Letting the characters speak.

This is very important when writing a new story, especially character-driven stories. Stories flow from me when my characters tell me what to do.

Does that make sense? For example, let's say I draw a dog, and I tell him to be funny and goofy, but if that dog doesn't look like a funny, goofy dog, he's not going to do what I want him to do. Instead, if he's drawn like a sad, droopy dog, then he's going to be sad and droopy.

When the characters that I draw start telling ME who they are, that's a good sign. The earliest character that did this for me was a girl named Bev. Right away from the drawing, I knew who she was. She started informing me what her thoughts are.

I share this because while I was drawing and thinking up new picture book ideas, a character yelled at me and said, "HEY! I'm this kind of bear and don't you forget it!" No longer am I writing then. I'm more like reporting.

Here's Merlo, being all hip and cool.