Please welcome author Rebecca Fyfe to the Tuesday 12 x 12 series. She manages to write while raising seven children! She didn’t stop at the 12 x 12 either – she’s also participating in February’s picture book marathon. Whew! Excuse me while I go take a nap… 🙂 Welcome Rebecca!
I first heard about the 12 x 12 in 2012 challenge through my Facebook friend and author Jo Hart. She had joined the challenge and posted about it on Facebook as well as on her blog. Having previously written three children’s stories that were currently sitting on my computer without any idea what to do with them next, I knew that this challenge would be a great one for me.
Being a mom to seven children means that I have read a large amount of picture books (usually to my children as I tuck them into bed). Sometimes, I would make up stories to tell them instead of reading them a book, and often they would plead with me to tell them a “made-up story” because they always loved these stories. As a result, I have a library of ideas in my head for picture books which have never been written down.
With the new year arriving, I re-evaluated my writing goals for the year ahead and decided to set myself monthly writing goals in order to keep myself productive and to circumvent my tendency to procrastinate. Joining the 12 x 12 in 2012 challenge seemed like the perfect way to both get those children’s story ideas of mine written down and to give myself a set time frame in order to do so.
After joining, I found out that the 12 x 12 in 2012 group on Facebook had opened up many new connections for me with other picture book writers and the whole community is so helpful and supportive that it has been a wonderful experience so far. I am enjoying reading the many blog posts from the different published and unpublished authors who have joined this challenge along with me.
As I attempt to get my stories out of my head and typed into my computer, I am learning that it is much easier to come up with the idea for a picture book than it is to write it down. Aside from finding the right idea to run with, there are word counts to consider and deciding whether to rhyme or not to rhyme. While it is a challenge paring down my stories to more acceptable word counts, I am enjoying the process and the feeling of accomplishment when I finish a story.
Rebecca Fyfe is a wife and mother to seven children, a writer, blogger and she writes kid-related health and fitness articles for a monthly magazine. She has a BA in English and an AA in Child Development. Born and raised in California, she now resides in the United Kingdom. She is an advocate for raising healthy children and has appeared in several national magazines and has appeared on the UK morning television show Daybreak.
Julie Hedlund - Write Up My Life 