I’m deep in the editing stage on a PB manuscript that I started writing in 2021.
This particular manuscript has been tricky for quite a few reasons. First and foremost, it’s about a character who cannot use their voice to communicate. This person is, for an unspecified reason, non-verbal. Communicating this character’s need to express themselves has been especially difficult for me to capture in just the right way.
Second, this story hits way too close to home. I started writing it less as a manuscript that I thought had any promise, and more as a therapeutic reckoning with the universe.
For months, we had been trying to coax my youngest to speak. We had been trying to stimulate noises. We had been singing and playing word games. We were tying ourselves up in knots trying to avoid a “non-verbal” diagnosis.
He’s just a late bloomer, he’s still young, he understands tons… we made every excuse in the book.
And then we got, not one, but two diagnoses that were contributing to his non-verbal-ness. And I couldn’t make any more excuses. I had to come to grips with the fact that the universe gave me — a hyper-lexic singer — a child who might not ever speak.
And I lost my s***.
I desperately needed to figure out what a non-verbal future might look like for my kiddo. Luckily, I have some amazing folks in my life who have a good decade headstart on living with a non-verbal kid. I already knew their NV kid was amazing. I figured mine had an equal shot of being pretty cool. I just had to figure out for myself what that looked like.
I sat down, and I put myself in this character who had things to say and no voice to use to say them. How would I communicate if I couldn’t speak. Sign language? Sure, we use rudimentary signs with our kids when they’re tiny. More milk — anyone can figure that one out. But I also knew from my work transcribing for the deaf community a decade before that often sign language is met by hearing people with a shrug or a shake of the head.
That wasn’t going to cut it for me.
What else could I use if I had to? Writing? Not until they’re older.
As a young kid, what would I use?! And then it hit me… my little was already using it.
Art! He loved everything to do with paint and color. His world was full of bright shapes, and he happily represented them in every medium from applesauce and pureed carrots to fingerpaint and watercolors to colored clay.
The manuscript was officially out of my hands as my muse took over writing the plot.
With the plot written I had a new problem. The Voice.
This time it wasn’t the main character’s expression that was the problem, it was mine. At well over 2,000 words the voice was all wrong for picture books today. It wasn’t snappy, it was sappy. It was, dare I say, maudlin in places. It ended with hope, which was good — all picture books should end in hope — but that was about all it had going for it.
It wasn’t active.
It wasn’t flowing.
In short, it wasn’t working.
The edits passed as quickly as the months. After a year and a half, tons of cuts, and lots of reworking, I think I FINALLY have found the right way to express what I want to say.
Now, I have to see if I can make some art happen.
Decisions. Decisions.
