you’d think

you’d think
that vacation
would mean a break from verse
rather than a brand new project
oy vey

[7:42 AM]
I’m notorious for not being able to relax. For those who haven’t guessed by the fact that I’m posting this morning, Ayeka and I returned from our cruise last night.

So anyway.

My plan for the week on our cruise was to essentially rest and relax, trying to get my brain unwound from a year of work and to get down to nothing at all important. The most pressing thing on my list was to work on some of the rewrite for The Quiet Ones, doing notes and whatnot to make sure that I could start on it in earnest when we got back. I did about five chapters or so out of the ten, so I’ve something there to work with.

What did come up was… another story idea.

My mother-in-law has been encouraging me for a while to do children’s books – while Minagi, for instance, feels that much of my writing would likely cater to a “young adult” audience, my MiL is mostly talking about my writing an actual children’s book. I’ve been somewhat resistant, as that’s not really quite the direction I want to go… I mean, I don’t exactly see myself as the next Shel Silverstein.

And then, suddenly, I had a kind of idea while sunning out on the deck by the pool. (Thankfully, I do take a book to write in with me on vacations – thank you, Picasso 🙂 – and so I had something close by to take with me around the ship in the evenings to write as I was inspired.) The idea is basically a fairly silly one, the idea of a book about the life of a child on a city-ship on a world that’s mostly water. Think of it as sorta “Waterworld” without the planet having been Earth – it’s not post-apocolyptic, but rather serene and pleasant. I’m going to do each page as a haiga in watercolors, and we’ll see where it goes from there.

Yes, I’m going to do The Quiet Ones rewrite first and get it out of the way… as the book’s going to probably take most of the summer to work on. It’s not like I don’t have enough material… (As I told Ayeka on Friday, before dinner… I think I have enough material already for an entire storybook, and am already thinking of stuff for a second story…)