Tiny Tales, Big Steps: How I Started Writing for Children | Julie-Anne Hyland 

Since doing the Writing Stories for Children course in 2021, I have been busily writing oodles of little stories.

My lucky break was getting help from a family member who is very experienced in kids book writing, so, lucky me was taken under her wing, and she gave me some really good guidance. Such a wealth of knowledge, which I have been very grateful for.

The main thing she taught me was to keep cutting words out to make the stories short and to the point. It’s amazing how many words you don’t actually need. I’ve learned that little kids ages 2 to 6 just like good illustrations and very simple but exciting story lines.

So after a year or more of pestering her, we talked about what I wanted to achieve, which was to print a few stories for my grandkids. She suggested self-publishing, as finding a publisher is a very long shot, since there are hundreds of people writing hundreds of good stories.

So, after trying a few amateur artist friends, my son suggested I look on the website Fiverr for an illustrator. I found an amazing guy from Indonesia, he’s so talented and has really managed to capture my characters just as I’d imagined them. I sent him photos of scenes here in NZ to work off and some pictures of my characters (my Dad, Mum, and neighbours).

Then, I have a printer cousin, so I sent the book to him to format and print! I originally asked for 50 copies, but before they were even printed, I’d presold them, so I upped the order to 125. I sold all of them in a few weeks!

I’ve done two other stories with the same characters, and the second one is just available now, so I’m advertising it on a Facebook page attached to my profile page. A third story is also getting printed. My son has made me a website with a shopping cart, so I’ve started selling a few books on that now, too!