Ana Jesus reflects on her Nest Residency

Whilst racing against the clocks as the last semester of my final year at university came to an end, I had this idea jumping around my mind. At first, I didn’t really know what to do with it but as time quickly went by this idea kept growing – as ideas often do.

‘Mom, I’m going to write a book’

It became too big of an idea in fact that I figured I had to get it out of my brain and place it somewhere else. A jar? Cake dough? Nope, that would make it grow even more…hmm a… book? A book! That’ll work!

Having a background in Illustration, the idea of illustrating a book had been planted during first year, but eventually whilst navigating my creative practice, that was something that was sort of left lingering inside, a possibility for the future.

A new routine

Applying for a residency came out of the necessity to establish a new routine as a recent graduate, the need to leave the house and work from another place. The need to focus on developing this idea. Going to the residency, was in a way a method to hold myself accountable and get started. Eventually, I’d go back and pick up the pace and further motivation as ideas started flowing onto the page.

Sticky notes and creative community

Being surrounded by fellow creatives was another key-element. Leaving university means in some ways parting with a creative community that one could often rely on for feedback, I knew that in order for this project to be further developed, I had to seek that source of feedback, the Nest was a great place for this. 

I shared the Solid Blue Studio with Sarah Owen and even though through the course of our residency we didn’t meet, we’d leave sticky notes around about our ideas. Being able to talk to fellow residents inspired me greatly in terms of taking things forward and look at different approaches or possibilities.

The F13 meeting was particularly important for this sense of community-building. It enabled me to reach out for feedback once again and present myself as a picture book maker for the first time.

Productivity and it’s absence

Writing the picture book has been an interesting journey. At first, I decided to just throw it all onto the page, evict it from my mind at once but, as creatives often do, I found myself using all kinds of different hats and this meant shifting from writer to editor to illustrator which, as one might imagine, made the whole process of passing the idea from mind to the page rather slow. 

Something that this residency provided was the time to navigate my own creative practice in all its overthinking glory and in my own terms. During my time at university, I learned how to simplify instead of overcomplicating an illustration but when it came to writing a book, as I’ve come to understand during my time at the Nest, I’ve yet to learn how to efficiently tell a story. The Nest allowed me the time and safe space to go through this new challenge with lots of trial-and-error opportunities.

What’s my title?

4 script changes in, I still found myself in search of a title and, in a way, a sense of direction. I knew the message I was looking to convey, the audience, but struggled to simplify it, to narrow it down to a picture-book friendly type of format. Then I decided to distance myself from what I’d written, get more feedback, do some research, read and listen to other picture books – Oliver Jeffers and Christian Robbinson are having a great impact on the way I am approaching this project – and once I came back to my story, I started to notice a pattern, a sentence that kept repeating itself:

‘as little as you are’

Was this the title?

It sounded like it!

‘as little as you are’ conveyed perfectly the message I was trying to put across but still leaving enough room for the curious minds to wander – an invitation into picking up the book, I suppose.

Feedback feeds forward

Oh, the irony of having a title be ‘as little as you are’ and a story that still felt quite big! I was trying to narrow down the story to 1000 words and it wasn’t until I gave it a title that things started to fall into place…sort of. After some further research and analysis on other picture books and how they were narrated, I gathered I wanted this to both be an experience for the listener as for the storyteller – children and grownups. Feedback was key to this narrowing down and making sense of what would be the next steps for the picture book script.

I’m really grateful for everyone who took some time to help me tell this story, to all of you a big thank you, for all who read it this will make sense: A thank you as big as the grownups in my story!

A big shift

I decided to step away from what I had written once again. 

Stared at a blank page for a while and then allowed myself to start over. 

‘In any home, in any place…’

This time around, things seemed to flow a lot easier. 

There was some sort of rhythm and direction that made it all flow a bit better. The story started to unveil through rhymes and short sentences rather than the traditional approach I was going for until this point. 

This big shift for ‘as little as you are’ become what indeed made it as little as I’d initially hoped it to be. Moving forward I’m going to once again take in the feedback provided on my last day at Solid Blue and try to step away from the rhymes, but with this newly found sense of direction.

Thank you, Talking Birds, for enabling me to hatch this idea at The Nest! 

Ready for take-off.