When I was in the throws of my transition, my emotional state ran the gamut from elation to despair. Most of my anguish came from the reactions of my family towards me as I transitioned. It was not pretty. Many times, I could not stand the pain that I had to endure somehow. I turned to writing my feelings down. I was not much into writing in those days and actually hated writing my entire life. But when I found how much better I felt to see the words on the computer monitor, I wrote more and more. As my therapy progressed, I was increasingly driven to examine my life from a transgender perspective. I began to write down stories of events in my childhood and adult life that lingered in my memory. Suddenly, many of the confusing episodes of my life made sense. I was writing about 3000 to 5000 words a day for quite a while during the most difficult periods.
One day, it occurred to me that I had enough material that could be rewritten in a fictionalized format and put together in a book. At first, I thought it might be a simple transgender autobiography but there are many of these already. I decided on a fictional story arc that would incorporate some of the events of my life but with many changes to make it more satisfying for me personally. I also wanted to change some of the events to protect innocents and also to not make direct accusations of real people.
I soon found myself in the process of writing a novel. It had many twists and turns including friends who read part or all of it. My family won't read any of it nor give me more than the bare minimum of help with it. They are not happy that I have written a novel.
The result of all this machinaction is my book, Dorothy's Boy
It is now available on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Dorothys-Boy-M-K-Bengtson/dp/1441409289/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236975523&sr=1-3I can't imagine I will sell more than ten copies but it was so nice to be able to publish my book. For that, I am very happy. Now, I am working on two more books and have written a dozen short stories. I probably will publish them too. The reason is that I still desperately need to escape into the words on the screen.
Maggie
