Queenie Quail and the Road to Publication

With the publication of my picture book Queenie Quail Can’t Keep Up coming up soon, I thought it might be fun to take a look at how this picture book came to be.

The inspiration for Queenie Quail Can’t Keep Up came from my late father, who loved to watch the quail families scurry and hurry through his backyard on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. He commented to me that quails have very amusing personalities, and that I should write a picture book about them – well, I wasn’t one to shy away from a challenge!

I immediately thought about what it would be like if I was a quail – I am always falling behind and getting distracted, so the hurry hurry hurry lifestyle of a quail would be a bit of a challenge, and I was sure I would always be getting in trouble. But of course, since I was writing about a character inspired in part by myself, this little quail in particular would surprise everyone and save the day! That’s one of the great joys of writing, you can always sneakily insert yourself into the story and make yourself into a hero. 😉

The first few versions of Queenie’s story were largely the same as the final version, just quite a bit longer and more descriptive. I also hadn’t quite mastered the repetition that I would use throughout the final story. I submitted this initial version of Queenie to a couple of publishers, who thanked me for thinking of them, but weren’t too convinced. Frustrated, but not deterred, I made a few tweaks here and there and submitted this revised version to my editor at Pajama Press.

“We love it”, my editor responded, “but it’s much too long” – turns out I needed to cut about half of my text, while still maintaining the same characters and the essence of the story! Yikes! Was I up to the challenge? There was only one way to find out!

My long-time editor and I put our heads together and looked at ways we could condense my text while not losing any of the heart of the story. The first thing we noticed was my rather extensive use of adjectives. Long-time readers of my blog (hi, Mom!) will know that I’m very fond of words like just, rather, very and so on. My little quail was always looking at a particularly fascinating feather, and I went on in great detail about the beauty of her woodland home.

But here’s the thing about picture books – unlike chapter books, picture books are a visual medium. I didn’t need to describe everything Queenie saw – the illustrations would do that for me! With that in mind, we were able to cut out a lot of unnecessary description, which immediately lowered the word count to something more manageable.

Another edit I needed to make was to add poor Papa Quail to the story, as he had been left out of the original manuscript. As my editor correctly noted, quails typically live in family groups headed by a mama and a papa, and I had forgotten to include a papa in my story – proof that a little research into your subjects can go a very long way.

A final change was to work through the repetitive phrases that are peppered throughout the story, and which are one of my favourite parts of the book’s design. I had included a bit of repetition in the original manuscript, but had to go back and make some changes for consistency, so that the words were always repeated the same number of times and in the same order each time.

So there you have it, a look behind the scenes into the months of editing that went into making Queenie Quail Can’t Keep Up the beautiful picture book it is today! All of this is to say that no matter how long you spend editing your manuscript, and no matter how many times you proofread and polish it, odds are you’ll still need to make edits to it, sometimes substantial ones, and that’s okay! It’s all part of the publishing process. Edits aren’t about correcting mistakes so much as they are about revealing potential, and making your story the best it can possibly be.

Make sure to grab a copy of Queenie Quail Can’t Keep Up at your local bookstore or library to see all of my editor’s hard work in person! Coming soon – March 2, 2019!