Making Time to Write: PiBoIdMo Prep

November is quickly approaching and one really important thing I do in November? PIBOIDMO. Also known as Picture Book Idea Month. I don’t usually do NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—where one attempts to do an entire draft of a novel in the month of November.

PiBoIdMo is more up my alley. The goal is to come up with one idea for a picture book per day. An idea—not a draft. This, for me, is doable.

Tara Lazar features an awesome picture book author or illustrator on her blog every day during the month of November. These professional picture book people have lots of wisdom to bestow upon the rest of us, so last year, I took notes in a PiBoIdMo notebook. You can see a sneak peek at what I did last year. 

Here’s what I’ve been working on to prepare for PiBoIdMo:

1) Readying a journal

I buy a special notebook especially for this occasion. The last couple of years I’ve been buying sketch books—journals without lines.

2) Brainstorming how I might hunt down my ideas.

Every year I do neighborhood maps with my fourth graders where we make maps of our neighborhoods and houses and label them with things that happened to us there. It’s a great treasure trove of ideas.

I’ve been doing this for a long time with kids, but recently I did it in a regional novel class with Candice Ransom. Instead of doing my own personal neighborhood map, I made one for my middle grade novel in progress.

For PiBoIdMo this year, I’m going to add my house in Thailand, my grandparents’ house, and my dorm room in boarding school. While not all of those places might conjure up ideas for picture books, I’m sure they will help me mine some memories for some stories, books, and hopefully picture books down the road.

What have you been doing to prep for PiBoIdMo?