Welcome to another holiday season! It has been well over a year since I last wrote, and I confess I am a bit rusty. But, I have been quite busy, and wanted to take this opportunity to mention my focus group heroes, who showed up in this very odd year and at the beginning of a holiday season to the virtual focus groups hosted by Charles Beatley Jr. Central Library. A huge shout-out to the Youth services librarian, Ms. Amanda, who also figured out a way to teach origami activities virtually.
 
We chose the pig face and the owl as a tribute to the new characters in book 3, but as one participant astutely pointed out, “Next time can we make an origami dragon?” While an origami dragon does exist, it involved far too many steps for a 20’ activity. Therefore, I created this easy Centipede Dragon garland (go to: https://centipededragon.weebly.com/crafts.html to download the template and instructions). This is a great indoor activity for kids, and an opportunity to use up wrapping paper scraps for the chain links to boot! Or, how about a newsy Centipede Dragon made from magazine pages? Plain paper can also be decorated or written upon: challenge your kids to make a link for each person who has been out there working throughout the pandemic: the grocery store clerk who’s bagging your groceries; the postman/postwoman; the restaurant workers; the ER doctors and nurses; the janitors and support staff, anyone who has had to go to their workplaces to get paid.
 
Focus group testing is an important part of the writing/illustrating process. As creators, we can lose objectivity, and furthermore familiarity breeds accolades that might not be warranted! Thus, bringing in voices, particularly in the age demographic you are targeting, is fundamental to gauging your success in relaying your story in both words and pictures. Once again during this process, I received invaluable feedback and have already implemented it in the book.
 
I can’t also NOT mention my adult focus group participants: my coerced friends who gallantly stepped up and told me what THEY thought as well!
 
In closing, my humbled thanks to all who believe in my characters and my stories. I can’t even begin to express what that means to me.

Although it’s the end of October, I have more to share with you about the SCBWI winter conference I attended in February. I wanted to talk about writing, because as an illustrator, drawing is fun and writing is hard. But without good writing, you simply can’t produce a good book.
 
So, I took this writing intensive and I frankly didn’t even know what I had signed up for. I wasn’t prepared and had not brought a computer. But I did have pen and a notebook so all was not lost.
 
Linda Sue Park was one of the leaders of the workshop, and aside from being a successful author, she is a realist, a pragmatist who understands that a main roadblock preventing us from our creative endeavors is the tasks of life itself. The creative process gets relegated to last priority, and when one does have, say, an hour of free time, half that time may be used to give the brain a rest from life. So what can one accomplish in the half-hour remaining?
 
The answer? A pomodoro, or in English, a tomato.
 
Yes, you should be confused by now. To explain, the Pomodoro writing technique was created by a student named Francesco Cirillo who set a tomato-shaped timer to its maximum of 25 minutes to perform a task. After time was up, he took a break, and then set another 25' to complete the next task.
 
From experience, Linda also realized that perhaps half of the remaining half-hour would be whittled away with checking e-mail, texting, and shopping on Amazon (again, the brain rest thing, it's no joke). Now with merely 15 minutes left to DO something, she halved the pomodoro, thus limiting the task to 12 minute intervals, and affectionately named this modified version a “writing sprint.”  
 
To put this in practice, she gave us a writing prompt to start us off, like “Once upon a time there was a what?” Your writing toward this prompt does not have to be the book on which you’re currently working. It could be about something entirely different, such as re-imagining another scenario for Harry Potter. Set the timer, go for 12, take a stretch. Oh, the thing about these sprints is they don't even have to be good English nor complete sentences!
 
The next 12’ could be a continuation of what you began, or, you can start with a new prompt, like writing the difference between the internal versus the external quest of a character in your book. The main point of these sprints is to condition you to write when you can. Blocking out time daily to get your creative work done is excellent advice, but also ideal advice. We human beings get into funks, and sometimes just can’t.
 
Now, let's imagine that you have 12 minutes. Set yourself up for success with, as Linda puts it, “a tiny task that is too hard to fail.” Go ahead, try it. And for kicks, buy a Pomodoro timer!

I hope all you readers have been enjoying a fabulous summer! I myself cannot believe we are less than 2 weeks away from Labor Day. And this has reminded me that a long time ago, I wanted to tell you more about the experiences I had at the SCBWI Winter conference on children’s book writing and illustrating, which I attended in New York City back in February.
 
This experience somewhat tickled me, because even though the exercise they took us through in this particular session was such a basic and fundamental one in the process, that when I applied it to the visual dummy I had already made for book three, it revealed an opportunity I missed to create a little suspense through the use of a spread.
 
To re-cap from a previous blog post, I created the “roadmap” for this book very differently from how I created the ones for books one and two. I used the storyboarding approach by making rough thumbnail sketches to match the part of the text I chose to segment out for each page, thus more effectively testing the pacing of the story. I had thought back then, well now the hard work is done; I’ve thought of visuals for every single page, and so now all I have to do is draw!
 
