Simply 7 with Anne Appert: WHAT IF YOU WISH?

I spent my entire childhood wishing and dreaming.  Today’s picture book is the perfect book for all the other dreamers out there.

Anne Appert has visited my blog before for their debut picture book.  They are a storyteller who uses whimsy and humor to inspire and connect with readers on their own journeys toward becoming their most authentic selves. Anne went to the Fashion Institute of Technology for a BFA in illustration with a minor in English so they could bring their stories to life. Their first book was BLOB, a picture book about being yourself. Anne hopes to inspire all kids through fun and imaginative storytelling to dream big and love themselves. Anne is represented by Charlotte Wenger at Prospect Agency. You can learn more about Anne at their website and follow them on Twitter or Instagram.

WHAT IF YOU WISH? is a picture book that soars with imagination.  It follows the whispers of the mind into flight, doubt, and hope.  It follows the thoughts many of us experience and helps young dreamers to know it’s okay to wander into the dark as there is a way out.  This book shines with optimism, perseverance, and wonder.  It’s a poem full of possibilities.

Welcome back Anne!

Me: Wishing, doubt, and wonder can all be such abstract concepts.  Yet you manage to turn them into a colorful and almost concrete vision of what a wish could be.  What gave you the idea for this book?

Anne: This idea spent a long time percolating. As a child, I loved collecting all the dandelions in my yard and making wishes. In 2018, I finally tried to use this in a story, drafting a manuscript about a child making a wish, though that one was very narrative. In 2019, a phrase would not leave my brain alone: “I wish, I wonder…what if?” I wrote a draft of a very different story. Still, something wasn’t clicking.

In October 2019, I participated in an ink drawing challenge where I created 31 ink drawings that all connected. They told the story of a child who makes a wish on a dandelion, grows wings, and goes on an adventure with a new bird friend. This was a wordless story in a limited palette that also dealt with environmental themes.

When I sold Blob, my editor mentioned these drawings as a starting point for our second book together. Fast forward to 2021 when we started working on What If You Wish?.  I hoped that she would have forgotten those drawings because they were done traditionally and I work almost exclusively digitally now. She did not! Thankfully, I followed her encouragement.

Based on those drawings, I created 3 outlines of possible directions for the story. With feedback from my critique group and then my agent, I picked the two strongest and sent them to my editor. She picked the one I also felt most drawn to: the one that was the basis for the book as it is now!

Me: Your text is deceptively simple.  It feels both short and succinct, yet at the same time it takes the reader on a huge journey.  How did you do that?  Was it always this tight?  Or did it go through many revisions?

Anne: I’m so glad you asked this question, because I’ve never looked closely at my writing process this way! Short answer: It was always concise because this story started visually, based on a wordless project. Additionally, I’ve always really loved poetry.

My first draft was a brain dump of different stanzas, words that I could use based on the visuals in my head, and random thoughts trying to figure out if I would go with a poem, a narrative, or something in between.

Because of the style of the art, I decided pretty quickly to write this as a poem. My first official draft was 137 words. I then edited several times (I have 5 “drafts” though none are drastically different from one another.) The opening phrase in the book is from the first draft and the final phrase came in the 5th draft. The manuscript I sent to my editor was 97 words. From there, we did one or two revisions together to add a couple beats and clarify some of the wording.

As I worked on the art, we continued to revise, in particular really honing in on word choice and phrasing, making sure everything represented the message I was trying to convey. You’ll see some of the changes we made in the text between the sketches and the final art! One particular change you may notice is that we took out the sentence “What if I am enough?” instead using only one “you” at the end, addressing the reader. Additionally, we moved text to several spreads I had planned as wordless to create stronger pacing. The title changed several times too! I believe the final version is 110 words.

Me: The illustrations are simply stunning.  I loved the textures and all the beautiful colors. Yet it feels like a different approach than what you did for your first book.  Can you talk a bit about your illustration process?  Is this traditional watercolor or is it all digital?

Anne: Thank you so much! It was a very different approach than Blob, and it caused me a lot of anxiety before I got started. I planned on doing this traditionally like the original drawings this project was inspired by. I even bought all the watercolors and supplies I needed. Years ago, watercolor was my go to medium, and I hoped it would come back to me like riding a bicycle.

Like with Blob, I drew my sketches for this digitally. I included color because I knew the palette in this book would act as a storytelling device. Meanwhile, how I would approach the final art loomed in the back of my mind. While the inspiration images were done traditionally, they were just sketches to me, and they did not come close to my vision for what this book could be.

I finally realized that creating this book traditionally was a mental block I could not get past. It felt too big and scary for me to even attempt. What if painting with watercolor didn’t come back easily? I decided to see if I could create the watercolor style I wanted digitally. Thanks to some great brush sets and tutorials for creating watercolor paintings in Procreate, I was able to get over my mental block, have fun, and achieve the look I envisioned for the book.

Me: I love that.  So this may be an obvious answer then, but which was harder: writing or illustrating this book?

Anne: Illustrating! Because I was teaching myself a new way of making art while making my final art, there was a lot of stress and anxiety involved. I also had a lot of imposter syndrome about my ability to create something that isn’t humorous, both with the words and the text. I still worry about this book’s reception, but I’m very proud of the work I did.

Me: What is one thing that surprised you in creating this book?

