I wracked my brain for two weeks, more and more frantic to think of SOMETHING that hadn't been done before. And finally, with 36 hours to a deadline, I had it. The assignment fell in the springtime, with all my senses already heightened to the vivid new life around me, and I wrote that story in an hour. The pictures required most of the remaining hours; I hauled around my art supplies and materials and unpacked on the nearest available surface whenever I had twenty minutes to spare.
I was a high school junior, a Creative Writing student, with a children's book to produce.
When at last I broke through the blank wall in my brain and found that story, it took up residence in my heart and has never left. I called it simply "The Dance," and my illustration materials were equally simple: construction paper, tempera paint, oil pastels...and clear packing tape. I had to seal those pastels in somehow, and I invested what felt like a lot of my money for two or three big rolls of tape to laminate my project. I remember distinctly spending back-to-back study hall and lunch periods holed up in the back of the library, chatting with a friend while I frantically/painstakingly measured, cut, applied, and pressed out the bubbles on row after row of that tape. I finished up as the bell rang for class. I handed in that labor of love, proud and excited, knowing I had made something good.
That was just the beginning.
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