Recollections and reverie with Ruth Paul

We recently enjoyed an interesting and engaging session with award-winning Aotearoa author/illustrator extraordinaire Ruth Paul, in which she shared many fascinating insights gleaned from her celebrated career as an author and illustrator.

She took us on a short virtual tour showing her semi-rural Wellington farmhouse, studio and ever-expanding area of native bush which has recently become home to around a dozen relocated kiwi! (Ruth explained her participation in the Government’s emissions trading scheme helps to supplement her book-industry income.)

After starting out illustrating three picture books written by others, Ruth has since worked exclusively on books she both writes and illustrates and now has more than 24 of these picture books to her credit. Ruth's titles have been published in New Zealand, Australia, USA, Canada, the UK, China and Korea, with translations in five languages.

We heard about some of the books she has coming out this year, including fiction picture book You Can’t Pat a Fish and narrative nonfiction picture book Anahera: The Mighty Kiwi Māmā. She will also be releasing her first junior fiction novel.

Ruth had some sage and sensible advice for attendees – here are just a few top takeaways from her presentation:

• Give every book your best effort because it’ll be on the shelves for years
  
  
• Write for the child within
  
  
• Send submissions to several publishers at once (and let them know this)
  
  
• Understand that rejections are par for the course – even for the most successful authors and illustrators
  
  
• Know that nothing you create is ever wasted. You can often improve or reuse ideas in a different way
  
  
• Embrace indolent reverie!
  
  

Thanks so much to Ruth for taking the time to talk with the SCBWI NZ community and answer our many probing questions.

We’ll be announcing our next online event soon – keep an eye on our Facebook page or SCBWI NZ webpage for details.