed an idea of how to reuse those, which you know their picture book manuscripts, how to reuse those by adapting them or dropping them almost straight into a larger narrative that has these stories that are told that where stories are being told to younger, you know, initiate grow bug.
I guess you could say grow bugs and training.
And then there's a bigger narrative around it and I would start off by introducing the reader to the world of grow bugs or to the fact that there are grow bugs in the world and have like a insight and a peek into kind of grow bug society or whatever you want to call it.
And, you know, it's basically it'd be an introduction to the world.
And then in that I get after that's all done, I could say look and there's these picture books too. So if this is just a textbook with an image on the front and maybe a black and white image on the head of every chapter or something like that, where you can also get, you know, if you like this, there's the other version of it, which is the picture book version.
But I'm still undecided if I'm just going to drop the text straight in from the manuscript or if I will rewrite the stories from the grow bugs perspective or not, because especially for one of them, there's a lot I could write or rewrite in order to add it there.
And maybe, maybe, I don't know. I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do, but that's like 7000 words, like I said, and I think I read that a children's picture book or a middle grade book can be, I want to say, somewhere between 10,000 words and 30,000 words.
And I feel like I could either write 30 or 20,000 more words or sorry, three to 20,000 more words to flesh out the rest of the story, especially for the ideas I have. And I basically already have an outline for that. And I was going to stop and be content with the grow bug books as they are now.
But I think actually what I'm going to do, I don't think they'll change very much, but that I could be wrong because I didn't think my second grow book was going to change very much.
Basically, I'm in a place where I never thought I would be with these books and I'm going to pause. This is what I've learned. I'm going to learn to pause and slow down, take it easy, let my draft sit for a little while after I've punched them all up and finished going through all five books to edit and bring them into unity with each other.
And then once they're pretty well polished and I think they're going to be done, then I'll stop and I'll go ahead and write the prose, the whatever, the prose book, the short book, I'll call it that. I'll call it a short book for now, whether that's chapter book or middle grade book, middle grade novel, I guess, whatever.
I'll write that and then I will consider taking elements from that that are new and adding them to the picture books as well.
Will I actually add those elements in? I could tell you right now. Do I think my manuscripts are good as they are right now without adding more stuff into them? Yes.
I think each book has a lot going on and as they go on, they get kind of more exciting and more full of adventure, which is good.
And I don't know if that's going to push me to add more into the previous books or what it will do. But I think I've learned that it's good to give yourself the time.
Well, push yourself to work hard and to work fast. Do not push yourself to publish very fast, I think is what I'm learning, because in the past, I would have been tempted to just put these out and I might put them out like in blog form on my website and just say, look, here's manuscript one for this book and the same with the others.
And then go from there as I'm getting them as I'm working on it, I want to be putting that out there and drawing some attention to it.
But that's not really what I'm focused on. And maybe I'll even do that with them as they are after I finish this round of edits and polishing up.
And then I'll give myself the time to rework or to work them into the short novel.
And I might put that in form what I have in the five books, but I do not know for sure. But I think I've learned to be fast and loose and to play with things and ride them out and see how they go.
Because had I not tried to push myself to write these three books so quickly because I want to get everything published in 2023, then I wouldn't be here where I am now.
And I'm hoping that this will help transition me into writing my pulp novels. And I'm not saying I'll try to write 12 pulp novels at once, but I'm training myself in like basing a story in the theme, developing an outline from just a simple beginning, middle end statement.
And I'm not off to see how long I can, like how far I can push that formula for myself, that creative process for myself. Yeah, I'll have to see.
So it's kind of humbled me. It's kind of made me a little nervous to just jump into writing pulp novels. But I'm also I mean, I'm going to write a short novel and pulp novels are short.
So if I can write a 25,000 word short novel that is geared towards kids or young readers, and it works for this grow bugs, then I'm halfway there to writing a pulp novel, which is going to be aged up a little bit and can have more content in it.
And I am designing the whole thing myself. So that'll be really interesting. And yeah, that's more speculative than I wanted to be.
I just wanted to be reflective right now and talk about what I have taken away from this experience. And it's been a good experience. I'd be willing to do more like it in the future.
More things like it in the future. And maybe I will.
Well, I'm not sure what I'll do. I need to think about it some more. But that's basically where I'm at for now.
I also do. Well, there's going to be a little outro about my books, checking out my books. But aside from the books, I do do analysis and art on mgwinter.com, which you could find.
I have analysis going into several things, books, TV shows, whatever, and art based on that. Basically all Tokusatsu inspired superhero art is what I do.
So I'll have kind of like fan art that my kids ask me to make that I'll post up there. But then there's also my own original creations that are going to be used for my stories that will be posted up there as well.
So you can look for both of those things on mgwinter.com as well as the actual books, which you're about to hear about from past me actually.
So anyway, that's it. I'm going to go ahead and get out of here and I leave you with peace and blessings.
If you enjoyed me talking about the writing process, then hopefully you'll enjoy reading or listening to my writing instead.
So go over to MJMunoz.com or MJMunoz.com slash books and check out what I have there.
My plan is to keep that updated all the time with the latest and greatest of my writing, whether that be books, audio books.
You should be able to buy direct from me there. And yes, so please go ahead over there to MJMunoz.com or MJMunoz.com slash books and check out all the good stuff I have to offer there.