Picture Book Idea Month

I know that many of you are participating in November's National Novel Writing Month challenge. For some of you, that is an exciting challenge that you can't wait to sink your teeth into. For others, it may be a bit scary. After all, 50,000 words is an awful lot.

Perhaps, you have no desire to pen the next Great American (or whatever country you hail from) Novel. You want to write shorter stories for younger children. That's great too. Did you also know that November is Picture Book Idea Month?

PiBoIdMo is a 30 day challange lead by Children's book author Tara Lazar. Writers are challenged to come up with 30 picture book ideas in 30 days. They do not have to be fully finished ideas. They can be settings, characters, plots. Just a different one each day.

To help with the challenge, Tara has created a blog that has a different guest speaker related to children's publishing each day. Many of them are published authors or illustrators. There are also prizes to be had, just for participating. Writers who register and then complete the challenge will be eligible for the following prizes:

Feedback from literary agents
Original sketches by picture book illustrators
Picture book critiques from published authors
Signed picture books
Jewelry
Other Cool Stuff


Registration is open until November 7th. It is FREE, so don't worry about your pocket book just yet. Guest Bloggers also share valuable information and suggestions to get those creative juices flowing. One Author/Illustrator created a 30 day Inspiration calendar full of prompt ideas. Another suggested using a digital Idea Wheel like: http://wheeldecide.com/

Go to http://taralazar.com/piboidmo/ to check it out and/or register before it is too late!!

I also wanted to add that PiBoIdMo may be good prep for Julie Hedlund's 12x12 Challenge (12 picture book manuscripts in 12 months). I will send more information on that when it gets closer to registration time.

Happy Writing!