One day in 2018, I stumbled upon the idea that gender isn’t binary, and suddenly it made perfect sense that for over 40 years I’d felt intense discomfort and confusion about my inability to act properly as a “girl.”
I knew that if I’d been a teenager, or even in my twenties, I’d come out as nonbinary in a heartbeat, but as an older adult, it seemed weird. Years of trying and failing to date were over, and I was happily settled into a life that I actually enjoyed for the first time: My job was going well, I loved my home filled with custom bookshelves I’d built, and I was finding my footing as a novelist.
It just didn’t seem worth the trouble. I didn’t want to create a fuss and bring unnecessary attention to it.
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Still, the thought piqued my superficially content brain: What if I were a teenager now, rather than in the ’80s or ’90s? I didn’t know the answer, but I grew increasingly convinced that this was a story worth telling.
In November, I started writing a book I had already called “Ugly.” In it, I imagined myself growing up in a small town in Oklahoma, dealing with the same criticism, bullying, and resulting emotions I’d experienced as a child. The difference was, Google existed. After a few days, it was clear the dam had broken.
By the end of the month, I had written over 80,000 words, roughly 350 pages, and a completed draft that told a story I knew was important.
The first draft of my brain dump needed significant revisions, but I worked on it and realized that I could have come out as non-binary if I had been a teenager. I still thought that ship had just sailed for me, that I was too old, that my family wouldn’t be happy about it, and I couldn’t imagine how I would fit into the LGBTQ+ community.
But I knew there was value in putting the story out there, to help kids understand what they go through when they feel like they don’t belong. I went through the revisions with constant regret for not being true to myself.
When I tried to sell my book at the height of the early #ownvoices movement, I felt a strong sense of not being queer enough to count. I was told the book wasn’t authentic because I hadn’t come out as non-binary (even though my characters identify as gender non-conforming at the end and still use she/her pronouns). My agent even told me it was wrong for Nick to still use those pronouns. Agents seemed unaware that Oklahoma is a completely different world than New York City.
I had the book ready and self-published it in June 2022 and even submitted it to some contests, after which I retreated into my shell and started writing the sequel.
A few months later, I got an email that changed everything: Ugly had won second place in a competition run by the International Association for Books for Young People. Other people had read the book and recognized it as real and important. Suddenly, I felt valued.
Not to waste any more time, I came out as agender the following week to my family, friends, work, and TikTok.
Things weren’t suddenly rosy. There were visible failures: my family, most of my coworkers, and many of my friends didn’t want to use the correct pronouns, and I still didn’t feel like I should be a part of the LGBTQ+ community.
But one day, as I was walking with a gallon of paint from Home Depot, I noticed a confidence in my step.
I felt good for no reason at all, and this was literally something I had never experienced before. I felt good in my body, and I felt like it was my own and I could do with it however I wanted.
I got the tattoos I’d always wanted, I started dressing comfortably, I started striking up conversations with strangers every once in a while, and no longer felt like they would think I was a loser and be annoying if they talked to me.
The constant shame of “failing” to be a woman disappeared. What saved my mental state wasn’t the rare moments when people got my pronouns right, but finally understanding that there was nothing wrong with me, my body just didn’t match who I really was. That realization punctured a hole in the self-loathing that had been nestling in my head for over 40 years.
If I hadn’t decided to undertake the thought experiment that led to Ugly and the The Art of Being Ugly series, I would never have had the courage to go down this path.
KELLY VINCENT (they/them) spend their weekdays crunching data and the rest of the day playing with words. They grew up in Oklahoma but have moved around quite a bit, with Glasgow, Scotland being their favorite place. They now live near Seattle with a couple of cats, who strategically wander across their keyboards to help them write stories. Their first novel, “Finding Frances,” is a great example of this technique.
Her next four books, “Ugly,” “Always the New Girl,” “Binding Off” and “Uglier,” were published in 2022 and 2023. “Finding Frances” and “Always the New Girl” have won several indie awards, and “Ugly” was named a 2022 SCBWI Spark Award winner in the Outstanding Book for Older Adults category.
Kelly holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Oklahoma City University’s Red Earth program. For more information about Kelly, please visit the university’s website.
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