This is what I am looking at at the moment (obviously only out of the corner of my eye as I am also having to concentrate on my two-finger typing, which takes some doing). It is, quite literally, a blank sheet of paper and it is a SCARY THING. As long as it stays blank, it offers limitless potential. As soon as I start drawing on it, its potential shrinks and shrinks and shrinks; diminished by my own abilities (or lack of them).

As I said, it is a SCARY THING . And in the past, I might have been so frightened by it, I would have preferred to leave it blank – keep the potential intact – rather than mess it up. But these days, I am more excited by it than scared.

I am looking at it because yesterday, I finished the first draft of another book (WOOHOO!) and now I can’t wait to start drawing so that I can develop and extend the story. The more books I write, the more I understand how the drawings are just a crucial to the narrative as the words – it’s not a case of drawing what the words say, but making the words say more.

I am very excited to have finished the first draft of my book, and because it’s another rhyming one, it has had to be relatively precise and ‘polished’ (in other words, all the rhymes rhyme), but I know it will change a lot over the months it will take to complete the illustrations.

When I look at some of it, I can’t help thinking about the bit in my favourite Lauren Child book, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book, when the main character, Herb, tries to escape from the book he’s trapped in by climbing up the text and finds ‘Some of the words were a bit weak and the whole lot stared to wobble’. I know the feeling.

Anyway, enough of the delaying tactics. Anyone would think I was scared of that blank sheet of paper. Time to get cracking. Though I might just go and put the kettle on first.