{"id":347,"date":"2017-06-30T22:32:25","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T22:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/?p=347"},"modified":"2017-07-01T10:13:19","modified_gmt":"2017-07-01T10:13:19","slug":"done-done-on-to-the-next-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/?p=347","title":{"rendered":"Done, Done, On to the Next One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today marks a milestone. I completed the final illustration for my children\u2019s picture book. As I glued the last piece in place, sitting back to examine my work, I experienced a quiet glow of satisfaction. No fanfare blew, no confetti fell from the ceiling (although the floor around me was, as usual, already covered with tiny scraps of paper), and so far I have yet to receive any unsolicited calls from publishers desperate to make me a superstar. Still, it feels good just to be done with the thing. I began working on this book a full eight years ago, and it\u2019s been a labor of love (as all art worth making must be).<\/p>\n

The story, a simple fable about anthropomorphized talking tools, is a personal one to me, born out of a period of frustration and longing and loneliness, written with a deep sense of having been made for a purpose and a hope in things yet unseen. I\u2019ve always been of the opinion that a story\u2019s genre and style should, as well as possible, match the author\u2019s message. Sometimes children\u2019s stories say best what\u2019s to be said.<\/p>\n

Shortly after writing its initial draft and sketching the characters, I became interested in collage art\u2014using scraps of old magazines to create new images. Upon encouragement from friends and family, I used this method to create the illustrations, poster-sized to maintain the level of detail I wanted each picture to have.<\/p>\n

Looking back, I wish I\u2019d kept a tally of how many magazines I\u2019ve destroyed to make these illustrations, as well as how many glue sticks I\u2019ve gone through. My estimate is that I\u2019ve harvested colors from easily thousands of magazines, and worn at least a few hundred glue sticks down to the plastics. A conservative guess is that about 600 hours went into the collages (15 in total at about 40 hours apiece). This time was spread over nearly a decade; while my picture book waited in the background, I put out two books for adults and spent three years in grad school (during which I barely touched any other projects).<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what are you going to do now that you\u2019re finished?\u201d my wife asked. I almost laughed. \u201cYou forget you\u2019re married to the man with 1000 hobbies,\u201d I told her. Art and writing are, for me, like the hydra: cut off one head and two more grow to take its place.<\/p>\n

First things first: the actual story text some serious overhaul. Needless to say, I\u2019ve grown a lot as a writer in the past ten years, and I think that some trimming and sanding and polishing are in order before this thing is ready for prime time.<\/p>\n

I also need to learn all I can about children\u2019s publishing. All my previous experience is in writing for adults\u2014sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Picture books are a whole different animal.<\/p>\n

And, of course, there\u2019s my other writing to attend to\u2014more short fiction, and the ever-looming \u201csecond novel.\u201d In the immortal words of Semisonic, \u201cEvery new beginning starts with some other beginning\u2019s end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who knows? Given the speed this project has moved at thus far, maybe I\u2019ll be able to get this thing published and into a form people can actually read within another ten years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today marks a milestone. I completed the final illustration for my children\u2019s picture book. As I glued the last piece in place, sitting back to examine my work, I experienced a quiet glow of satisfaction. No fanfare blew, no confetti fell from the ceiling (although the floor around me was, as usual, already covered with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshstrnad.ztechcomputers.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}