The last thing I saw before I went to bed Saturday night was the very end of Alice in Wonderland. I found it on ABC Family just as the White Queen and Hatter were standing outside the queen’s castle waiting and hoping Alice would show up to battle the Jabberwocky.
That last paragraph doesn’t really matter much except that, when Alice first gets a look at the Jabberwocky, she tells Hatter that sometimes she “believes as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” So I’m sitting here before breakfast thinking of the things that, until yesterday, I would have thought were impossible, and I’d like to share five of them (I’m lazy, it’s early, and I’m pushing it to find five).
1. I am (apparently) a writer
Growing up a reluctant reader makes this one all the more impossible. I guess now I’ve become what might be considered a “reluctant writer.”
I did write the Twisted book so I would have something to illustrate, but in the end there were words involved and I did write them. That, and they were bound in a book.
3. I would be reviewed in Publishers Weekly
I’d like to think that only happens to real writers.
4. Writers would accept me as one of their own
I spent the weekend at a writer’s retreat trying to convince everyone there that I was actually just an illustrator, not a writer, and that I didn’t really like to write. They convinced me otherwise.
5. Editors wouldn’t laugh and point when I read them my manuscript
At that writer’s retreat over the weekend? Yeah. I got to read to two different editors from Scholastic; Grace Kendall and Mallory Kass. I personally witnessed them laughing over the weekend, and they both seemed to have complete control over their index fingers, and neither of those things were directed at me as far as I could tell.
And I believed all of these impossible things before breakfast.
But you know the thing I’m thinking about as I’m writing this? Not only am I going to have to accept all of the above, but I’m also going to have to update my website.
Oh, and 6. Slay the Jabberwocky.