Transcription
(Music Playing) (Applause)
Thank you so much for such a warm welcome. So yes, I’m Patty, and I have the best job in the universe. I get to make picture books. I get to make, like so many other speakers over the last two days, I get to make picture books for kids and for adults too, so not just for kids. But I get to make picture books, and I illustrate them, and I write them. And oh, if you want to say hello to me during this talk, I’m Patty on Instagram. And because I used to work in web design all those years ago, I remember hearing the day before Instagram was going to launch, so that’s how I am, Patty. I’m Patty only on Twitter. So if you want to say hello, do that. But I come from Ireland, this beautiful green country here, specifically from inside that tiny white circle up there, a little place called Ballycastle on the coast. Any Irish people in?
Yeah, somebody said yeah?
OK.
OK. Yes, so I’m from way up there, a little place called Ballycastle, which is on the coast. And off the coast of Ballycastle is a little island. You can maybe see it’s shaped like the number seven. That’s Rathlin Island. And I’m going to tell you a bit about where I come from, and you’ll see how that influences my work. And a little bit later, I’ll tell you
where I went in UX design. But Ballycastle looks like this.
We have-- woo! This is my hometown, and we have this beautiful beach and these big huge cliffs here. And this is me on that beach, this one.
This is me and my brother on that same beach in Ballycastle. This is where we grew up. And those cliffs that you saw in the background, here I am, on the very tip of those cliffs.
And in Ireland, the landscape is just filled with stories. And you just have stories-- like every hole in the hedge has a story behind it, like in all of the rocks and the cliffs and the sea, everything has a story. These huge cliffs are called fair heads. And this is what-- this is my view, imprinted on my mind, because the town is here. And you’re just looking at these huge cliffs all day, every day, as you grow up, years and years and years. And this is called fair head because that little island, shaped like the number seven, Rathlin Island, that’s what it looks like from the cliff. On that island, many years ago, there was a king on that island, and the Vikings were coming to invade this island. And to appease the Vikings, he offered his daughter, the Princess Tazy, to the Viking chief. And she was known as the fairest maiden in the land. And he offered her to the Viking.
And she refused and wouldn’t go with the Viking. And so the Viking said, it’s OK, we will sort it out. And the Viking organized a huge party up on these cliffs here. And up on these cliffs, he organized this big party with lots of merriment and dancing. And he got a servant to dance with the princess. And they danced a wild Viking dance. And they got closer and closer to the cliff tops. And the Princess Tazy fell. And the king, the next day, went looking for his daughter. And he went around the bottom. And he found his daughter lying on the rocks below, with her beautiful fair hair spread out in the waves. And that’s why this is called Fair Head. And so we have these stories, which I grew up beside. Every rock you look at, every cliff, they all just have these stories just embedded. And they last forever. And who knows what’s true and what’s not true, but the story kind of lives forever. And we have a beautiful stormy green sea with beautiful little harbors and tiny little houses. And we have real fairy tale castles built on top of cliff tops, like crumbling into the sea. And we’ve got the Giant’s Causeway. Anybody been to the Giant’s Causeway before? Oh, yeah, some hands. So this is-- so the story about this one.
A giant, Finn McCool, built a bridge from Ireland to Scotland. And here is a nice--
this is a nice summer’s day in Ireland. And so he built this bridge. And he got all of these big stones, stuck them in the water, and built a bridge from Ireland to Scotland. And because he wanted to fight the Scottish Giant, and he went over there. And he saw that the Scottish Giant was far larger than he was. So he ran back home. But the Scottish Giant had seen the bridge and knew about Finn McCool. And the Scottish Giant started chasing him across the bridge. But he got home first. And he went in. And he said to his wife, you’ve got to hide me like the Scottish Giant is coming. And she was very clever. And she put him into a bed, dressed him like a baby. And she was working in the kitchen when the Scottish Giant burst in. And he said, where’s Finn McCool? And she said, he’s just out at the minute. He’s at the shops.
But I’m just about to feed his baby here, our baby. So you can wait for a little while. And when the Scottish Giant looked inside the crib, and he saw Finn McCool, this giant baby, he thought, well, if that’s the size of the baby, I don’t want to see the dad when he comes home.
And so the Scottish Giant ran home. And on the way back, he destroyed the bridge. So there’s a tiny bit in Ireland. And there’s a tiny bit in Scotland still to this day. So yeah. So we’ve got beautiful bridges everywhere, two little tiny islands. This is Raffin Island, the number seven island, which is home to the puffin. So they have thousands and thousands of puffins on this island.
We’ve got these beautiful ancient stone walls all over Ireland. Some are 500 years old. Some are 5,000 years old. And the effort that these took to create by hand, they had to pull, like rip these stones from the ground and stack them all up. And as they stack them up, they last forever. So just like stories. And they’re just part of the landscape, like literally, just like being overtaken by moss and by grass. And they’re just still part of the landscape.
And we have, on Ballycastle Beach, where myself and my brother were, we have this old bridge at the end that goes out to these little rocks. And there’s something really magical about bridges that just like once you step on a bridge, and you’re walking across, and you’re going over to another island or somewhere, there’s some sort of magical thing that happens. And you can sort of feel it. Even as an adult now, you can sort of feel it. When you get on a bridge, you’re going somewhere different, and somewhere new and unknown. It’s kind of magical. We have got spooky trees along the side of the road. So they film Game of Thrones up around here all over the place, because they just have all of this amazing landscape lying all over the place. And we have spooky trees. This is called the Dark Hedges. And we even have cows that go to the beach.
This is true. So these cows live in a field up here. And when it’s a nice sunny day in Ireland, and they just take themselves off, walk down a little path, and they go to the beach for the day. And at the end of the day, they just walk back up and go back to the field again. And they even go swimming sometimes, if it’s really good weather.
Bizarre. But what’s really interesting is that every single one of those photos was taken inside that tiny white circle. So this is where I grew up, inside this really magical story land, story time, fairy tale place, where you’re just surrounded by all these stories, just literally as you’re walking around, and you have your cliffs and everything you touch. Just has a story behind it. And you get those stories told to you, and they last forever. One of my first stories I ever wrote,
I’ve illustrated a lot of stories for other people. This is the first one that I ever wrote. And it’s called “The Vanishing Lake.” And I’ll skip through it quite quickly. But it’s about this lake which vanishes and reappears, and vanishes and reappears. And a little girl and her grandfather live at the lake. And this is Mira and her grandfather. And they live at the lake. And the lake is kind of ordinary, except sometimes it just vanishes, just completely disappears. And then it rains a lot, an awful lot in Ireland, so it comes back again. And she kept asking him, why does it disappear? And he starts to tell her stories about the sheep that would go swimming in it. And they just soak up all the water.
