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so exciting
May. 2nd, 2012 01:10 amMy two new children's books went to the printer today. I'm ridiculously excited. I don't remember the last time I was this excited about anything, except when my son was born, and honestly - this feels a little like that. Not the same scale of thing, but the same quality of awe, the same overwhelmed sense of having made something amazing out of basically nothing - out of desire and hope and optimism and snackfoods.
The illustrations are extraordinary; my two illustrators made two really gorgeous, very different books. Amazing how much I learned about the characters I wrote into being and the worlds into which I set them by watching what two such talented people did with the 1500-ish bare words of each story. One created a whole planet and all its inhabitants, and one created an entire parallel world in which Wish Fairies live and work. I'm just so grateful.
In a month, they'll be books. I put as much love into them as I could; thought and care and time and secret love notes and all other manner of tendernesses. Then they go out into the hands of all kinds of people: families with a trans or gender-independent kid or parent or other family member or friend, libraries and schools and community centers, all sorts of places. I am enjoying the anticipation of who I can send copies to, and hoping to hear back from people about their experiences. I'm thinking about what this will mean to the kids who read or hear them, and their families. I am imagining what it will be like to be a little trans or gender-independent kid who has these stories at the age of five or six, and who might indeed always feel different but knows that they're not bad, or wrong, or the only one - for sure. A kid just like them is in a book.
I know it's a little much. But I feel just this minute like I did a big thing, and I am full of bright and fresh hope that in the fullness of time it will turn out to have been a big, good thing.
The illustrations are extraordinary; my two illustrators made two really gorgeous, very different books. Amazing how much I learned about the characters I wrote into being and the worlds into which I set them by watching what two such talented people did with the 1500-ish bare words of each story. One created a whole planet and all its inhabitants, and one created an entire parallel world in which Wish Fairies live and work. I'm just so grateful.
In a month, they'll be books. I put as much love into them as I could; thought and care and time and secret love notes and all other manner of tendernesses. Then they go out into the hands of all kinds of people: families with a trans or gender-independent kid or parent or other family member or friend, libraries and schools and community centers, all sorts of places. I am enjoying the anticipation of who I can send copies to, and hoping to hear back from people about their experiences. I'm thinking about what this will mean to the kids who read or hear them, and their families. I am imagining what it will be like to be a little trans or gender-independent kid who has these stories at the age of five or six, and who might indeed always feel different but knows that they're not bad, or wrong, or the only one - for sure. A kid just like them is in a book.
I know it's a little much. But I feel just this minute like I did a big thing, and I am full of bright and fresh hope that in the fullness of time it will turn out to have been a big, good thing.
