Want to check out my book? Of course, you do! Click the attachment to read the whole story!

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Yesterday I worked on my audio recordings and finished all of them! You can check out the link attached. for the full audio of the book! I have also been working on perfecting my “Final Pitch” video that is going to be re-uploaded today.

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Curious about the recording set up and hear me do a couple of lines from the book? Check out this video!

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After a week long Spring Break. I have picked up right where I left off by putting words to pictures and began audio recording the book!

Other than working on my trailer I continued putting words to pictures! I plan on seeing Anna soon so I can gather hopefully the rest of the drawings so I can add them to the document and be ready for assembly. Later today I will be doing some voiceover work for my trailer and get it posted by the end of the day.

Check out this video as I discuss how I create my trailer!

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So far I have been transferring the story to be ready to print and began the first step in the assembly process!

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So far this week I have worked on organizing my work to be finished and have discussed with Anna on picking up more finished photos!

In this video I give a quick behind the scene of what I am doing to make sure that the communication is smooth between Anna and myself and making the transition from the draft, to book ready.

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What I have been doing with the actual assembly of a book is I have been cutting out the words of the story and getting them ready to be glued onto the page with the drawings. In about a week or so I should begin applying the words onto the pages.

For this video, I asked Anna a couple of questions regarding the work she was doing for the book. I asked her: "When I first asked you about helping me with this project did you have any ideas of how you wanted to illustrate?", "Was there anything that took you by surprise when reviewing the story and what you drew?", and "Was there any inspiration or references when drawing?". Check out this video to see her responses!

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Over the weekend I worked on the story revisions and perfected the picture descriptions for my illustrator to finish the drawings. I'm unsure of the timeline on when the drawings will be don't but they are on pace to be completed by the beginning to the middle of April.

Check out another excerpt!!!

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More revisions as I look to perfect my writing, and have begun to print out and organize some of my already completed and finished work!

This week I showed my progress to someone closer to the age group of my targeted audience. Rather than my mother, my 13 year old brother Andrew, provided me with some of his feedback!

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This week so far I've moved on from writing the actual story and have been revising and editing my work in hopes of simplifying and shortening my story.

Here's a short excerpt from my book!

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At this point, all I have left in my rough draft is to add the drawing ideas. Hopefully, at this point, I hope in my next post I will have a colored photo of the illustrations and maybe more pictures.

Today I showed my progress to my lovely mom for her feedback and thoughts on how far I've come!

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I am currently in the home stretch of my story and I am very happy with how well it has come along. I feel that I have been challenged with how to fit my passion for baseball with teaching a younger generation.

Check out the very first drawing! Color is soon to come!

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I've been doing some more work on the story along with talking with my illustrator to discuss what exactly I am looking for in the pictures. Hopefully, by my next post, I will have a picture to show you!

Big steps were taken this week as I also get past my writer's block!

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Yet again, some more writing of my first draft. Lately, I've been dealing with a bit of writer's block in trying to figure out how to keep my story simple, but include all of the necessary details. On top of trying to write more, I have kept in thought regarding who I plan to ask to help me illustrate my story, I have a couple of friends who I know draw very well and hope that they can assist. In the event they are not able to, I do have some backups in mind that I plan on reaching out to.

Here is a short excerpt from my rough draft! I give a short glimpse at what I've written so far along with what I included in the rough draft to help craft the illustrations.

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It was another writing day as I continued to develop the rough draft of my story. At this point, I have written nearly half of what I hope for my story to be and feel as if I am in the right direction of meeting my goal.

Today I began the writing process for my book! Here is a time-lapse of me beginning the process. In my rough draft, I plan to write each page in bullet points. Since it is a children's book I am looking to keep each page under 3 lines. With guides of who is saying what and short descriptions of what I intend for the illustrations to look like in the book.

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An alien invasion? Maybe so! After talking with my teacher a fantastic idea was brought up. Why not combine something that young children enjoy just as much with the story? Some different ideas were thrown out in what was believed young kids like. Such as dinosaurs, robots, superheroes, etc. After some thought and reflection of what I enjoyed, I felt that aliens would be a unique and intriguing topic. On the lined paper in the picture is the rough plan I assembled for the alien idea of my book called "Meep Plays Ball!". At the bottom, I included some key points to include in my story after also receiving the book "Too Many Socks" from my teacher to give me an idea on sentence structure and dialogue within the book. Which I found to be a great help. My next step would be to compare my different book ideas and prepare to begin the writing process of the book!