She says, that can’t be true, Granddad. She can’t swim. And he tells her about the narwhals that live in the lake. And they do headstands. And they poke holes in the bottom. And then all the water drains out. Or maybe the mermaids took the plug out again. But she doesn’t believe any of these stories. She wants to know the real reason. And one day, she gets annoyed. She doesn’t want to know why it’s disappearing anymore. She lives in the real world. She doesn’t use her imagination. And so they hop over a fence. And they start walking up higher and higher up in the field. And they get to the top. And they lay down in the long grass. And he hands her his binoculars. And he tells her to wait.
And they waited for a long time staring at the lake. And she was so tired and ready to go back home. But then she saw them. She saw mammoths. And there was a huge herd of massive mammoths surrounding the lake to have a drink. And she couldn’t believe her eyes. And as quickly as they appeared, they disappeared. And they were gone.
And the story goes on. But of course, I don’t need to have much--
I don’t need to use my imagination that much, because I’ve got so much inspiration from back home. Because the Vanishing Lake, indeed, is a real place, five minutes from where I live. So on a Tuesday, it can look like this. Luxie Vanishing Lake. And this is not a big touristy thing. This is just one tiny little sign. Nobody knows about it. Nobody goes to-- well, the people who live in Bali Castle know about it. But yeah, on a Tuesday, it looks like this. On a Wednesday, it looks like this. It just completely vanishes and disappears. It’s got these beautiful hills all around it. And you can go back the next day. And it completely comes back. And if it really gets up-- and even the sheep are real from the story. And it gets up. It fills up higher and higher. And creates a nice little island. And mysteriously, these little stone structures have appeared. And then the next day, it can disappear, just like that. You can see it, like this brown plant. This was a couple of days apart.
Gone.
And even, if you go a little bit further around the coast, the mammoths are real too.
Because you can see, this is the elephant rock. And so all of these things inspire my stories. And I’m going to read you one of my stories in full. This is one of my latest ones called “The Golden Hare.”
Yes, OK. This was “The Golden Hare,” also inspired by back home. So I’m going to read you one of my stories so you can kind of experience what it is to-- because maybe, well, since yesterday, you haven’t heard many picture book stories.
But I want you to hear about this. And then I’ll tell you kind of what inspires me to-- or how I actually make a picture book and where I kind of came from the design world. So yes, “The Golden Hare.”
And this is Mira and her grandfather again. Same characters from the first story. “Have you ever seen a shark, granddad?” asked Mira.
“I swam with them when I was younger,” said granddad.
“And how about a giraffe?” “Oh, yes. Did you know that a giraffe has a blue tongue?”
“And how about a dinosaur? Have you ever seen a dinosaur?” “I’m not that old,” chuckled granddad.
“Oh, Mira,” said, “I’ve never seen a dinosaur, or a shark, or a giraffe, or a tiger, or a lion. I’ve never seen any of these animals.” But granddad patted her on the shoulder and said, “Have I ever told you about the magical golden hare?”
“The what?” asked Mira. “The golden hare can jump to the moon in two and a half leaps. And its golden hare shines brighter than the sun. And its really powerful ears can hear the tiniest spider scratch and itch.”
“But how do you know all of this?” asked Mira. “Well, granddad said, my granddad told me all about the golden hare when we went exploring together. You had a granddad,” she asked. “Oh, yes. He’s your great, great granddad. And did you ever find the golden hare?”
“Only once,” he said.
“Let’s go and find it, please, granddad,” said Mira.
“I suppose,” said granddad, “that we might be able to spot it again if we follow the clues in my nature journal.” And he pulled out this little book.
And inside this book, he had written-- and he had this book from when he was Mira’s age. And inside this book, he wrote everything about nature. And he sketched all the different birds and their eggs. He stuck feathers and seeds and leaves and flowers and everything into this book, including all of the clues to find the golden hare.
And Mira took the book. And the very next day, they picked up food supplies and a tent, and they set off across the fields with granddad’s pet otter, Kara. And Mira was reading from granddad’s old journal. It says in here that the golden hare loves precious things. “Well, there are many precious things all around,” said granddad, “and lots of gold.”
And just then, a bright flash of gold swooped by, and Mira jumped. “What was that?” she asked. “Let’s follow it and find out,” said granddad. And they did follow it. “But oh, it was just a bird,” said Mira, disappointed. “It’s not just any bird,” said granddad. “That’s a goldfinch. And they are called the bright flame of the forest, and maybe it will lead us to the golden hare. And look, look, there’s something gold shining in that tree.”
And together, Mira and granddad climbed the tree to see what was glowing.
“Treasures,” said Mira. “You’d be surprised what you’ll find in a bird’s nest,” said granddad.
“But I don’t think we’re going to find the golden hare here.” And he told Mira to close her eyes and to listen for the golden hare song. She did close her eyes, and she listened. And she said, “All I can hear are hundreds of birds singing.” “But they are beautiful too,” said granddad, like the tiny wren with its powerful song. “I think we might be getting nearer now.” And he took her further, and she read further into the book. And in the book she read, “The golden hare can hide very close to people, and they never see him at all.”
But granddad said, “Did you know foxes and badgers are really good at hiding too? Because they burrow deep into the ground at even puffins,” like on Rattle Island, “puffins and kingfishers like liveth hiding in burrows.”
But Mira asked, “Why is the golden hare so hard to spot?”
“Well, it’s not just an ordinary hare,” said granddad.
And so this is the point in this book, when I’m reading it to a bunch of school kids, that I will start to see some little kids start whispering to each other, and pointing. And one little hand will go up, and they will want to tell me something. But you’re all grown up, so you wouldn’t do that. But does anybody want to put their hand up and tell me something interesting?
No?
Well, what will happen when there’s a bunch of-- oh, I see a little hand. OK, yes.
You see a shape in the ground of what?
Of a hare? Where?
The fox. The fox is inside the hare. That doesn’t happen often. But yeah, very good. I’m very-- round of applause for being brave. Yeah.
(Applause) And so what happens when I read it to a bunch of kids, one little kid will have the courage, and we put the hand up, and he says, I can see the hare. And I’ll say, yeah, come up. And I’ll bring him up. And I’ll bring him up, and he’ll say, like, where the fox is. And he’ll go, I can see a hare, and his nose, and his ears, up here in his back. And like everybody else, I’ll start to go, oh, yeah.
