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Over the last few years, I’ve had quite a few bad ideas for stories.

This is good, because if you gather up enough of them, you can entertain yourself for a while. Today, I went through my stack of idea notecards and pulled out some of the worst.

Why do this? I guess as a reminder to myself that not every idea works as a story, so why not have a couple laughs.

In this story, I imagined a table or something hanging around, talking about the good old days when she was part of a tree.

This was a real "mess with the reader" idea, where I just try to make whoever is reading the book really self conscious about how we blink all the time.

I really get into trouble when I have play on word ideas. This idea is about friendship gone wrong.

I think the joke here is that all robots are naked.

I swear these are all real ideas that I was at least a little excited about when I wrote down. There have been a few "__ on a Bike" books before, and so I thought the image of a bike riding a bike was funny.

Okay, I'm really exposing myself here. Apparently, when I try to come up with funny story ideas and things really go south. Although this book kinda did happen.

The play on words idea might not be my forte, but I don't think the rhyming idea is either. I just imagined toast-shaped ghosts popping up when you push the toaster lever down.

Sometimes an idea comes, and you think about it for a minute, and then you have to say "It's just not me".

I've had a lot of meta picture book ideas, and I think it's really hard to have one that makes sense as a book. In this idea, there's a character who's just really mad that it's so cold, and she keeps bugging the reader to dial up a couple notches on the heat.

Another tree-related one. I just pictured a tree standing there with a cape flowing in the wind. An immobile hero seemed interesting to me, but things kind of stall out quickly from there.

No comment, other than I'm sorry.

I had a great time trying to predict which books would end up on the annual New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books list. Do you agree with my picks?

BLUE FLOATS AWAY was featured on one of my favorite websites, Brain Pickings. That was such a cool surprise.

My son got this puzzle game for his birthday, and I'm using it way more than him.

If you've read THE VERY LAST CASTLE with kids, they might like to use this free PDF to make their own version of the story.

Thank you for reading! If you like FROM THE DESK OF 100 SCOPE NOTES, pass it along to a friend or let me know.

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Yours,

I'm an elementary school librarian, podcaster, writer, and drawer. I contributed to The Creativity Project and wrote The Very Last Castle, illustrated by Mark Pett, and Blue Floats Away, illustrated by Grant Snider.

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