Last week in My Author Origin Story, I told you a bit about what made me think I could become an author. It started with a broken leg and ended with finding a wonderful community at the SCBWI conference. Now, let’s see what happens next.
I left the SCBWI 2024 winter conference empowered by the affirmation of my peers and equipped with new knowledge and advice. Now it was time to put it all together and write. I sat down to apply my first piece of advice: write what you know. It only took me a moment to decide on a rhyming picture book. It only made sense. I’d read so many of them. Actually, that’s an understatement; I don’t just read rhyming picture books, I perform them. My voice undulates with the rise and fall of the rhythm. My face contorts playfully to interaction with the text. I feed off of children’s expressions and gleeful voices as they chant a clever repeating phrase. Without a shadow of a doubt, rhyme is an important part of my voice, and stanza after stanza flowed from my fingertips. That was until I remembered another piece of advice from the conference: If you can tell the story without rhyming, do so. UH OH! For me, these two pieces of advice conflict, so I had to think about this thing. In fact, the more I thought about it the more I remembered that it seemed every time someone mentioned rhyming books, there was a hesitation, sometimes a pause accompanied by a stutter and an explanation that boiled down to rhyme needing to be almost, if not, perfect. The very thought of perfection as an onramp to being published intimidated me. I began to spiral: What if my rhymes aren’t strong enough….What if I do all of this writing and no one wants to sign me....Publishing is a business…and on and on and on. My writing was stifled.
Then in a moment of sobriety, I remembered another piece of advice in the form of a prayer. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.” And I started talking to myself again, “Okay, settle down, Tischa. You cannot control the publishing industry, BUT you can control your attitude about it. You cannot control if someone decides to sign you BUT you can prepare and go through the process. You cannot control whether or not someone likes your rhymes, BUT you can make strong rhymes and YOU CAN publish them. With that certainty, I got back to work. I watched webinars and wrote. I shared with critique partners and revised. I recorded beta readers, noted the hiccups, and revised some more. There was only one thing left to do, take it to a professional. That professional was Autumn Allen.
At the 2024 Kweli Color of Children’s Literature Conference, I pushed aside the delicate parts of my ego and signed up for a critique. I asked for and was paired with author, editor and professor, Autumn Allen. I was delighted that I got Autumn, because I knew as an editor at Barefoot Books she had a pulse on early childhood rhyming books. Also, I was fangirling over her YA novel, All You Have To Do, so with giddy nervousness, I was eager to hear what Autumn had to say about my rhymes. Autumn handled me with great care. Initially, she didn’t mention anything about my rhymes. Instead she told me that my ending was unsatisfying, and even gave me an idea for a sequel. I could see her point about the ending and took note of the suggested sequel, but what I really wanted to know was if the rhymes were good, so I asked. Without hesitation, stutter, wary tone or qualifier, she said my rhymes were strong. I felt my shoulders go down. Autumn corroborated what I believed, that I could write a rhyming picture book, and that’s just what I had done.
Every publisher knows that a strong manuscript is just the beginning of a book. I had mine, but there was so much more to do, and I’ll tell you about that next week. Hope to see you there!
For over 30 years Tischa D. Brown has enjoyed working in early childhood education. It’s been an adventure filled with laughter, tears and extraordinary ideas. That’s why in Tischa’s debut picture book, Got Ideas, Anyone?, she highlights the classroom in all of its glory! Currently she juggles marketing and promoting her recent release while preparing for the next one and writing new material for querying agents.
You can contact her through her website: tischadbrown.com
And follow her on Instagram:@tischastake.
