Well, of course I was interested! I promised Jorge we would start the storybook when I was wrapping up the sketchnote collaboration. We decided we wanted the book to be for ages 5 – 7, which according to the how-to books, meant no more than 1000 words for the written story.

It is a story about Beatrice, a little robot who is good at learning all sorts of things but can’t figure out how to learn how to dance. We are calling it Beatrice’s Possible Impossible. I emailed the story to Jorge, and he was so inspired he emailed the sketches I’m sharing below. Aren’t they ADORABLE?

And as a teaser for the prose…

Beatrice was proud of all the things she could do now that she couldn’t do before. But one day, she saw her next door neighbor, Melvin, do something she still didn’t know how to do… dance!

“Mom,” Beatrice said at breakfast the next morning, “I’m going to learn how to dance.”

“That sounds like a fun thing to learn! How are you going to learn how to dance?” Beatrice’s mom asked.

“I found a book,” Beatrice said, holding it up so her mom could see it. “I’m going to read how.”

Really excited to see this project move forward!

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings…”

Ok not really. I’m not talking about shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, or kings. Nope, I’m talking about sketchnotes. Very excited to announce the Sketchnotes Field Guide is now available for purchase!

We have a print version reasonably priced at under $7, and the PDF version is free this first week in January. I hope to sync the two editions together so if you order the print edition, you automatically get a free PDF, but this is something I’m working out with the distributor.

I want to thank my collaborator, Charlene McBride, for making this project an absolute blast. Huge thanks to everyone who supported this book in one form or another (in no order whatsoever)…

Derren Hermann, Erin McCain, Erik Stolterman, MJ Broadbent, Denise Philipsen, Heiko Maiwand, Eugene Siew, Adrienne Dye, Stefani Bachetti, Anjana Thirumalai, Amanda Lyons, Micah Gideon Modell, Boon Sheridan, Lydia Whitehead, Jen Myers, Shirley Tobias, Lynn Dombrowski, Mike Rohde, Austin Toombs, Vidya Palaniswamy, Grant Carlile, Amantha Lott, Jingyu Wu, Jeremy White, Shay-Jahen Merritte, Christian Long, Brad Nunnally, and Brien Tate.

Now go forth! Empower yourself and others to sketchnote just in time for conference season!

The photo above is the last round of edits before the print copy, and then the print copy, all shiny and new. The photo below shows where I found an alignment gaff.

There are still some formatting issues that need to be made, just tiny stuff such as when images don’t align properly with the text, etc. But other than that, and pending any changes from Charlene, we are a go for a mid-January release! It will be available on Lulu and I will make sure to post a link here, on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. You know, so everyone knows.

Next up, I’ll post some updates about the children’s book. I have the story written, and like I mentioned before my illustrator, Jorge Eduardo Sanclemente, is sending sketches to me all the time. So look for some teaser content soon. I have another project I want to highlight as well, something that combined my two loves of sketchnoting and lindy hopping, but I’ve been asked to not release it until the official launch. So stay tuned for that, as well.

Finally, I updated my portfolio website. It’s simpler, and I’d like to throw in some jQuery filtering when I have time since I have so many projects to put up there (I haven’t put up any of my projects from my current job yet, i.e. all my current UX stuff). All in all, I’m pretty excited about these projects.

Are you working on anything you want to share?

I’ve titled this post “Living the Dream” because I think it’s important to note that even though I love being a user experience designer, it was never my dream to become one. Not my childhood dream, anyway.

Honestly, I’m not sure any child dreams of becoming a translator, as it were. A professional who facilitates projects via their soft skills and documentation to ensure features within a holistic system benefit and hopefully delight customers.

My childhood dream was to be a writer. I have wanted to write books for as long as I can remember.

1. Historical fiction books
2. Picture books
3. How to books.

I wanted to create content and have people read it, enjoy it, and feel inspired to make something themselves. As of last Friday, I can now say that I am in the process of doing all three: children’s book, historical fiction, and how-to. I am living my dream.

I keep saying it because I want to remind myself. I am living my dream. How many people can say that?

Before I talk about the new project, first let’s get you updated on the project I last blogged about.

The How-To Book

The Sketchnote field guide book is coming along really well! The beta readers are liking the context and structure; they have great feedback and I’m feeling really encouraged about this project. I have to say, without Charlene McBride’s collaboration, this project wouldn’t be nearly as strong as it is. The survey people filled out for me back in August is what brought Charlene to me, and helped us focus the book.

I’m so excited to share it with people! It will definitely be on Lulu (they allow royalty splitting), and maybe on Amazon.com. We still need to figure that out. Keep your eyes peeled, though. We’re hoping to release it in January, just in time for conference season.

The Historical Fiction Book

Under my historical fiction pen name, I started a book four times before I felt like it was something worth writing. This fourth start has around 24k words, which is about 30% of the final word count. I’ve stopped writing because I realized I needed more research… ergo me dragging ten books home from the library about Ohio and the Civil War.

The Storybook

The new project I keep hinting at is a children’s storybook. I’ve loved the process of checking out thirty children’s books at a time, consuming them at a leisurely pace and asking 6yr old Binaebi what she liked about each one. I’ve loved reading the how-to-write for children books, learning the nuances between picture books and storybooks, the intentions of each, the intended age groups, and the parents that buy books for their children.

I’ve loved chatting about the project with my illustrator and collaborator,  who suggested we write about robots (because he loves them). I’ve felt inspired by his supportive enthusiasm when I insisted it be about a girl robot, and that it have something to do with dancing (because we both love dancing). The main character’s name is Beatrice, and that is about all I’m willing to share at this point. Maybe later I’ll leak some the sketches my collaborator has been sending me. They’re so adorable.

Anyway, at the risk of sounding like a broken record (does that idiom even apply anymore?), I just wanted to share that I’m living my dream. Why? I don’t know. I guess in the hopes that you might feel inspired to do something tonight or tomorrow that gets you one step closer to living your dream.

Genevieve Bell : I think we have a great deal more work to do, which is good because I like research. We have spent a lot of time focusing on the obvious and the obviously sexy stuff – mobility, gaming, social networks, and of course the individual and youth. We have, as a consequence, neglected the other stuff of daily life – religion, spirituality, love, child-care, anyone over 40, who does the dishes, who puts out the recycling, community, the nation-state, changing ideas of citizenship.