Believe it or not, there was not a moment that I plotted ahead and said, “hey, I’m going to write a children’s book I’ll start tomorrow”. The funny thing is I was up in the middle of the night in my office finishing up with my voice over auditions and I wasn’t quite ready to call it a night. It was around midnight and I, as usual, was wide awake. I just felt like typing so I opened a word document and a story just moved through my fingers and on to the computer. As I wrote, ideas came to me and words from my daughter crept into my head like “I’m a scientist Mama”.
Here’s a little back story about me. Years ago, on my pursuits to find a flexible job that would allow me to audition, I took a job as a theater teacher at a summer camp. I worked with kids aged 3 to 10. Big gap, right? I’d have to say that the 6- to 8-year-olds were my favorite. I found one theater game after another to play and there was one game that was my favorite. You guessed it, telling stories. I would grab the first thing I could find, and it could be anything, a shoe, a pen, a stuffy or even a crown. It’s a theater class, yes there are random crowns hanging around. Ok, back to the story. I would hold that crown in my hand and I would start a story. I would make up anything. I was pretty good at it. Then I would pass that item around and everyone got to add to that story. This was the start of my impromptu story telling which was well before I had my daughter. My daughter helped me hone my skills with a card game we played that had pictures that you could create your own story too. This may explain why randomly starting a children’s book in the middle of the night was somehow entertaining to me.
As I wrote and more ideas came to me, I thought about characters that my daughter and all her girlfriend’s love. My first thought was unicorns. I wanted a character that anyone could relate to, I didn’t want to exclude anyone. The story started small at first and when I found time, often in the middle of the night. Don’t judge me, these are my hours. I would add more and more to the story. I was on a roll for a while…. until I got busy. I got busy and put it down completely. Have you ever been on a roll and then just forgot about the thing that got you excited in the first place? Welp, that’s what happened to me. I worked, had great opportunities, and just put my focus elsewhere. The Universe was not having it though.
Ok, so of course if you have a daughter, it is not abnormal to see unicorns frequently. But here’s the thing, not only was I seeing unicorns literally everywhere but at very strange moments I was being reminded of my story and unicorns. Something weird was going on. I at the time had named the unicorn in my story Eunice. I had never met a Eunice before, I just liked the sound of Eunice the Unicorn. This of course was before I realized that there was already a Eunice the unicorn book. I’ll tap on those lessons later, now back the universe screaming at me to finish writing the book.
After not writing for maybe a month, while picking up my daughter from dance a girl’s mom yells out “Eunice” to her daughter. Now I had seen this child a million times, but I clearly never knew her name. All I could do was look up and say to the universe “got it, I’ll get back to the book”. To be honest, I still didn’t get back to it. Then one day, I was in the middle of a voice over session, and I was killing it I might add when one of the producers referred to me as a unicorn!! I mean, who gets called a unicorn in a voice over session or in life at all?! Not only was I flattered and smiled ear to ear but I was reminded once again that I had to get back to writing the book. That, my friends, is when I went into high gear not only writing the book but learning about the business and details of writing a children’s book. Now I won’t say that I know it all, but I will share what I have learned. Stay tuned (yes, I said stay tuned, are you surprised?), as I keep you updated on my progress writing and self-publishing my first children’s book.