Ryan Maloney dumps raw sketches into Procreate, then shapes promising fragments like song verses. He moves the material to Notion, cuts words ruthlessly, and reads aloud repeatedly until the text feels lean. He's working on "Waffle Wisconsin," a sequel to "Pancake Pennsylvania."
Chapters
This is how I write a picture book. This is Procreate. I just dump ideas into here and then ideas will start to form and I'll make little sketches all around. Pretty much nothing makes sense, but then I hit on a little nugget and then I work that into sort of like a verse, almost like songwriting. Then I'll bring it over into Notion and try to structure it a little bit more, cut out as many words as possible. I'm sure that there's spelling and grammatical errors all over this. And I'll talk it out hundreds of times to make sure it's super lean and it's super— it just flows very easily. So when people will read it, there's no extra syllables and it's not going to be confusing. This is a book I'm working on called Waffle Wisconsin, the follow-up to Pancake Pennsylvania. I know, pretty creative. So I'll write out these weird verses and then I'll piece them all together at the end and hopefully make a story that works. The first waffle makers were hard-working Quakers who got waffle fixings from working their acres. Word with quick of these waffle bakers who top off their waffles with sugar from shakers. Then this third The other part, I don't really know about.