But why is the golden hare so hard to spot, ask Meera? It’s not just an ordinary hare. It’s a shape shifter. So it can transform from one thing into another, like a tadpole changes into a frog, or a caterpillar changes into a butterfly.
And then there will be more murmuring in the class. The golden hare can float like a seed on the wind
looking for a place to make its home and grow. And it has seen many tiny seeds grow into giants in its lifetime. But how old is the golden hare? The golden hare is very, very old. However, jellyfish are even older, because they’ve been around for millions and millions of years. And my granddad told me that some jellyfish might even live forever.
Can anybody see a hare here?
Hands up if you can see a hare.
No, that’s not even half, I think.
So if I kind of pointed it, something.
But how could your granddad know all of these things, ask Meera? Well, my granddad read every nature book he could.
And he peeked under every rot. And he taught me about the Painted Lady Butterfly, this little butterfly. And I can see some people pointing at the screen.
He taught me about the Painted Lady Butterfly. It travels the length of the world on its tiny golden wings. But how can one tiny butterfly do that, ask Meera? One butterfly doesn’t. It does it over six generations.
So a great, great, great grandparent butterfly sets off, and a great, great, great grandchild finishes the journey.
And there are signs of the golden hare’s magic everywhere, said granddad. Just look at this dandelion. That’s just a weed, granddad, said Meera. You might think it’s a weed, but it’s very special food for bees. And a dandelion can grant wishes if you blow the seeds. And people like to say that the golden flower is for the sun, and that white ball is for the moon, and those little seeds that you set sailing into the sky, those are the stars.
And as they settle down for the night, granddad asked Meera what she had wished for. She said, I wished that we would find the golden hare, but I don’t think we ever will, said Meera.
Hands up if you can see her hair here.
Still not even half, I think. If I told you the moon was the eye.
So I wish that we would find the golden hair, but I don’t think we ever will, said Meera.
And so the next morning, as they set off home, Meera thought about all she had seen. She saw nests filled with treasure and waves filled with jellyfish. She saw homes in the ground filled with love.
She saw forests full of songs and seeds full of life. And granddad said, maybe we didn’t find the hare, but I have something for you. And he handed Meera her very own nature journal, just like his. And he said to her, fill it with all of the magic you have seen. Thank you, said Meera. And as she looked on the cover of her brand new nature journal, she saw that there was her very own little golden hair. And just like her granddad and her great, great granddad, Meera fell in love with nature and she sketched and she scribbled and she stuck seeds and leaves and flowers and everything into this book. And when one journal was full, granddad would give her another one and another one and another one. And he’d always say that the world doesn’t have enough pages to hold all of its treasures. The end, that is the story of the golden hair. So this is Meera’s journal inside.
And you can see she stuck everything into this book as she learned. And the story starts off, if anybody has children, it starts off with just a conversation, a question you’re hit with, it starts off with, have you ever seen a shark granddad? And she wanted to see sharks and giraffes and lions and all these thrilling animals, which are very thrilling. But the granddad used the golden hair as a tool to teach her that the natural world is thrilling enough. If you just walk, go to the beach or in your garden, you can see all of these amazing things like tadpoles changing into frogs and jellyfish that live forever. And dandelions, all these beautiful things.
And I told you I come from a magical place. And this is an Irish hair. This is what a hair looks like in Ireland. We have a special Irish hair which in the winter doesn’t turn white. So other normal hairs, they turn white in the winter. Ours don’t. But I told you I come from this magical place up here. And inside that tiny white circle, there’s a little island called Rathran Island with those stories of princesses and everything. On this island, they have Irish hairs.
But every so often, one hair will be born with golden fur and blue eyes. And it’s the only place in the world where you have this phenomenon.
And some years, there will be no golden hairs on the island. There are years and years, no golden hairs. And then it’ll come back magically. This gene, this golden hair will be found on the island. And I know a photographer who lives on the island. And he camps out, waits and feels, waits forever to try and spot the golden hair. And rumor has it, at the moment, there are two golden hairs on the island, which he hadn’t seen before. He photographed two together, which is pretty magical.
But yes, I also used to do--
just to go straight from a story to something quite different.
Let’s talk a little bit about UX design and stuff. Now what I do is I tell stories and write books and do illustrations. But I come from a very different era of the web. So I started studying 2003. I graduated in 2007 and then worked for many years as a web designer, UX designer. I went through-- it was a very different place 20-odd years ago. We had Web 2.0 and we had lovely glossy buttons. And it was really delicious. We built everything in Photoshop and built websites out of tables. It was uber messy. But you could really see what you made. You could feel it. It was magic time. And I made a bunch of different things. I made the stickers, Swarm by Foursquare, and you check in. So all those little--
so I made all of these, which are really fun.
I went to go for this talk to find some of my old work was just a challenge in itself. I did the website for-- I started messing around with illustration. Did the website for Deconstruct, if anybody ever has been there.
This was one 2015, I think. Did the website for this. I did games on the iPhone, but everything was-- with super shadows and you could feel it in skeuomorphism. And it was a fun time. But it was so difficult for finding-- to try and find some of my work from back then. I found little snippets, little JPEGs, and blew them up. And they’re really blurry now. But you can feel all that indentation, those tiny shadows and everything. And I loved the texture and all of that, and nudging all of those pixels. And it was very different worlds. I also did this. This is me, little young Patty. When I was a student, together with my buddy Lee, we made a website where we sold words for a dollar a letter. And it got picked up and was in Wired magazine. And we sold a bunch of words. So you could buy a word. And if you clicked on that word on our website, you would go to whatever page you wanted. The web was like a wild west back then. You could just do anything. And yeah, it was really fun. And I made apps for kids. I started doing this. So I never studied illustration or writing or anything like that or English literature.
