'Short' is the very devil itself. The attention span of a young child isn't very long, so for this age group a short text is always more effective than a longer one. Description has to be abandoned in favour of revealing characters and the trouble they're in, and how they overcome it. The trouble with the trouble is, however, that it can't be superficial. For a picture book story to become a classic -- that is, to last long enough for the writer's children to go on receiving royalties after the writer is dead -- the trouble must be trouble on a grand scale. It must be the kind of trouble that works its way into the depths of children's souls and makes their hearts sink into bleakness and despair. Momentary despair, of course! Which brings us back to Dreadful Draft No. 8 of The Green Sheep. The greatest requirement for those of us who write for children is to develop the highest possible level of dissatisfaction with what we have written. Many amateur writers would have had early-onset satisfaction with Draft No. 8 and may even have sent such a draft to a publisher, as the final version, as the best they could do. Self-congratulation comes too easily to the amateur writer, and also to me, I must admit. But to have been satisfied with Draft No. 8 would have been tragedy. It never would have been published, and even if it had, it wouldn't have sold, due to