Once the speakers guided us through the making of an actual physical dummy, we then began writing sentences from our manuscript onto each page. I realized that as early as page two, I had missed a chance to spread an event across two pages instead of crowding it onto one!
 
As you might have guessed, this had quite a ripple effect. First, with the addition of this new page it threw off all my planned-for page turns that followed. What appeared before on a left-side page (non-page-turning page) now was bumped to a right-side page (page-turning page). It also created problems like potentially crowding the following page by cramming the info that got displaced by the new page-turning page onto that successive page in order to avoid adding an additional FOUR pages. Why four? In the printing process, printing is done four pages at a time in what is called a signature. Therefore, it wouldn’t be possible to add a single page to get the left-side and right-side pages properly re-positioned.
 
At this point, I had to play out the ripple effect, and proceeded to evaluate how the new page-turning page flowed into the next page and the next. This was instructive in determining if a natural condensation of information (both text and visual) would reveal itself, if information in two pages could be condensed, or even omitted. It also made me more discriminating about the page turns I had already incorporated: was it truly "page-turn-worthy," or, could I get rid of the page without disrupting the sequential flow of the story?

It’s been a painful process and is still frankly in progress. However, I keep in the forefront of my mind that I wouldn’t want to go to all this trouble to produce this book, and forever look at the obvious suspense or page-turn opportunities that I didn’t include. Or worse, didn’t execute well.

Once again, we had an awesome time reading and telling stories at Charles Beatley Jr. Central Library on May 18, 2019. We had an energetic crowd for sure, as we started off with a reading of Centipede Dragon A Benevolent Creature versus the Rascally ReptilLion. Then we celebrated Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month–the month of May–with a mythical story about how the order of the animals in the Chinese Zodiac came to be. Now, there are so many interesting things about Asian cultures, and though it was hard to choose upon what to focus, a story about a great race to the Heavenly Gate seemed too good to pass up!

We concluded with our rollicking drawing game where we create a new zany creature out of two (or even three), only this time we chose animals from the Chinese Zodiac. Our resulting crazy creations: Dogragon (dog plus dragon), Horx (horse plus ox), and RASNOX (rabbit plus ox plus snake)!
 
So, a hearty thanks to Amy and Diana at Charles Beatley for another wonderful opportunity to share my story, and further share information about Asian culture. And of course, thanks to the engaged and enthusiastic families who attended. See you next time!

Hello friends! It’s been a while. I have to thank each and every one of you for your patience during my absence. My weekends (and some weeknights) have been spent working, unfortunately on work that is NOT Centipede Dragon work. But I hope to get back at it soon.
 
In the meantime, I am hoping on Saturday, May 18, that I can kick off a period of productivity with a story time that is also a nod to Asian American Heritage month. As you know, I am Asian, and my story is based upon a character derived from Asian culture and mythology. Therefore, I will be reading our story as we normally do during these programs, but maybe go into something a little more special, to celebrate Asian culture,
 
So join me at our favorite library, the Charles Beatley Jr. Central Library in Alexandria, VA, at 11am on Saturday, May 18, for a good time as we read Centipede Dragon A Benevolent Creature versus the Rascally ReptilLion, and then learn a little something about the Chinese Zodiac!

I've been a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) for 6 years, and have attended 3 or 4 regional conferences. This year I decided to go to the annual national winter conference. It was 1.5 days of programming kicked off by a Gala presentation. There was familiar programming like inspiring author presentations, and the ever-informative editors and agents panel discussion. But the big difference was the three, 2.5-hour intensive sessions, with a wide variety of alternatives in each of the sessions. I wasn’t even sure if they would be working- or info. overload-sessions, so I tried to select those that could help me re-focus on writing and producing high quality picture books. I will be talking about these sessions more in-depth in a future blog.

The other big difference was in my personal approach. In the past, I put too much pressure on “making it count” by meeting as many editors, attempting to make lasting connections, and hoping for the possibility that a publisher would want my books. And I always came away somewhat disappointed. This time, I decided to go as a proud self-published author, who wanted to inspire and be inspired by others.

I confess, I was planning to skip the gala presentation, for it started at dinner time without offering food alternatives. Then I saw who the guest speaker was: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor! So I ate before and off I went. She spoke of her relationship to books as a reason for us to keep creating books, for young kids like her found solace, companionship and inspiration in them. We also each got a signed copy of her children’s book.

The whole conference exceeded my expectations. Initially I felt I had chosen my intensives poorly, but all three ended up extremely fruitful.