I did. I drew as a kid, then became a teenager, got into computers, design. And I studied design. And then I moved to Belgium. Have I said that? I live in Belgium? No, maybe I’ve skipped that. Yeah, I live in Belgium now. I’ve been living there for 15 years. But I moved to Belgium and started at a design agency, then went freelance. And I made with a developer friend of mine, we built a bunch of apps for kids, because we were trying out-- the iPad had just been released. And we wanted to mess around and make an app. So I made a bunch of different apps for kids,
like little story ones with dinosaurs and all of these fun things. And we did that for a number of years. And it was really fun. And the web was a very different place. I emailed L.A. J. Stocks, who I remembered just to have these beautiful textured websites back in the day. And I said, do you have any JPEGs of your website from back then? And he sent me a couple. But he also-- he sent me a couple of things he did. But he said that might be on an old hard drive somewhere. And that was just such a really clear indication of how temporary everything is whenever you create digital things. And in the short space of 20 years, or even 10 years, or five years-- and you kind of heard that in some other talks as well--
you started to-- stuff doesn’t live very long. And as I was working in design and working for a number of years-- took maybe five years before I started to see in my portfolio
that all the work that was a little bit older started to disappear. And I started to get more and more broken links. And I only had JPEGs of work that had previously existed, but didn’t exist anymore. And as the web went on, it became shorter and shorter. And things got redesigned. And apps broke down. And I discovered that I had this kind of realization that if I only ever did digital things for the rest of my life, whenever I retire, I won’t have any work to show for it. It’ll all just disappear. And maybe have a JPEG here or two. But it’s not the same. And so I was like, I’ve got to do something, a real physical thing. Because I just wanted to do something that you could see and touch. And it was like a real thing. And what I did, obviously, was I went to New Zealand and took six months off and traveled myself. My wife took six months off. And we climbed mountains. I went to New Zealand and Australia. We swam with whale sharks. And we went skydiving. And we climbed Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings. And we did all of these things, hung off cliffs. And I started to remember about all of those things
I had as a kid that I grew up beside, all of those things that lived longer, like all of those stone walls, and those cliffs, and those bridges, and islands, and all of the stories from back home. So as I was going around six months thinking, what do I want to do? Because as you travel, the first thing people ask you is, what do you do? You have to say, yeah, well, I designed digital-only things. But I can’t really show you much of it because it’s all disappearing. And so I found myself telling them that I did the kids’ apps a lot more because I really enjoyed designing stuff for kids.
I had illustration. And each project was very different. And I remembered about all of those stories from back home. And I started to have a realization that stories are magic. And they last forever. So all of those stories, those stories I told you at the start, those-- I don’t know who told me those stories back when I was a kid. But they’ve kind of stayed in there. And they’ll stay with you a little bit. And if any of you go to Ireland, you go to those places, Giant’s Causeway, you’ll remember me telling you those stories. Because they do last forever. They’ve got this magic appeal. And then I thought about picture books.
Picture books were ideal. They would be making something physical that wouldn’t change and would stick around.
And I remember the stories I read as a kid. And I’m sure everybody in here can remember the stories, the books they read as a kid, and those picture books, and really specific ones. And people hang on to their stories, their books. And they give them to their kids and their grandkids. And so I thought that would be the perfect thing to try and get into.
But this was going to be a massive change. This was going back to a nice, safe job in tech and doing design.
Would have been OK. But I’d already blown all my savings on going around New Zealand and Australia. But I came back and took a leap into something new and unknown. And I thought about some advice, like some of the best advice ever given to me by my old lecturer. So I studied in Belfast under Chris Murphy. And Chris Murphy, who I guess spoke here a number of years ago, super guy. And he always said to say yes and panic later.
And if you know Chris Murphy, he did not say this. He used to say yes and shit your pants later. But this was for an article I was interviewed in a magazine to give some advice that I’d been given. And obviously, I couldn’t say what Chris would say in print. So yeah, say yes and shit your pants later was what Chris always used to say. So like anything, I came to anything. If a client came along and said, have you ever used this technology? We want to build this thing. You say yes. And then you just go home and you figure it out. And you just go for it. So I did. And I came back. And I tried to figure out how to get into picture books, which is a totally new world from where I’d come from. I went to the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Bologna Book Fair. And what happens is when you go in as an illustrator for picture books or an aspiring illustrator, they have this illustrator’s wall where you could place a bit of your work in the hope that some publisher would come along and go, yeah, let’s give you a job making a picture book. Very intimidating because you can go there and stand in a queue of 200 other illustrators wanting to make a picture book. And you get five minutes with an art director to show your portfolio. But I did that. I went there with my vector digital portfolio
and got to the front of the queue and spoke with a number of art directors in the hope that I could make a picture book that they would take a chance on me. And what they would say is, I wouldn’t know where to put you. Or this stuff is too digital.
It’s not real enough for in a picture book. It’s totally the wrong style. Your portfolio doesn’t have the things that you would need in a children’s book.
So I went home and I processed all of that feedback.
And I started. I got to work.
And I came back and I started making a new portfolio with lots of things that I knew they wanted in there, and unicorns and lions and tigers and all of those superstars of picture books. I put all of those in there. But I started putting a lot of things that I love in there. And what I did to discover what I love,
I took a huge sheet of paper.
And in the middle of it, I started writing the things that I love to illustrate. And inside I put the sea from back home. And I said, lighthouses. I love to illustrate lighthouses. I don’t know why, but just making a stripey lighthouse. And mist and mysterious islands and waves and just the foam and spray when you’re creating, when you’re illustrating,
a wave just really appeals to me. And the seaweed and old maps and jellyfish and octopuses and rocks. And this is the way I draw a rock. Like, it’s really-- everybody, if you draw a rock, you draw it differently. But I always just draw all these little sharp, kind of triangle-y rocks with starfish on them and waves around them. And I kept going and trying to be more and more specific. I like drawing fur on animals and long mustaches and tails. And I love those palm trees that you get on beaches which kind of grow horizontal.
Yeah, I love that. I don’t know why. But I started writing down all of those different animals I love to illustrate, and mice and rabbits and long ears and long tails. And those little fences you get at beaches, which are just kind of sticks just kind of stuck in the sand with a little wire between them. Like, I don’t know why, but I just wrote all of this stuff down and put it all in there. And jungles and foxes, waterfalls, dodos, dinosaurs, mammoths, everything. I just kept going and really specific dinosaurs, which ones I did love to illustrate. And you see from this huge list, I started filling my portfolio with these things that I love. And I started illustrating the sea.
And I started using lots of texture. This is all made digitally on a Wacom, but I started doing all of this stuff, which imitating kind of the texture stuff that I loved from the web from 20 years ago. And I did lots of mysterious little islands and used beautiful colors and did little mysterious islands, but with palm trees that kind of grow a little bit more horizontally. And I illustrated jellyfish. And I started filling my portfolio with all of these different things
and islands with lighthouses, people with big blue beards and sneaky crocodiles, and all of these different things that were just for me. So this wasn’t a brief from a publisher or anybody. I just put all of these things. I just wanted to make this. I want to make this illustration and little foxes in the wood. And I really love the-- whenever you see trees, there’s been so much snow. It’s kind of sprayed up onto the trunk and stuff. That’s just really personal to me. I just love that. And those little wooden things, you get little fences on beaches.
