With the picture books, I think for me, my advertising background was good training because a lot of times I would think in pictures and then write about it or I would think in pictures and have writing that sort of goes against those pictures, in opposition so that it becomes more dynamic. And because in advertising a lot of times you pair an art director and a copywriter, you know, who’s doing the words, and you’re not looking for credit; you’re looking for a final product.
And so many times I would come up with an incredible opening visual for the commercial and the art director I was working with would come up with the great last line that put everything together. And instead of saying, “Well, no, no, no, we’re not going to use that line because I didn’t think of it and I’m the writer,” it wasn’t territorial. You were just looking for what’s going to make the best advertisement. And I sort of approach the books that way. I think in pictures, but I don’t want those pictures to sort of impinge on the illustrator’s vision because most of the time they’ll come up with something even better.
And so I sort of sketch it in and — not literally. But I have a picture of what it is, but I try not to communicate that to the illustrator until we see sort of what they’ve done.
