5 March
I figured out why I got the bunny!
Sunday night I was getting ready for bed, and it just popped into my head fully formed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. I'm going to use her for a book! A children's book, a picture book with photographs, "Sylvie the Bunny Goes to Coney Island"! Of course, I have to wait for Coney to open, but you know, I'll take pictures of her in various spots at Astroland and write a little story about the fun day she had, and doesn't that sound swell?
This is going to be such fun, my summer project! I know that I still have the Molly book to finish, but that's such a huge undertaking, that the idea of something that I can do quickly, go out to Coney, shoot a few rolls, go into the darkroom, blow up the shots, write the text (which I pretty much did today, leaving some parts mapped out only so that I can improvise with the pictures a bit), then it's a book!
I won't know what the hell to do with it or whom to send it to, but it'll be a book!
I wrote all of that yesterday, and then as the day wore on, I realized that I don't just have a book, what I have is a series of books.
At first I thought that I'd do the first book, and hey, I'm going to Toronto in July, I can shoot some pictures there, too and she can do the Canada thing, and Kate said that she'd have to come to Philly some time, and I can probably do all three books this year, but then I realized that Sylvie is a New York bunny and the first at least three books should be about New York.
Right now, I have the first book half written down and half mapped out in my head, the second book pretty set in my head but nothing written down, and pretty solid ideas for three more. All these adventures that Sylvie the Bunny can have! Well, tame-ish adventures, the books are for, say, the 4-6 range, there won't be any "Sylvie the Bunny Goes Wilding" or "Sylvie the Bunny Becomes a Crack Whore".
And even if it doesn't sell, even if nobody likes them, I'll have a neat little set of books that I can read to my kids. Better have some kids, quick, or I'll be reading them to the cats!
You know what? This might have been what I was anticipating...
After I thought of it, I remembered these books that I had when I was little about a doll named Ellen, and the thing that I loved about it was that is was black and white photos of a real doll, not drawings. I tried to find something about her online, but couldn't. The book covers were gingham, I remember that.
And then boom, I found her! It's not Ellen, it's Edith, The Lonely Doll!
O, those books were wonderful!
I would look at them for hours, and I didn't particularly care for picture books, I liked longer stories, but I loved photographs, and I loved dolls, so these books were a dream come true. And I liked the way Edith and Mr. Bear had their own lives, they weren't anyone's toys, and that's what I want to do with Sylvie.
The key is not that there is a child dragging the toy around, it's that the toy itself is the representation of the child, and the idea of going out by yourself and doing whatever you like is intoxicating for a child.
Coney doesn't open until Easter! I cannot wait...
Today's
horoscope:
You and the family need to balance tasks with playtime today. A little compromise can allow some of both.
One year ago today:
...and showed a reporter cringing in Times Square pointing at like the one flake coming down, shrieking about how the deluge had begun...
* Yesterday / Index / This Month / Tomorrow *
Graphics by the wildly exotic Saundra!
This page was written by hand. My hand. Only
pussies use HTML editors.
Last Updated Tues 5 March 07:51:09 2002