And what I started to find was that whenever I created these things in my portfolio, which started from a place of love and passion and just what I really wanted to illustrate,
I got a way stronger reaction when I showed it to publishers. So the stuff that kind of ticked the boxes with unicorns or lions or whatever that come in picture books, when I showed them this stuff that I just made because I love to do it, these are always the pieces where they go, what’s the story but this guy? There’s a story in this.
And I could see that this was resonating with publishers, but starting from that place of love and to create genuine stories, it has to start from something like deep inside or deep in your memory, deep in your heart. And yeah, so I filled my portfolio with these things. And I went out. And this was in 2017, 2018, and started approaching publishers. And I got an agent, which is kind of necessary to get in with publishers. I submitted my stuff to a bunch of agents, got loads of rejection, but then eventually got my ideal agent that I wanted that loads of other illustrators I admire were with this agency. And so they started getting me work.
And to date, I’ve illustrated 24 picture books and written four of them. And it’s been such a dream come true job because I get now every day to make-- I get to dive underwater into these underwater worlds with jellyfish and all of these things I love to illustrate. And I get to do stories about rabbits escaping from nightmares about wolves. And I get to-- here we are in the woods. This is from a book called Wolves and Helicopters. It’s the best title ever. I didn’t write it, so I get to work with other authors who dream up stories like this about nightmares about wolves and helicopters.
I get to do stories about little kids on desert islands
and use lots of sweeping patterns and lots of textures and do all of the things that I really love to illustrate in cave drawings. I put in all of those things, mammoths and saber-toothed tigers and dodos and all of these things that I really loved. And Little Moles, Digging Underground, and more big giant wolves and islands. And I’ve got a bunch of my books have also been translated into German.
So one recently is Eva and the Acorn, which came out like a week or two ago, also in German. And in that one, it was written by Lou Fraser. And it’s a beautiful poetic book. There’s a whisper of wood smoke that tumbles and twists through the ribbons of dawn and the morning soft mists. It weaves through the eaves of a house with a curl and downwards it’s drifts in the breeze to a girl. And it’s about a little girl and her grandfather, and they love this oak tree. And they go through all four seasons with this oak tree through summer and through autumn. And as it gets into autumn and winter, the grandfather and the oak tree start to not do so well. And it’s all about the circle of life and this magical gift that nature can give you and this relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. And it’ll make you cry. And I have a book about dinosaurs. So I get to draw books about dinosaurs now. This one’s called Daddy’s Footsteps, also available in German. And I get to draw-- do all of this. But apart from making the books, which is super enjoyable,
I get to go and do events with kids. This is in Galway in Ireland. We closed down the middle of the streets one day when the sun was out. And there was a bunch of us authors and illustrators in these yellow jackets. We went on this pink bus you can see in the background. We went down that west coast of Ireland and invaded every town and did events with kids in schools and libraries. But we rolled out this big sheet of paper, and the kids got to draw monsters on the roads. And I get to read my stories to kids, which is the most enjoyable thing ever, getting to draw long events with kids and answering the strangest of questions.
Yeah, you get to go into schools, and they treat you like you are a superstar. You feel like Taylor Swift walking into class. It’s an incredible feeling. A kid came up to me two weeks ago and wanted a fist bump. Gave him a fist bump. And he just looked at his hand. He was like, I just fist bumped an author.
It’s magic. I’ve had incredible experience and inspiring confidence in kids drawing and their stories is a super addictive feeling. I visited my old primary school, so I went back to Ballycastle
on World Book Day.
And on World Book Day, they all dress up as their favourite book character. And so that’s why there are Oompa Loompas and the Gruffalo and everything in here. But I went back with this charity called Book Trust. And what they do is they get-- we did this massive event for 250 kids. And what Book Trust do is they give every kid a copy of the book to take home with them at the end of the session. And who knows, maybe some of those kids, that’s the first book they ever have of their own at home. And it was in my old class, and I showed my old school photos of me in my little school uniform with all of my schoolmates, a class photo. And as I showed it, some little hands started going up and we’re like, that’s my mum in your class photo, or that’s my dad.
Which is really full circle magic experience. But one thing I’ve definitely learned is that if you want to be doing something, you need to already be doing it. So there’s no way in the world any of this would have happened if I didn’t go and fill my portfolio with all the things I wanted to do. I wanted to draw islands with those weird palm trees. And I wanted to draw underwater worlds and tell stories about foxes and dinosaurs and everything. Nobody was ever going to come and just bang on my door and say, “Hey, do you want to do all of this?” Because the reality of the real world were those massive queues in Frankfurt with 200 other illustrators all wanting to do the same thing. But just showing up and going there and making a portfolio of the types of books I already wanted to do. But what I wanted to do, doing that already,
it means that I was able to have some stuff happen that I eventually got there and now I get to do it for a job. Because I do book covers for middle grade for older kids. But see, for most of these and most of the other picture books, I got the job. If you take one, for example, “Oddily Dark and the Face of the Deep” from Philip Reeve, I got this project because I had already done the cover. Like years before, where I made something in my portfolio that was just something I wanted to do. I just wanted to experiment with different brushes and I made something. But an art director came along and was like, “This is ideal for this book cover.” And I got to recreate it and that’s happened again and again and again. So if you want to do something, whatever you want to be doing, just do it already. Like don’t ask for permission. And luck.
So, yeah, luck exists, but it does need something to bite onto. So you’re never going to get lucky enough where someone’s just going to turn up and say, “Hey, do you want to have this career of your dreams that you’ve never told anybody about?” You have to be actively getting out there. And you’re doing the right thing by coming here and meeting all of those people that are where you want to be or putting your work out there. Like you’ve heard so many times from Craig and from Jessica and from Linda and everybody. Like you have to put your stuff out there and then stuff starts happening. I think Christine mentioned it as well. She said random things happen when you put your work out there. And that is so true. Like so many of the opportunities I’ve had are because I actually just like took a step and did something, like put something out there. And I did randomly one morning just to kind of like warm up. I did, I had an idea. I want to illustrate like a mountain, but like make it a dragon and have like little trees growing off it. And I just made that and put it in my portfolio because I just wanted to do it. And an art director came along, was looking for had this story from someone else called Susannah Lloyd, called “Here Be Dragons”.
