Several months ago I had a brilliant idea. Actually I must have had more then just a brilliant idea back then, but right now I can remember only that particular one: I had to write a book.
I’m not new at writing, in the sense that I’ve already written a few short stories in the past (and my friends said they were awesome, so, there!) so it’s not like I said anything like “tomorrow I want to be a mathematician”. I could actually do it.

Plus, instead of having a lot of good beginnings and no endings in mind, as usual, that time I had both of them. I mean, the beginning and the end of the same story, all together. I couldn’t believe it. However, the great epiphany was the fact that, though working in the videogames industry, I am a professional illustrator and I could have made the illustrations myself, be paid twice as much than your average writer, and become rich and famous in no time.

So I put some serious heavy metal into my playlist, poured myself several glasses of wine and started writing my first picture book. It was the first time I was writing something with the deliberate intent of being published and I was quite excited, so I ended up writing about three thousands words in a day. There.
Now I only had to illustrate it, but I had no idea of the size of a standard picture book. You know, painters always need to know the size of the canvas they will be painting on. So I googled it and, well, I didn’t expect to find what I did. I started with the various sizes and shapes of picture books, then I read about signatures, end pages, self-ended books, agents, queries, rejection forms, slush piles, adverbs to be avoided at all costs, bloggers and fellow aspiring writers, and I found myself sucked into a world of information I’m still struggling to process. Plus, since I want to illustrate the stories I write myself, I had to face the fact that drawing for videogames is nothing like drawing for picture books, and I would have to learn a completely new set of skills.

I bought a gazillion picture books (my three-year-old daughter didn’t mind), I read a few books on the craft, went back to life-drawing classes and subscribed to several forums and blogs. Oh, and I got rid of the three-thousand-word manuscript, it was crap. And I started to consider the illustrations in my website and also found them crap, and I am going to have to re-do it all from scratch, I can barely stand the sight of it now. And I was just googling for the size of a sheet of paper for christ’s sake.
Anyway, one of the things I found out during these past few months is that you need feedback at all stages of your work, you can’t be a good judge of what’s on stage when you’ve seen the bunnies get stuffed into the hat  (I’m quoting someone but may I choke to death on the spot if I remember who).
Hence this blog. Mostly to force myself to write on a regular basis, then to post works in progress, both drawn and written, and have people tell me “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG”.
I mean, before I write three thousands words for a picture book again.

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