The hugest intangible in going to these conferences is the collective hope of its participants. You have the chance to meet people who have truly made a committment to this as you have: people who levy their time, their money, and their egos, to produce something worthy for kids. Interestingly, while over the past few years self-published books have gained traction and respect in the market, they were not mentioned throughout the conference. But I was so grateful to meet one other person who raised money on kickstarter in order to realize his publishing dream. And like me, he fortunately doesn’t plan to stop. So, I want to say to Phil, let’s make a promise to each other, and not stop!

Hello, and welcome to 2019! While I have had a renewed drive to complete book 3, the year has started out somewhat slowly in the Centipede Dragon realm. At the end of December I had three glorious days to devote almost entirely to illustrating for book 3, But the demands of life have again taken over and so, again, I am trying to jump-start my process in the first month of this new year.
 
So, I’d like to share my 2019 goal with you: by year’s end, I hope to have all 32 illustrations plus the info page ready for focus tests in early 2020, and an aim of a publication date in the latter half of the year.
 
Sharing this information with you is a way to have accountability. Setting goals can be unpleasant and scary, and further feel pressured in a bad way. But goals can also make your tasks feel more routine and automated. If I throw in several hours of illustration time on the weekend just like vacuuming or doing my ironing, I might be surprised with how much I do get done by year's end! Also, if I chunk them up to only three a month, it sounds a lot better than 32.
 
The catch is that other things come up in life, and then the key becomes being able to adapt my goals. For instance, I have been preparing for a children’s book conference in February. I spent a day running around looking for materials for my press kits and putting them together so that I would be prepared should someone express interest in Centipede Dragon. It was a day that I could’ve made headway on an illustration, but instead, I was doing something else for Centipede Dragon. Therefore, worth my time, but also puts me behind with my 3-illustration goal for January. Now, if I say I must complete 6 illustrations in February, it would likely make me feel more stressed, and thereby make my goal feel less achievable. Therefore, maybe I aim for 4 illustrations in February, March and April. After all, 4 sounds a lot more doable than 6!
 
So, I’ll check back in and let you know how my illustration count is faring!

I’ve had a few moments to think about what I’ve accomplished this year in my world of Centipede Dragon. I’m afraid I have come up short of my goals; disappointing, but galvanizing for 2019.
 
This year, I was able to complete my illustration “road map” for book 3 using story-boarding, something I had not done for books 1 and 2. I also tried a new workshop format at Charles Beatley Jr. Central Library, which allowed me to learn first-hand just how fascinated kids are with writing stories. They also embraced drawing as a tool to help them write. They weren’t self-conscious about what their pictures looked like, and frankly they didn’t need to be, because their drawings were comprehensive and liberated. Kids just want to tell their stories and have someone really listen to them.
 
I was hoping to be well on my way with the actual illustrating part, like maybe have more than half the illustrations completed. But then there are family issues, or an all-consuming job that leaves you sapped at day’s end, and many moments when I needed sweatpants, potato chips and TV.
 
Then, I receive just about the greatest present I could get for the holidays, pictured here. These letters are from two kids who got my second book, Centipede Dragon a Benevolent Creature versus the Rascally ReptilLion. I was particularly impressed by the imagination inspired by my illustrations, that of his own hybrid creatures. I can't even describe the feeling I had when I saw them.
 
You see, as someone who has stories constantly swirling in her head, you really just want to tell your story and have someone listen to it. But when you inspire someone to be creative enough to spin off your ideas, you cannot imagine how overwhelming and rewarding that feeling will be.
 
So, onward to 2019, when I hope to complete the drawings and have a publication date for book 3, which is shaping up to be a rollicking good adventure!

I wanted to share with you my first experience running a workshop on writing and doodling out stories.
 
In conjunction with the Charles Beatley Jr. Central Library in Alexandria, VA, this was an experiment inspired by the presentations I had done in the past on writing stories. After all, these are really the main questions people have of me: where do my ideas come and from and how do I start writing my stories? Turns out it isn’t as intimidating as one might think, at least, not when you begin with a good character. Anyone can write about someone or something, BUT, what situation would be appropriate in which your character would find him/her/itself, and why? How would your character react to being in the situation? How could the reaction be funny, or unique? How could the subsequent action by your character heighten suspense? When you have a character, a story often follows. But the details that make a story a compelling one come from the details you KNOW about your character.
 
So I created three worksheets for the participants to start 1) getting to “know” their character, 2) writing using a guide about something happens to that character, and how the character then tries to resolve the incident, and 3) using doodling and drawing as tools to help fill in and document all the rich details of the character, the character’s environment, etc, that make it all come alive on the page.
​
​These workshop sheets, along with others, can be downloaded here:
http://centipededragon.weebly.com/events.html
 
We had nearly a full house on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and a very engaged group keen on writing AND drawing. I wish I had pictures to show you, but I was so busy running around with the kids that unfortunately I couldn’t take any. A couple of huge lessons I learned from these kids is that: 1) they are NOT afraid of the blank page, and 2) their creative minds are BOUNDLESS.
 
Something to chew on for next post!