And in this store is also available in German. And she came along and saw this piece in my portfolio and was like, “That would be perfect in this book because the story is about a knight trying to find a dragon, but the mountain he’s climbing on has a tail. And he goes through, he thinks he’s amazing. And he knows exactly how to find a dragon, but he’s not actually looking at what’s in front of him. And he goes into a cave which looks kind of suspicious. And yeah, I got this project because I already had done it. And it was in my portfolio and the art director saw it. And this book got a sequel about giants. And it also blew up into, in the library, in the city I live in in Belgium. It’s a big library.
They created this year in the summer in massive exhibition based on these two books. And inside they just completely covered the library in life size, dragons and giants. And the whole like kids section, the whole kids section was completely transformed into this wonderland with giant footprints and dragon mouths that they can walk into. And the kids could go around, do a scavenger hunt and find things from the book. And in behind the bookshelves, there’s lots of different animals from my stories. There was a beanstalk in there and projections, really phenomenal thing. But that only happened because I did those books. And it only happened because I put that one little piece in my portfolio that I wanted to do. I wanted to draw a dragon book.
Yeah, so there’s me and the author Susanna earlier in the year.
But yeah, a story has a user experience, a picture book has a user experience. And it’s really something interesting. And it’s something I know a little bit about, creating a user experience. Because picture books are unique, they’re for two people. And you have the adult and you have the child. Or you have the person who can read and the person, the child. Because they need each other for a picture book to work. Because you’ve got words and pictures. And usually the age that a picture book is aimed at, the child can’t read on their own yet. So they need the adults, their parent or grandparent or older sibling to read the story.
And so the kid is sitting down in this magical moment, like at the end of the day, they’re sitting down. And then you have to be sitting down, right, to read a book. And they’re sitting down at the end of the day with their parent, with someone special. And that person is reading the words that they can’t read yet. But those words are going in, this trusted voice is telling this story. And they are engrossed in the illustrations. And they’re looking at all of the different things that I’ve hidden in the illustrations, and all the stuff I just put in there, just because I want to do it. And I put lots of stuff in for the adults too, obviously.
And kids will spot things way before the parents. Because like a lot of you, spotting the hairs, the kids would have been two pages ahead of you. And they would have been like, I see the hair. And then the parents are like, what? And at the end of the long day, and the parent is not thinking about deadlines and mortgages and the real world and politics and all of that stuff, they’re sitting down with their child and they’re just diving into this different world. And it’s a very amazing user experience to design for.
And what an advantage you’d be giving your child by just reading them stories and giving them this huge opportunity and advantages in life.
From reading to them at an early age and flaming their imagination. So getting to do all of that is just such a dream. And it’s a big responsibility, like maybe the first time they ever see what a penguin is, it’s gonna be in a picture book, what a tiger is. And they learn all of these things about the world from picture books. And you’ve got the user experience, which is fun to design for, some like details. You never put the surprising thing on this page, on the right page, because a picture book is a physical thing, you’re holding it and you’re reading it from left to right. And so you never put your surprising element here because you can already see it, right? So you put, then as she looked on the cover of her new nature journal, she saw that there was her very own little golden hair. And so you want, that’s like a physical thing, you have to turn the page, right? So you always put your surprising stuff on the left side. So all of these little details are really, really fun.
And out of all of this, I discovered,
I get the best results whenever I’m writing for my childhood self, for that little kid on the beach.
Because, remember that big list of things I made, that I love to illustrate, I could have made that when I was on the beach, because nothing has changed. Back then, I was drawing dinosaurs, and I was drawing animals with long ears and rabbits. I was drawing little islands, and I was living here with raffling islands just out there, and those big cliffs, and I heard all these stories. So that big list, I could have drawn that when I was five, so nothing has changed, absolutely.
And when I’m writing my stories, and writing it for my five-year-old self sitting on that beach,
it gets way better reception when I pitch it to a publisher, and everybody in my stories, like it’s all me. So Mira on the floor here, surrounded by books, and drawing dinosaurs, and giraffes, that’s me, right? So that’s me when I was a kid, when I was five years old on that beach, and I remember, I have specific memories of, I remember this story, this whole story about the magic of nature and everything, I had this book of Irish birds, list of every Irish bird, and I remember on the cover of it, it’s got some parrot or something that was seen once in Ireland in the 1800s or something, but it was just put there, so it’s a nice catchy image. But I remember the disappointed feeling of like, I’m never gonna see that bird in Ireland, and I always had this feeling of like, I wanted to see sharks and giraffes and dinosaurs, but couldn’t, but then this grandfather here is my great aunt, so I had a great aunt who died a couple of years ago in her 90s, but she was like, the best person that like, introducing nature to me, and taught me how to draw things, and taught me all the names of every bird, and taught me about nature, and how do you appreciate nature. And that it’s really magic, and taught me about books, and that’s where this story came from, about the magic of the regular animal world, and I hid lots of things in there that I just love to illustrate. And by the way, so you remember she got this little green book with the golden hair on it, can you see, this is the first page, can you see what the grandfather’s pulling out of the bookshelf?
Just here, because grandparents are kind of, they’re wise like that, and they kind of know what’s gonna happen, what the whole full story is. So he pulled out the bookcase, and he shoved it in his bag because he knew he was gonna give it to her later, because he knew what was gonna happen. And I remember looking at nature books, and seeing these underground cross sections with different animals, so I was like, I’m gonna illustrate all of that sort of stuff.
And things like Jurassic Park, and favorite movies, like I put little mosquitoes in amber, and all of these little details are just for me for my five year old self, and I just fill the book with that. But whenever people look at it, people can tell that you’re passionate about it. And you saw it like Jessica mentioned about, like kind of, to kind of look within, and Linda put the nyan cat in her playground and stuff, that was like just for her, but like people can tell when you see, when you see like, you put something you love into it. And like I can see some of you like whispering to each other, you can see the hair in this as well. And, but yeah, that Rathlin Island that I looked out upon in my entire childhood, that had made it in here. And the granddad in the story, the granddad’s granddad, is up here in the old photo on those cliffs,
those cliffs that we went to later in the story, right? So that was an old photo of the granddad and his granddad. And they were on these big cliffs with those really special rocks, they kind of look kind of unique and different. And those special rocks, obviously, those are Rathlin Island that I looked out on for many years, and so it all comes around. And I remember being disappointed when I was a kid. I loved dinosaurs, Jurassic Park, all of that. And at some point I remember feeling disappointed that I would never see a real dinosaur. Like I remember there was a realization one day that I’m not actually gonna see a real one. Like before I was like, I’ll see one someday, but then no, I wouldn’t. But then I grew up, became an author, and as an author, you get to make up the rules. And so in my rule book, dodos are not extinct, or dinosaurs are not extinct. And this is a story also in German
about all of the animals who supposedly are extinct, but they just disguise themselves as different animals. And saber-toothed tigers, to hide those teeth, they just grow massive moustaches.
