My therapist took a vacation last week, and on the plane she happened to sit next to a trio of transfems. Apparently, they got to talking, and she offhandedly mentioned SGW.
And apparently all three of the transfems read it regularly.
When she told me, it just left me flabbergasted. It just seems so surreal for that sorts thing to happen, for people to be talking about my writing like that.
@Impossible_PhD this is my shocked face 😉
It is so good, not just for us in the community, but to those outside (or hatching).
I mean, I name dropped “Stained Glass Woman” during corporate transgender 101 training.
It is that good.
I mean, on some level it makes some sense... but also several trans folks at my conference this year knew about SGW, and thought highly of it. Important people. People I really respect.
It's just... I don't think of myself or the things I make like that. I'm just following the instructions for writing effective technical documents and fusing it with bog-standard autoethnography.
I guess I just don't understand why people on an airplane or my scholarly peers would care much. 🤷♀️
@Impossible_PhD OK but first off, most people who write are bad at the technical writing parts of things. They do not clearly communicate their point.
Second, you analyze stuff from you own past clearly to find topics, setting aside a lot of biases and doing an incredibly good job at providing relevant support.
Thirdly, this all matters to you. You care, you're one of us, and it bleeds through in all of this. You're not trying to write a manual for an outsider to use, you're one of us. 💜
@Impossible_PhD I'm sure you can and do critique your work, but from where I'm sitting you're doing something so few are trying to do at all in the way you're doing.
@Dani I mean... This is stuff any good technical writer should do. Watch your users, see their needs, respond in a way that meets them where they are and uses the language they'd use.
@Impossible_PhD I got my mechanical engineering bachelor's without technical writing (to my detriment); if I write in similar patterns it's because of trial and error.
I sincerely doubt many in our community even think in terms of clearly communicating well researched ideas with the goal of uplifting the community as a whole. Of those, having even the rudiments of the skill set?
@Impossible_PhD Because it's vanishingly rare that people like us find clear, coherent, and cogent writing about our lives that we can identify with AND share with others in our lives as a way of building a bridge between us.
Your work does that, Zoe.
Recently I had someone thank me profusely for my book, and tell me about the impact it had on their life. I tried to be gracious, but the whole time I was thinking, "What? My book? That wasn't anything special, just me geeking about gender and sexuality and spiritual practice..."
My wife had to point out to me that what I think about what I wrote ultimately doesn't matter. My words touched someone else's life in a way they desperately needed.
@Impossible_PhD Oh! Yeah, I wrote a book about gender, sexuality, embodiment, and modern polytheist/pagan spiritual practice. It came out about six weeks before the pandemic shut down the world. 😅
@Impossible_PhD Saleswise? It did... okay. Further affiant sayeth naught.
However, I've had multiple people tell me it helped them come out to themselves as queer and/or trans, or to embrace some other part of their identities they'd been unable to accept. I've had multiple parents tell me they bought copies for their queer and trans kids (of appropriate ages). I've been told that a few different teachers have added it to their "required reading" lists.
In that sense, it has exceeded my wildest dreams and hopes.
Our work touches people's lives in ways we can't imagine, and has a far greater reach than we can ever know.
And I am most emphatically referring to your work with SGW here. 💕
> However, I've had multiple people tell me it helped them come out to themselves as queer and/or trans, or to embrace some other part of their identities they'd been unable to accept. I've had multiple parents tell me they bought copies for their queer and trans kids (of appropriate ages). I've been told that a few different teachers have added it to their "required reading" lists.
This is the part I was wondering about. Sales are nice, but honestly who cares about that.
Sales are nice, but honestly who cares about that.
My publisher probably has feelings about it. 😉 But I also know that my book helped to wedge open the door for other books that I'm pretty sure are doing quite nicely, so that's alright.
When I was writing the book, I said that if it helped even one person accept themselves, the whole thing would be worth it. Available evidence suggests that it's helped far more than one person. With that, I am content. 🥰
And the best part, from my admittedly selfish perspective, is that the first person it helped was me. My eggshell, already more cracks than shell by that point, shattered about ten days after the book was released.
@Impossible_PhD Yeah, my "holy shit I'm a girl" moment happened a bit later than was convenient, so my book is saddled with a pre-transition author photo and the wrong pronouns. C'est la vie. :nkoShrug:
It DOES give me a pretty hilarious transition timeline, though. The "moody-spooky-queer-boi-author to cheerful-middle-aged-witchy-trans-girl" pipeline is real, y'all.
@Impossible_PhD because you are doing something that needs to be done.
And, be true to the work you have done to get here, you are good at this. Written communication is a serious skill.
I don't know how many trans people there are in the world. You probably do. We are going to find ourselves online. We are going to find your work. When we talk to each other, we are going to talk about your work.
You're a skilled writer, creating content that this community needs out there.
@Impossible_PhD Sometimes our writings take on a form that we don’t fully appreciate. Happens to all good writers. That there aren’t too many other good writers in this space only adds to the effect.
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