Anne: While it doesn’t surprise me anymore that I learn something about myself each time I create a project, I’m often surprised by how much of myself ends up in a project unintentionally.

What If You Wish? is my second pandemic book. In fact, my entire publishing journey so far has been shaped by the pandemic. When the world shut down, I was lucky to be able to focus on creating Blob. I thought I was writing a book about the frustration of people not recognizing me as an individual as a child and the fear of deciding what to be when I grew up. While it is all that, I spent a lot of time in self reflection while working on that book. (I mean, we were stuck at home, what else was I going to do?) When I was done, I discovered that, for me, Blob was also a humorous look at my own gender journey. Through writing Blob, I realized I was nonbinary. I hadn’t told my family when Blob published so it was something I wasn’t able to share the last time you had me on your blog. And yet, Blob still connected with nonbinary readers, and I will always be incredibly grateful for that.

In What If You Wish?,  I was once again trying to capture personal childhood emotions as I discuss in my next answer. Also, I was working on the final art as vaccines were finally become widely accessible. Thus, in some ways, this book could be a parallel of the emotional journey between selling my first book in 2019 and working on final art for this book in 2022 and how the pandemic was shaping our world.

However, to finally answer your question, I share my personal journey with Blob because in looking back at the process of creating What If You Wish?,  I am surprised that once again my personal connection to this book is tied to my queer journey. Discovering I am nonbinary was exciting. For the first time in my life, I finally began to understand myself, and the possibilities of this self knowledge felt freeing. However, I grew up in a religious, conservative family, and the reality of coming out to them so that I could pursue an authentic life felt impossible. While I worked on the final art for What If You Wish?  I was grappling with the what-if’s of telling my family I am queer. In a way, the hopeful ending was my own attempt at manifesting a happy next step for me. Thankfully, just like the book, this part of my journey did have a hopeful ending, and my family continues to be a part of it.

Me: What made you want to share about wishing and doubt with young readers?  Why was that important to you?

Anne: Ok, I have to be 100% honest. I didn’t think about the readers while creating this book. Generally, I don’t when I’m creating books. Is that wrong to admit as a picture book creator? Ha! For me, I constantly want to push myself as a storyteller: moving outside my comfort zone and pursuing ideas that excite me.

In this particular book, not only did I want to nail down the story about wishing that had been haunting my brain, I wanted to capture a feeling I often had as a child. It’s still a hard feeling for me to describe: an overwhelming sense of being pulled towards something more. This feeling could be all-consuming and undefinable. It was both impossibly exciting and impossibly scary. Perhaps this book is my attempt to illustrate this feeling instead of defining it.

While I may not have thought about the readers while creating this story, I’ve thought about them often since. One of my favorite things about picture books is that, once they are out in the world, readers can connect to them in the way they need to, regardless of my why for creating the book. I love hearing about what readers, young and not so young, take away from the stories I create. I only hope that in trying to connect with the strong emotions I felt as a child, I can make at least one child feel seen. I state on my website that I hope to connect with readers on their own journeys towards becoming their authentic selves. I hope that by letting my authentic self spill onto the page, my books become spaces for children to feel the hope and possibility of discovering themselves.

It will always be important to me that this book and its message about wishing and doubt connects with any readers who need it. Currently, it is increasingly important to me to share my own connection to this story. Violence against those who identify as LGBTQIA2S+ continues to increase. I am horrified and devastated in particular about the rapid increase of laws, hate speech, and violence against LGBTQIA2S+ youth. In some ways, it feels disingenuous to promise hope, to promise light after darkness to queer youth. At the same time, I am encouraged and emboldened by the increase in queer people of all ages living their truths loudly and proudly and finding happiness. By sharing my own queer journey, especially in how it relates to my books, I hope to add my small light to this beacon: you CAN wish, and you CAN hope, because an authentic future IS possible.

So to my LGBTQIA2S+ readers, those who know and those who are yet to discover themselves: I hope this book finds you, I hope it connects with you, I hope it helps you hold on to the possibility of a better, bright future. Your dream what-if IS attainable. 

Me: I loved your dedication to Elizabeth: “for the all hours we wondered the what ifs together.”  What is one thing you wondered about and/or wished for as a young child?

Anne: Thank you! Elizabeth is my twin and my long-time partner in crime. Because I was trying to capture the feeling described above from my childhood, this book snared a nostalgic vibe, and thus there was no one else I could dedicate it to. Together with our best friend and neighbor Mary, we spent HOURS playing pretend, making up wild worlds where anything could happen. I believe these hours are where my passion as a storyteller took root.

Anyway, picking one thing? That’s so hard, especially because I was an anxious child with a wonderful imagination. Anyone who knows me will tell you I can never just pick one thing. So how about this?

1. I wished that I would discover that something more and what it meant
2. I wondered what I would be when I grew up and if I would like it
3. I thought…what if I could be a storyteller?

Thank you so much for having me, Jena!

Oh my gosh.  Those are so wonderful; I’m glad you shared them all.  And thank you for stopping by my blog again Anne and letting your authentic self spill over into this interview.

Dear readers, if you are a dreamer too, then this book is for you.  What do you wish?  What do you wonder?  Where will those dreams take you one day?  These are all questions many of us ask from time to time.  If you’ve ever asked them, you won’t want to miss this book.