Illustrating and Middle Grade Novels

 I've been illustrating projects over the past year and have a bunch more to do, but I'm realizing that my style is too detailed and specific and it takes me so long. I'm thinking I should loosen up a bit and try learning to develop a simpler style. More of a cartoony style. The only way I can increase my productivity is to do things faster without losing quality. Therefore, that means I have to change my style.

Here is a sample of my current style:

Not only that, but the series of middle grade novels I want to put out over the next year (and next few years) will need approximately 10 illustrations in them, and if I can use a simpler style, it might be easier to hire someone (as in work for hire full time) to use my designed skeletons and styles to specify and finalize the art for the books.

Although, because I enjoy it, I would probably just hire someone to take over another aspect of my work.

My goal for 2027 is to really focus on middle grade books because that is where I find the most joy in writing. In fact, that's how I initially started writing. First with children's stories (getting published in Highlights and by CTB-McGraw Hill) and then as middle grade chapter books, then young adult novels, and then adult novels. It's like my stories grew up.

But now I am excited again about writing for younger audiences. It's so freeing and so much fun because it's kinda like reliving my childhood. Except sillier lol.

In other news . . . 

I've decided that the only way to keep up with this blog is to treat it as a daily diary and write in it while I have my morning coffee.

It Has Been A Week

 Yes, I'm aware I've only made it to Wednesday thus far. I managed to redesign both covers in the first two books of the Zoey series (under the name Aspen Faraway).

I wanted to modernize them a bit since the previous covers were hand-drawn by me. The previous ones featured a handpainted city beneath handwritten font I did in Procreate. Let's just say it didn't come out exactly as I'd wanted. It took me forever to get around to designing new covers for them, but not of course before someone bought a copy of each with the older covers.

These are the older covers:

I decided to spruce up the covers since I've been working on the outline for book 3 in the series. But, I cannot get to that until I finish the illustrated project I'm working on. And then I have a middle grade series I want to write. I've written the first book already, but want to do some illustrations for the beginning of each chapter and through the longer chapters.

So, needless to say, my work is cut out for me for the next two years. I have a mile-long list of book ideas that I cannot keep up with. My brain keeps coming up with new ideas but my fingers can only type so fast! For the record, I can type 2000 words per hour if I know what I want to say. Usually, I do.

From 2012 to about 2018, I would regularly write 50k words in a week, just writing around the clock. That's how I write though. I cannot pace myself. I just have an on/off switch. I'm either eat-breathe-sleep the book, or want to do absolutely nothing.

Being a procrastinator does not help. For instance, at this very moment, I should be finishing up some illustrations for a picture book but here I am, writing this.

I've decided to go back to writing here more often. I will try at least several times a week. Maybe daily.  At least daily is a goal, like a daily diary.

For people who have been following my writing career since around 2012, you know how I've struggled with blogging. I have been unable to do it. I think I can do better now.

It's nearly 1 a.m. and I've just finished my long-forgotten cold cup of coffee that I'd made about five hours ago. I suppose it's time to head to bed so I can wake up in the morning and get back to the thing I'm most excited about. Starting a brand new novel!

Revision Phase

 I have been struggling for the past month-and-a-half on book revisions. My new novel had to be put on hold for a bit while I struggle to catch up on these revisions. I'm completely rewriting my first book series under my old penname since that series continues to sell.

I'm appalled at how poorly written it was back in 2012, and shocked that readers are still finding it and reading it. So, I'm completely rewriting the entire series of "Diary of a Teenage Mom" because my writing skills have seriously improved over the years, and I cringe at the early books. I'm still working on book 1.

I'm also stuck in a revision of another nonfiction book that is a troublesome inconvenience but again, that has continually sold over the past 19 years when I'd not even been aware it was still in circulation. I've made sure it was unpublished in November when I realized where those random royalty payments were coming from.

I know that seems counterproductive, to cut off the source of royalties as soon as I discover it. BUT the thing is, the writing is not streamlined. It is personally sharing my experiences of seeing UFOs. Because it is real life, it's not like I had a plot to work with. It was just sharing a series of strange events, and because at the time I initially wrote it I was so confused by the experiences, my thoughts are jumbled in with the events and it seems to be all over the place.

Something as extreme as seeing a UFO and other encounters with chaotic disjointed memories about it makes for difficult writing, especially when in the process I was trying to figure out what the heck was going on, what the heck I was seeing, etc. So, it is quite the challenge to get all those events and thoughts properly organized and coherent and a more enjoyable read for anyone looking to read about someone's actual experiences.

The reason it is taking so long is because I have to relive all the memories during this writing process and it is kind of overwhelming at times, so I procrastinate.

So, even though I'm continually working daily, it's on several different projects and they are each moving forward inch by inch.

I have people asking for both (the Diary of a Teenage Mom series and the UFO book) so I'm kind of working with deadlines that creates more pressure and makes me just want to go clean house instead.

New Novel - Saturday January 24, 2026

 Dear Diary,

This month has been a bit of chaos, and looking back on it, I can't even pinpoint how I managed to get basically nothing done on my new novel that I'd planned to have finished by the end of this month.

I suppose one issue could be that I had four novels I'd wanted to write and couldn't decide on which one to begin first, so I kind of began them all, and basically wrote five chapters, but they were all first chapters for five different books. Yes, I know I'd said there were four I'd wanted to write. But once I get started, the ideas keep coming, and now I have a mile-long 'to write' list.

It seems every time I tell someone the title or show them a cover concept of what I'm working on, I feel like it is completed somehow and then I cannot seem to find the willpower to actually work on it.

Or maybe I've just been lazy. There is that. And I guess I have been.

I really appreciate all the readers that have stuck with my work over the years and watched my pathetic attempts at keeping up a blog or diary. I know, I know. I could just never wrap my head around the word "blog". So, now, as I know I've said again, it has been officially dubbed "a diary" and not a blog, so I am more likely to keep up with it.

Also, yes, I am an eternal optimist. But with procrastination tendencies.

So, I am working on a novel, it is brand new but along a similar theme as my 11-book series (if you've been following me, you'll know what it is, if you haven't then it will be a brand new surprise for you).

I will get back to my writing on Monday. And try to keep a daily update on my progress here. 

Have a great weekend!

xoxo

Elizabeth Barstone