In response to Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich.
🥰🥰🥰 I have ideas for a monster costume to wear! I've already written half of a keynote speech in my head! I've planned lunches with multiple editors! My 3-5 year old behavior management strategy is taking shape! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH
10:58 AM - Apr 25, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
I have a new batch of armature parts arriving this weekend, maybe as soon as tomorrow, so, you know, onward and upward. I've taught myself a lot about how I want the armature structure to look and function. It's a process
#MonsterPictureBook #kidlit #kidlitart #WritingCommunity
#MonsterPictureBook #kidlit #kidlitart #WritingCommunity
12:53 PM - Apr 21, 2023
In response to Anne Marie Pace.
I wouldn't have either. But it might have stuck deep inside somewhere and become part of a bigger whole; that did happen, sometimes.
02:19 AM - Apr 15, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
It's a lot, but it's ok, because the old sadness is blended with intense joy in the present, and new hope for the future. I'm letting myself feel the sadness unreservedly, and it's...healing? Because it's inseparable from the new joy and hope? I think so. I'm healing. I'm still capable of that.
01:53 PM - Apr 14, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
Last Friday I had lunch with 2 of those friends, and they helped me realize that STEVEN (working title for my #MonsterPictureBook ) is, at its heart, a story about sadness. The process of creating this book is, appropriately enough, provoking tidal waves of a very old and familiar sadness inside me.
01:51 PM - Apr 14, 2023
In response to Tracey Baptiste.
ALL OF THE BIG STUFF! ESPECIALLY MICHELLE YEOH, THE QUEEEEEEN
01:47 AM - Mar 13, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
I don't know if I can do it. There are moments when I genuinely feel confident and energized by new creative and professional challenges, but this one? I don't know. Gonna try anyway. Gonna try to become, at long last, a professional artist. #kidlit #kidlitart #picturebooks #WritingCommunity
10:54 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
But it also feels...I'm not sure how to say it. Meaningful. Fraught. Destabilizing. Reawakening. It feels like unearthing a dream I considered dead and gone, and trying to infuse it with new life, despite knowing nothing is promised or guaranteed.
10:53 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
So I'm diving into the new and thoroughly daunting process of figuring out how to illustrate my own picture book. It feels like a far bigger challenge than figuring out how to write a novel, to be frank; there are worlds within worlds of technique to navigate.
10:53 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
Another friend said something in an email about the happiness she feels when chewing on problems with no solutions because who knows what that process may lead to? She has no idea how exquisitely that comment is reshaping my perspective; I'll have to tell her.
10:53 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
Friends and colleagues have been making a difference. For example, one of my oldest friends told me I was always a better artist than him, even though he's the one who built a wildly successful career for himself in comics and kidlit.
10:53 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
And even after that miraculous sequence of events, it's taken me 15 more years to even approach the idea of creating books on more than a textual level, because the old feelings of shame, guilt, and regret still hold some sway over me.
10:53 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
I did eventually find a way to move on to happier and healthier times, however. I still carry those old traumas in my body and mind, but I've been able to find healing and joy again, not in the least because I found my way into the kidlit world.
10:52 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
So I took my childhood dreams of being an artist, a *real* artist, wrapped them in grief and self-loathing and denial, and buried them in the deepest hole I could dig in the lowlands of my psyche, thinking they'd stay there until I die. I gave up.
10:52 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
I hated myself too much, you see. And I became convinced that I'd squandered any chances of pursuing art professionally before even finishing college, because how can an entirely worthless and despicable human being accomplish something so lofty?
10:52 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
High school and college were catastrophically bad years for me, though, and I didn't do well with my artistic studies. And during that years-long haze of depression and suicidal ideation, I gave up on the idea of ever being a professional artist.
10:51 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
Art didn't save me the way books did, though. It didn't give me the ability to lose myself and escape into a narrative for hours or days at a time; my relationship to art grew much more complicated over time. Still, I kept it up. I even studied art in college.
10:51 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
I loved visual art first. I started drawing and painting and making art as soon as I could hold the materials in my hands. In the assorted schools I attended what people saw wasn't my abilities as a writer; it was my abilities as a visual artist.
10:51 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
Writing children's literature is a dream come true, one I didn't realize I even had until later in life. It's brought me so much that I want, and the potential for so much more. I love writing and I love being a writer. But it's not what I loved first.
10:50 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
The terror just arrived today, and I think it's because there's a whole series of psychological floodgates that are opening inside of me. Thinking about my dad. Thinking about making visual art, being or becoming a visual artist, and about old dreams.
10:50 AM - Feb 28, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
Started building a new monster prototype. Pipe cleaners, sake can, egg carton, duct tape, and Gorilla tape
01:15 AM - Feb 25, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
Lil' monster, now with...whatever those things on its back are called. An osteoderm, I believe #kidlit #kidlitart #picturebooks #WritingCommunity
03:44 PM - Feb 23, 2023
In response to Jim Calkins.
While the entertainment value of doing that is limitless, I think they already have enough reasons to want to fire me 😜
02:01 PM - Feb 22, 2023
In response to ميجان the Librarian.
I don't want that either, but it's not what Courtney Milan was talking about. And I'm struck by how those who come at me to mock Courtney and defend the TOS simply refuse to say if they think books with characters who are sexually active or LGBTQIA+ are porn. They WILL NOT ANSWER. How about you?
02:05 AM - Feb 22, 2023
In response to Mike Jung.
I've written other songs since 2012, but this is clearly still my best song about writing (ok ok, it's my only song about writing) #music #kidlit #WritingCommunity #MiddleGrade #mglit
I Wrote This Book and Now I'd Like You to Buy It, a song by me, Mike Jung - YouTube
This isn't a desperate plea. It's not at all desperate. OK MAYBE A LITTLE
02:39 PM - Feb 21, 2023
(Edited)
