Cave painting photograph © Maxime Aubert An interesting thing happened this morning: I got up at 6am and went downstairs to make a cup of tea. As I waited for the kettle to boil, I checked the weather (to see if a walk was on today) and the BBC News (to see whether Trump had… Continue reading Are you being guided by something?
I have been conducting a little experiment. For the past few months, I have been doing a quick doodle every day. Nothing major. I simply pick up my pen and draw whatever wants to come out. Sometimes what comes out is great. Other times, not so much. It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. The… Continue reading The joy of making stuff up
Something unexpected has just happened. Since 2012 I have written and submitted 5 picture books to a few carefully selected literary agents. All my submissions have been rejected, though one was a “near miss” according to the agent who represents Julia Donaldson (guess how much I treasured those two words!). Rejections don't faze me; they’re… Continue reading Writing a picture book in 3 days
Five weeks ago, I wrote a post entitled How to kickstart your creativity without having a meltdown. This turned out to be one of my most popular posts, so I thought I’d give you a quick update on how things are going. If you recall, I was taking ridiculously small steps towards writing and illustrating.… Continue reading An update on taking ridiculously small creative steps
I opened my notebook yesterday to take one more ridiculously small step towards creativity and this little character came out! He's a small guy but he has BIG thoughts. Quote: Wallace D. Wattles, author of The Science of Getting Rich.
“Have you done any writing or drawing lately?” J asked. “Not really," I said, "why?” “Because you get really crotchety if you don’t create something.” "Huh?!" Strange as it sounds, this was news to me. Everyone has their up and down days but I hadn’t appreciated that not being creative meant I was waaaay more likely to… Continue reading Do you go ‘weird’ if you’re not being creative?
I had planned to write a post about my next venture. That’s still the plan but I'm taking a quick detour to share something important. I’m reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. (I wasn’t sure about the book at first but it's just got better and better and now I am ever… Continue reading Stop whining and get back to work
I hinted in my last post that I may be about to take a new direction in life. It requires a bit of explaining and bizarrely, it all starts with a Salsa class… I have always wanted to dance. For years I watched Strictly Come Dancing and vowed to start dancing, but of course I… Continue reading Heading in a new direction: Joy!
I spent most of today at work researching quotes about nature for a book about the great outdoors. Copyright rules state that you can only quote from a source who has been dead for 70+ years. So I found myself in the strange position of finding a great quote and then looking up the author… Continue reading What I learned today: we only get one shot at this
Ah, I’ve just come back from a week in the Cotswolds. We stayed in a converted barn on a beautiful eco-friendly farm. Every night we sat on our balcony and watched the sun go down over the valley… When we woke in the morning, this was the only sound we heard… We walked through beautiful… Continue reading Magical Trees
Katherine Bassford 