And the dinosaurs, Velociraptors being very clever, they’re dentists, and so they’re out there to be spotted. And whenever I read this to like a bunch of kids, you can see afterwards, they’re like kind of looking out in the street like, “Oh, they’re real?” And I have a very many like kind of pinch me, full circle moments, because one of my favorite books, when I was back as a kid on the floor, this is one of my favorite books, it’s called Run With The Wind. It’s about a group of foxes, they go on an adventure to like survive together. And I remember sitting, you know, with a torch under my blanket reading this story. It was one of my favorite books, read it so many times. This is my old copy, it’s got my name in it, written by my mom in it.
And it’s got a tea spill all over it in the middle of it. This is my old copy, it’s my office now.
And the author of this book, for the golden hair, the author of this book from back in the day, wrote a quote for it to appear on the book. So this is like some bizarre full circle thing, where he wrote a really special touching quote about this. And this is the guy who like in my childhood, I read this book over and over and over again. I absolutely loved it. So that was really special to have that. It also came out in German, like in the 80s. So maybe some of you in here read this story back then. And I get, it was really special. I get like letters sent to me, like from my kids,
which are super touching. It’s like a magic moment now, that like kids are reading my books now and stories stay with you forever, right? So some of these stories that kids are reading now, my stories are gonna be the ones, like the run with the wind one, hopefully, in like 20 years time, whenever they’re thinking about the stories that they’re gonna read their kids, they were like, I wanna remember that story about the golden hair or the vanishing lake.
And it’s really like, I went to a bookshop in Ireland,
when I was on that bus tour with the other authors, we went in there and a little kid got his mom to take him to the bookshop and he came up to me and he had this little book in his hand that he had made just for me.
The Adventures of Ram, a story for kids who like adventures and inside this book, he wrote this amazing story with lots of drawings inside it. And he just wanted so hard to give it to me, he loved my books and he read all my stories and he was just amazing, he was like totally overwhelmed to like give me this book, which is just magic. And my office is just filled with stuff like this, which just blows my mind.
I see my drawings and everything. But I had been so lucky on my journey to get here and luck exists, but you kinda have to make it happen.
But one of the things is, I love to pay that luck forward because I’ve been given so many opportunities. And like for Mark, inviting me here to this, I feel very lucky that I get to do this and chat to you all. So I picked three books from friends of mine, three books that are also children’s books that are available in German. I thought I’d take like one minute of my presentation to talk about them. So if you need some book recommendations,
Olivia Hope and Fiona Butcock have a book called Little Lion Girl and it’s about a little girl and her mom, they go on this big journey into the overwhelming city, but nothing can scare a brave lion girl, can it? And it’s the Tale of Imagination and Self-Belief, really beautiful book.
There’s a book called Maybe by Chris Houghton and it’s about three little monkeys who are told definitely do not go down to the mango tree, but when the mom goes away, they think, maybe we could just go look at the mango tree and maybe like we could just go and smell the mangoes and like it goes on like that. But it’s a beautiful book. And also in German. And the last one is by a friend of mine, Eve McDonald. It’s a time travel tale. This is for older kids and it’s set in London, 1928 before the Thames burst its bank and there was a big flood and there’s lots of time travel and people from the past and all. It’s really cool if your kids are into that, also in German. But yeah, I’m a firm believer of like, if any time you get like the opportunity to like be on stage or talking to a group of people, try and talk about someone else for like one minute and give them an opportunity that will not happen any other way. So yeah, I wanna kind of run over time, but I wanna really quickly read you one of my other stories. I’ll try and go really quickly before I finish. This is one called Fox and Sun Tailors. And this is about animals and the animals in this world have no tails. So tails don’t exist. They’re just not a thing.
Never has a tail existed until the fox has invented tails. And that’s why tail tailors is spelled wrong.
So tailors, E-R-S, is someone who makes tails. And it’s set in the little town of Ballybrush.
And this is Fox and Sun Tailors here. This is the little town where every street is named after a different animal. You’ve got Skunk Street and Weasel Way and Robin Road and all these different animal named streets. We’re going to Aardvark Alley where Fox and Sun Tailors is. You wanna hear another story? Or, yeah, okay.
This is Fox and Sun Tailors. On a busy little street in a busy little town, there was a shop called Fox and Sun Tailors. And there were many other different shops. This is Fox and Sun Tailors here. And there was Badger Books next door. And there was a stork delivery company. And there was haircuts. The hairdressers wear hairs, cut the hair of other hairs. And my favorite shop out of all of these is right behind this chair.
It’s a super tiny shop that maybe some of you can see. There’s a little shop with two little mice in it. And they also sell tails. But the story’s not about them.
Rory’s dad, Fox, was a tailor, which means he made tails. And his granddad was a tailor before that. And his great granddad was a tailor before that. And animals came from all over to have their tails made by him. So the lions came and the toucans came and the penguins came. And Rory helped his dad in the shop. And one of his jobs was to measure the customers. But sometimes that wasn’t so easy.
And Fox and Sun Tailors had tails for work. And tails for weddings. And tails for birthday parties. And even tails for your first day at school. Like all of these little bunnies here. But Rory was bored of tails.
He’d lost count of the number of times he’d heard his dad say, “Wedding tails have to be seven feet, three and three quarter inches long.“ Or, “Formal tails need to be seven eighths of an inch off the floor.” His dad had all of these rules for making tails. And Rory thought, “Why can’t we do something different for a change?” And Rory sat down on the floor and sketched out all these different ideas for tails. Tails with lots of beautiful colors. And spots and stripes and spikes. And most importantly, no rules. And his dad found the sketches. “What’s all this?” Asked Rory’s dad. “There are my ideas, dad,” said Rory. “Just imagine a big, long, feathery tail with bright colors. Or a spiky, slimy tail. Or a fluffy, bouncy tail.” But Rory’s dad wasn’t so sure. Tailoring is a noble profession. And our customers don’t want silly things like this. And I stopped playing around and fetched me a box of safety pins. And Rory did as he was told. So was dad’s thought. Because after everyone had gone to bed, Rory snuck out of bed and down the stairs and into his dad’s workshop and started turning these silly ideas into something fun. “I just know the customers are gonna love these tails,” he thought. And he worked the whole night to make something. And the very next day of VIP, a very important peacock, came into the shop.
