How Mysteries Saved Me, Although Now I'm Writing a Picture Book

When I finished graduate school I thought I'd never want to read a book again. And I certainly never wanted to write another word. This was my ... 1/3-life crisis? Let's hope I live that long!

My first "book" was a picture book about Hello Kitty (I was 4 years old -- I knew nothing about intellectual property back then) that I dictated to my mother. After I became literate, I still wanted to dictate to her because her handwriting was better ... yeah, she wasn't having that after a while. Around the same age I remember staring at the pages in books, willing the black text to make sense because I wanted to read so badly.

But after graduation, all I knew was that I wanted to be somewhere, anywhere other than where I was. And my job was deadly boring. So I picked up an audiobook of M.C. Beaton's Death of a Dreamer to play at work and remembered why I loved to read.

Then I found a copy of James Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Mystery and realized I should give it a try. I'd always loved mysteries, but had been writing and trying (unsuccessfully) to publish children's books for about 10 years.

I finished my first cozy mystery two months ago and am currently workshopping it. I'm also plotting my next cozy.

But today I spent my writing hours reworking a picture book that I've wanted to write for a long time. It's based on the first middle-grade book I ever wrote (which, although I didn't realize it at the time, was a mystery!) that I think will be much better off as a picture book.

Of course, I'm besieged by the typical-of-me doubts: am I wasting my time? Am I just procrastinating?

Right now my mantra is: trust the process. Right now I feel the fire burning for the picture book. So tomorrow it's back to the picture book, and I will definitely get back to the mystery soon.