Children’s book writing inspiration comes from the most unexpected places.

For Jaz Hoy, it came from a memory she had carried for over twenty years — a quiet well in a village in Lower Austria, and a wish she could no longer quite remember.

It was 2004. Jaz was travelling through Austria with Rick, her boyfriend at the time — the man who would later become her husband. They found the well in a quiet village square. It was stone, mossy, and older than anything either of them had seen up close. They stood at the edge and made wishes. Jaz cannot remember now exactly what she wished for. She suspects Rick wished for something practical. The well kept both wishes secret, as old wells do.

She never forgot it.

What Is Children’s Book Writing Inspiration, Really?

There is a version of children’s book writing inspiration that sounds tidy. A writer sees something beautiful and a story pops into their head, fully formed. But genuine children’s book writing inspiration is rarely tidy. It arrives slowly, in fragments, across years — and sometimes it arrives twenty years after the moment that sparked it, when you are sitting at a desk with a blank page and a cup of coffee and suddenly you are back at a well in Austria with the person you would one day marry.

That is what happened when Jaz began writing Book 4.

She thought about what Veronica would wish for. Then about what Otto would wish for — and whether Otto would publicly admit to wishing at all. Then about Greta, who would almost certainly have already made three wishes before anyone else had found their words. And then about Liesel — Veronica’s daughter — who would not make a wish immediately. She would ask a question first.

That is when the story began. That moment — quiet, unhurried, built on twenty years of memory — is children’s book writing inspiration at its most honest. Not a lightbulb. A slow accumulation of a life lived.

By the time Jaz had the bones of Book 4, she had eleven drafts behind her and one clear truth at the centre: the story was always about the difference between hoping something will happen and deciding to make it happen.

Why This Kind of Inspiration Matters for Children’s Books

The best picture books are deceptively simple. They look easy to write. They are not.

What makes a picture book work — really work, in the way that children ask for it again and again — is that it operates on two levels simultaneously. The surface story is for the child. The deeper story is for the adult reading it aloud. Both have to be true. Both have to resonate.

Children’s book writing inspiration that works at both levels at once is rare. The memory of that Austrian well gave Jaz exactly that. On the surface: a funny, warm story about animals making wishes and things going delightfully wrong. Underneath: a story about agency, and questions, and the quiet courage it takes to decide what you actually want.

This is what separates lasting children’s book writing inspiration from a passing idea — when a single memory carries enough emotional weight to hold both the child’s story and the grown-up’s story at exactly the same time.

Research from the National Literacy Trust shows that books which prompt children to think about characters’ motivations and feelings are among the most powerful tools for emotional development in early childhood. Veronica and the Wishing Well is built for exactly that kind of conversation — the one that happens after the last page, when a child looks up and asks: but what did she actually want?

From Austria to the Alps

The Veronica the Clever Cow series is set in the Alps of Austria — the same Alpine valleys where the real Veronica lives. For Jaz, children’s book writing inspiration and the Austrian setting have always been inseparable. The wells, the meadows, the particular quality of light in a mountain valley — all of it is woven into the fabric of these stories.

Book 4 began with a memory of a young woman standing at the edge of a well with her boyfriend, making a wish she can no longer remember. Twenty years later, that memory became a book.

Book 4 — Veronica and the Wishing Well — is available now on Amazon

New to the series? Start with Book 1 on Amazon

Free colouring pages, activity sheets and more are waiting in the free library at veronicacow.com/join — no credit card, thirty seconds to join.

Veronica would like you to know the well is still there. And it is still listening.