And he says, “I’m looking for something rather special for a grand birthday party.” “Certainly, sir,” said Fox. “We have a wide range of tails for you to look at.” “How about this?” “Oh no,” said the peacock. “Or something like this?” “No, no, no, no, no.” “These are very popular right now.”
“No, no, no, none of these will do,” said the peacock. “I need something amazing. Something fabulous, something like that.” And he pointed at something.
There’s a little fox behind the shelves modeling a tiny little tail. And the peacock grabbed the tail.
Uh-oh, thought Rory. And Fox gave Rory a look and said, “Oh, that’s just one of my son’s wacky ideas. That’s not for sale.” “But this one is just right,” said the peacock.
“I simply must have one made out of these.”
But Fox, and Rory thought, “No, I am for it.” But Fox surprised him and said, “I’m sorry I doubted you, son. Whenever I was your age, I had wild and wonderful ideas too.” And you can see on the wall these dusty old photos of the dad with beautiful blue tails and feathery tails with purple spots. And he was in the newspaper. He hasn’t looked at these photos in a while.
And he says, “If we’re gonna make this amazing tail in time, ”we better get started.” And with that, they did get started.
Rory and his dad set out their tail-making tools and they sketched and they died and they glued and they tied. They trimmed and they sewed and hoped it would hold. And for the final touch, Fox held the fabulous feathers as still as he could while Rory painted on glowing tips and sparkling eyes.
And they worked the whole night to make a tail. And what they made was this.
“It’s wonderful, it’s marvelous, it’s simply fabulous,” said the peacock when he came to collect the tail. “I’ll be the talk of the town, and I’ll make sure everyone knows where I got it.”
And as the days went by, Rory dreamt up so many wild and wonderful tails. There were long tails and short tails. There were furry tails and feathery tails. There were spiky tails and slimy tails and tails with beautiful colors. Tails with stripes, tails with spots and tails with both. And the customers bought them all.
And for weeks after, Fox and Son Taylor had a queue of animals down the street and everyone wanted one of Rory’s terrific creations. And one night Rory’s dad gave him a present and said, “Here, son, I’ve made something special for us. It’s my way to say thank you.” And he made them, obviously, the very first fox’s tail because tails don’t exist, right? So he had to invent what a fox’s tail would look like. “Oh, wow,” said Rory with a big smile. “They’re simply fabulous.” And nowadays, Rory runs the shop. Here’s Rory all grown up. And tails are available in all shapes, all colors, and all sizes, and they’ve never been busier. The end, that is Fox and Son Taylor’s. And you can see that-- (Audience Applauding) You can see the dad’s still around, but now he’s a granddad. And you can see him with his slightly gray mustache and a little granddaughter. And what’s really fun about picture books, like I said, it takes two people. You’re designing for two people, the parent and the child. And one thing is the words.
So if you took the picture away, it’s just the words. Nowadays, Rory runs the shop. The tails are available in all colors, all shapes, and all sizes, and they’ve never been busier. That’s one part of it.
But the illustration’s the other part. But neither of them really work without being together. So if you remove one part, because this is a nice drawing, but you don’t really know what’s going on, but when you put them together, it kind of makes something magical happen in a child’s head when they’re reading this story.
And so many things I can slip in the illustrations that are not said in the words. So if you look, he’s now a granddad, and with his granddaughter. But if you look at her drawings on the floor, she’s not really into tails that much. She’s into astronauts, and robots, and rockets, and dinosaurs, and she wants to do all those things. But you can see the granddad doesn’t really think tails are the most important thing in the world anymore, because he’s reading our little story about Pluto, the best of the planets. Put up for a little, yeah. So, but like all that sort of stuff, that’s just for me, right? However, this story, nowadays, I’ve got kids, and I feel, I feel like I’m the dad. Where is the dad? Yeah, I feel I’m much more the dad in this story, because I get met with questions, and my kids ask me things, and I’ve got rules now. I’m a grownup, and I have all these important things to do, and I’m following the way the world’s supposed to work, and I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to do, but every so often, you kind of need to be reminded to break those rules, and to do something different, and to take some chances.
Okay, just to finish, because I’m realizing over time, this book has come out in a lot of other languages, so here’s where this luck thing comes out when you put something out. This could come out in 12 languages, but not in German.
So, there’s a lot of people here. Somebody must know a publisher in German. So afterwards, give me a shout, and we’ll see what happens. And in like a year or two, when the book comes out in German, I will remember, like it happens, because on this stage, I said, the book’s not out in German yet, and something magic happens when you just put stuff out there.
So, to finish, this is my last thing. I’ll teach you a beautiful Irish word called Strannach. And Strannach is a special word because it’s a whistling or murmuring, that sound of the sea in a cove when water rushes in and rushes back out again as it scrapes over the pebbles, this beautiful, beautiful word. And like everything good, you have to be really quiet to hear the sound.
And my hope for you is that you discover what you love, like I did, and discover what your dream is, and it’s not always easy, and you have to work at it to find it. But once you do, throw absolutely everything you have into getting it because it’s very achievable.
And tonight, like two nights, so not next week, don’t put it off any longer, like tonight, what I really ask of you, like after this conference, or even during this conference, just nudge one tiny pebble in the direction to like get towards your goal. Because even as like the most microscopic thing you can do, sending an email or chatting to someone here to like get closer to your goal, definitely do it. Because in any journey, you always wish you started yesterday.
And once you know what that dream is, I want you to put everything that’s important to you, like specifically to you into that.
And like the things I put into my stories that are just for me, just for my five-year-old self, others can really sense when you put those things in there. And while you’re not able to control your own luck, you can definitely control other people’s luck. So anytime you have an opportunity to lift someone else up or to shout about their work, definitely do it. Because the more and more you put out there,
and you remember your struggles earlier in your journey, the more you put out there, the more luck you put out there, it always, you can’t resist but being blown back on you afterwards.
And most importantly of all is effort. So effort is a huge thing.
And just like those ancient stone walls, and you had to place all of those stones on there, or nudging those pebbles up the beach and pulling the mic back out to sea endlessly, in and out, never ending, that strannach, that sound that you hear, that is untiring effort with no loss of vigor. And effort is something that you can control. So that is my wish for all of you after this talk. So thank you very much.
(Audience Applauding)