Here is what I had developed in my story. I've created a title for my book called "Scotty's Grand Game". I came up with this title by incorporating who my story is about and a little play on words in how it's his first baseball game, and he developed a bond with his grandfather through the game. On top of my title I began to plan out the plot points in my story and what would happen. This helps me create a base for my book and with this, I've created a starting point where I would need to add dialogue and transitions between each plot point when creating my story.

Rather than just showing papers of my next step I created a video that summarized my progress since my last post!

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I took a brief pause in my physical book to complete "Ready, Set Pitch!". For this section, I thought about who I would ask to view my pitch, and immediately I thought of my grandfather. While part of it was someone I had easy access to and was not so knowledgeable in my project prior, he was one of if not the supporting roles in my life that had led me to the decision in writing a book. My likes, dislikes, and how I carry myself are in response to watching him as I grew up. I also knew that he would be someone who would be straight up in whatever criticism he had for my project and help guide me in the right direction. After his initial feedback, I was also able to talk with him and voice out more in-depth my idea. I feel that this part significantly helped me because, for me to move forward to writing my story, it was important to know what others think of my plan before I make it happen.

Here I began to plan out my own story. To start I established where I believed I wanted my various locations to be in the story, along with the characters. I feel that before I plan out the story itself, it's very important to know where and who you are talking about.

During the week I looked at my calendar from project number 6 and saw that I was well ahead of schedule. Since I was not falling behind in my plans and doing everything efficiently, I opened myself up to my classmates to assist them in wherever they found problems. I helped a few of my classmates in class on how to upload their videos the way I uploaded mine in my last post. I also helped out another in finding the way to allow other people to view his videos and documents once they were uploaded to his own PIP website. I feel that this not only helps those I assisted but myself as well because it allowed me to retrace my steps and communicate in a way that was clear and simple. I found this to be very important since my own book is intended to help teach an unknown or not fully understood topic.

I felt that simply typing out would do me no justice in explaining not only to summarize what my last step was, but my thought process going into it and my previous posts. Check out my video in the attached link, explaining what I've learned on what I have learned, and how I did so!

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"The Contract" and "Hit and Miss" are the first two books that are apart of the young teen autobiography series by former shortstop of the New York Yankees Derek Jeter. These are stories led through the lenses of a young Derek as he grows up and learns not only how to play baseball but how to grow up. Personally, for my book, I am not looking to write my story the way this book was written because it is directed towards an older audience.

After some technical problems in how my original logo downloaded onto my PIP website, I attempted to recreate it in different software (Microsoft Paint 3D) rather than a free logo website that was provided. The free logo website was a good start to get a basic idea for what I wanted, but in terms of showing off a clean, neat, and proper end result, using the different site helped with the colors of the logo, and its resolution.

This is the rule book that I am going to be referencing when I write my book. I know it is a bit outdated but it was the only one I had available. But because I know the topic fairly well, I know that the key rules I am including in my story, have remained the same between 2016 and now. I will use this to help guide myself in making sure what I say is correct. While I do look to inspire an early passion for the sport of baseball, I want to do so while providing the correct and accurate information to learn and understand the game.

These are the notes that I took on the Derek Jeter books. When reading I looked for details that were included that not only sent his message, but told a story, and what would set it apart from what I look to write about and how. When reading I saw who his intended audience was and how he wrote to that audience, so by comparing the Jeter books with the first book I reviewed, I feel that I can properly construct the type of book I envision.

Here are the notes that I had taken from reading "Nick's Very First Day of Baseball". While reading I looked for various things that made the book unique, so I know what I can incorporate to make it different, and even what not to include so I can keep my story original and authentic.

Nick's Very First Day of Baseball is the first book I read as a reference to my project. I plan on my book being fairly similar in the topics that are covered. It talks about how to play baseball while taking a child on a journey of his first time playing the sport.

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