Last week I went to see Into the Woods at the cinema.  This was not just a normal night out at the pictures. No, this was a Big Deal. Let me come clean. I’ve loved this fairy-tale musical with a proper ache for years and years and years. It was one of the Wood-y touchstones for Sue Heap and I on the day we met, thinking about where the Very Littles might live. I know the songs so well that it was like having a personal secret revealed when I heard Red Riding Hood singing ‘I Know Things Now’ on the radio the other day. If you don’t know it,…

Turning off that critical voice This post originally appeared on the wonderful Picture Book Den website: http://picturebookden.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/just-say-yes-turning-off-that-critical.html I’m doing a comedy improvisation course at the moment. Yes, me – picture book writer and editor – doing comedy impro like Whose Line Is It Anyway! I still find that quite amazing to write down.   I did it (partly) to take myself out of my writer-ly comfort zone where I forever fiddle with individual words for picture books…and instead to explore spontaneous storytelling. For in this case, impro, with the brilliant Kepow Theatre Company, is less about “Tell us a joke about a toaster! Now!” and more about character and plot – creating stories out…