Baby Steps, Errors, and Exciting Things to Come

Hey guys! Hope here! It’s been a long time since I’ve worked on any publication projects here at Talya Press. It’s been a crazy (but amazing) past couple years full of learning for me. During my last two years of high school, I completed a two-year program at Alexandria College and earned my AAS degree in Communication Design, along with graduating high school. I’ve learned so much, and I’m excited to use this new skill set to keep creating!

As I worked toward my degree, I was able to focus on many different areas in which to grow my creative skills. During my last semester in the Spring of 2023, I took a Capstone class which is a class that focused on creating and completing one big project over one semester. I was able to choose a large-scale project I wanted to create and then set goals to make it happen.

After a bit of brainstorming, I settled on the idea to illustrate, write, and design a new children’s book. It seemed like a huge undertaking and I wasn’t quite sure how I would pull it off in four months, but I decided to jump right in and go for it!

I won’t bore you with all the details, but I’ll highlight the top 3 things I learned through the process.

1. Baby steps aren’t just a cliche. Let’s talk about deadlines. I had a big, scary deadline coming up, but to get there, I had to set all these other “helper” deadlines. What I did before I started any work was develop a four-month plan with many baby steps that would get me closer to the end goal. Like any big project, it doesn’t seem doable until it gets broken down into smaller pieces.
2. Make room for error. When planning these baby steps, it was important to accept that not everything would go exactly as planned. That’s why I planned some extra padding throughout the weeks, a little bit of bubble wrap. This simply allowed extra time to complete tasks that might have taken longer than expected or that didn’t go quite as well as planned… a little space that made room for error (because it was bound to happen at some point.) The good news is, if I didn’t use this padding time every week, there was always room to work ahead. Realistic goals are the key to success.
3. Stay on the right track. It can be easy to feel discouraged or get derailed by limiting beliefs. Throughout the different seasons of this project, I experienced many ups and downs, so it was important to remind myself to stay on the right track. I found it helpful to surround myself with other creatives who were excited about my project. Instead of working in a vacuum hole, I was working in community and constantly sharing my goals with others, whether it be my classmates, friends, parents, or extended family. I also had to keep the end goal in sight and realize that when I was in the thick of the more monotonous parts of the timeline, there would be less stressful and more exciting weeks ahead of me.

Speaking of exciting weeks ahead, I’m thrilled to announce that we are officially launching my new book, I Saw Bigfoot, soon! We will be pulling together a launch team, and I’m super excited to share the inside scoop of the process with you guys! Stay tuned for our next post, which is all about how you can be involved and why we made the decision to break away from Amazon.

Catch ya next week!

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