A Whole New World: Changing careers to fulfil your passion

Tita Berredo - Children's Writer Illustrator

Hello everyone, I am so excited to be a guest here! \o/

For those who don’t know me I’m a Brazilian children’s writer and illustrator, based in Scotland (I married a Glaswegian and someone had to move). Since I moved to the UK I have been actively engaged with the kids lit community, volunteering for SCBWI, the Society of Authors, and the Association of Illustrators. There’s no doubt that I was able to explore and expand the most with SCBWI by becoming a volunteer from the get go. I was Illustrator Coordinator of the British Isles for years, and now that I am moving back to Rio I am the IC for the International Central.

Connecting with this community has been a great joy for me, and through the years it’s proven to be an excellent way to exercise a myriad of skills I actually use for the career I've chosen. Whether it is practicing communication, networking, writing articles, hosting events, meeting people from different countries and backgrounds, learning, sharing... all of that makes me be a better creator. Books after all have everything to do with human connection. So, when the lovely Justin Campbell asked me to write a four part blog post I thought that the best thing I could share is how I found myself and grew by nurturing these connections.

Interestingly, but not uncommon in this industry, this wasn’t my first profession. Like most people, I was very young when I had to make a choice of what to study and work with. In my late teens all I knew was that I hated maths. I was good with art and literature, but that was not considered a good enough foundation for a normative profession by my parents or the society I lived in. They weren't wrong, but they also weren't right. I was good at many things, was theatrical and entertaining, very sociable, and no doubt a  creative. So as a middle ground between what I was good at and what was acceptable, I ended up in social communications at PUC University in Rio. In retrospect, it was a great foundation to what was to come later. I was able to experiment in different areas like cinema, journalism, and marketing. Ironically, on every area I worked with I would always end up drawing and making stories: in marketing I made logos and commercials; in journalism I wrote journeys and illustrated the editorial headers; and in cinema, well, I’d often work with animations. So…, I guess we can agree there were a few clues on the way, huh?

Anyway, I was already into a mixed career in publicity and marketing when one thing really changed my life (and it’s not even a thing): my husband. Martin was living in Singapore when we met on a trip to Chile with friends (yes, very international, very romantic). Jump ahead a little bit and suddenly I was living in Singapore, speaking a second language, and reinventing myself under adulthood’s autonomy – away from parents' and cultural expectations. 

Autonomy means freedom in many levels. For me it meant freedom to play again with my original passions. Everyday I would draw something different and make a little story about it for Martin, until he said the obvious thing that I actually had never heard from outside my head before: you love this, and you have a talent, go take it seriously. That was the very start of what would become a happy and fulfilled life based on a career that deeply reflects who I am.

I was already deeply focused on children's publishing and picture book making when we moved to London. There I enrolled in a Master’s degree in Children’s Literature and Illustration at Goldsmiths. Note, I did a Master’s because I also wanted to teach – you don’t need that to make books and become published. But that really opened up my horizons and helped me develop my art along self expression rather than pleasing a public (hmm, I should have learned that but then, wasn’t this the whole point of changing careers?). When I finished the MA we moved to Glasgow in Scotland, and there I was: a new beginning, in a different country, in a different language, and a new career knowing zero people. Then I met SCBWI.

I shall leave a gap between then and now, so I can share it in different ways on the next posts (I still have three to go, and there’s a whole lot of fun to explore). The point is: I took a long circuitous path to end up where I always was supposed to be, and this probably made me better at it. I was able to reinvent (or, in this case, rescue) myself and grow in a completely different industry from scratch within a few years. That’s to say that wherever you are in your life, you can always change your career, you can also work with different things that reflect you or not, or keep a side job that allows you to pursue a passion. Our priorities change, our limits shift, and we should always be open to changing our minds. Because there’s no doubt that you will always be who you are, even if you don’t end up where you were meant to be. It might be a cliché, but “be yourself” is never overrated.

Whoah, that was a philosophical trip down memory lane! Next time I’ll jump ahead and talk about more recent discoveries, how I was able to generate new opportunities and learn to deal with them professionally. 

See you then! Beijos! (that’s kisses in Portuguese)

Tita Berredo is a Brazilian children’s writer and illustrator. She holds an MA in Children’s Literature and Illustration from Goldsmiths UOL and a BA in Marketing from PUC-Rio. Her work has been recognised internationally, including a London's House of Illustration award and selection for the Bologna Children's Book Fair. She has illustrated books for the US and Brazil, and is making her author–illustrator debut with a Seuss Studios early reader published by Random House Children's.

Tita is the Illustrator Coordinator for SCBWI International Central, and a Picture Book reviewer for My Book Corner. 

Find Tita's work at www.titaberredo.com follow her on Instagram: @titaberredo