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Dear Supporters

As I write this thank you letter I am painfully aware that it is rather tardy. I should have written much sooner. My best excuse is that it's been rather busy. But I needed to write, because I certainly owe you all a proper thank you -- and I owe some of you an apology too.

FIRST THE THANKS... YOUR support made this unique book possible. For those of you who put in pledges during those heady six weeks at the start of 2017 what more can I say but THANK YOU SO MUCH. I believe Britain needed this book. Trans people certainly deserved to hear some of their own community's history. They needed to hear from the people who were involved in getting to where we are today. But what we didn't know last year was the extent to which non-trans people were also going to need this book. The trans backlash was a remote-seeming thing twelve months ago. It was mainly something going on in Trump-land. I intended from the start that this should be an  accessible book for non-trans people -- everything they needed to know but were unsure of how to ask. The feedback from non-trans readers shows that the contributors fulfilled that brief very well.

SOME GOOD NEWS... Last week, when the book had been on sale for just six weeks, Unbound ordered a reprint. That's because the reorders were coming in from retailers thick and fast and the original print run was running out at the warehouse. Again, that's a sign that the book is meeting a need and has been selling well. That's also the impression I've had as I toured the country during LGBT History Month, addressing various events. People were lining up to get their hands on copies.

BUT I ALSO OWE SOME PEOPLE AN APOLOGY. It is no secret that the distribution to supporters got off to a very bad start. The reason behind that was a monumental foul up by the printers. The print run to produce the trade edition, before Christmas, had gone seemingly without a glitch. That's the version destined for the shops. However, the separate process of producing the deluxe first editions for supporters went disastrously wrong. These are supposed to be high quality collector’s pieces and the flaw was so bad that the entire print run had to be binned. That coincided with the Christmas and New Year holidays and a bottleneck in production and — well, to cut a long story short — the books weren’t ready. Then I also went down with Flu. It was my hope that you’d all receive YOUR copies in advance of publication, as you fully deserved, but it didn’t happen — in spite of chasing every day for progress reports.

I'm assured that the backlog was mostly cleared very quickly. However, if you pledged and you haven't received the book(s) or higher level incentives that you were expecting then please get in touch with Unbound's customer services. They use tracked mail services to ensure they know where every book despatch has gone and they can sort things out for you.

Once again, thank you so much for your support. We REALLY couldn't have done it without you.

Best wishes

Christine Burns

Six Weeks On - Thank You So Much

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 GOOD NEWS! GOOD NEWS! GOOD NEWS! GOOD NEWS! GOOD NEWS!


Dear Supporters

I know it's been a long time since I last wrote. My last update to you was at the start of October, so it's been about ten weeks. At that time (3rd October) we were busy checking the book before printing proofs to send out to reviewers. After that -- when we'd received back some truly lovely comments (some of which will be going on the back cover) -- there was still work outstanding to make sure the text was as good as it could be. There was the index and some back matter to add. And then the whole thing had to go off to both the printers and the people who make the digital copies.

All that time I kept thinking that I really ought to write to you all again -- I know from social media how eager people are to receive their copies of the book. And believe me, with some of the stuff going on in the media recently, we were really aware of how much the world NEEDS this book. Still, there wasn't any point in sending an update just for the sake of it. Instead, I thought it better to wait until I had some specific dates for when you would be receiving your special edition copies of Trans Britain.

I had been hoping to be able to announce that you would be getting your special edition copies in time for Christmas. That's been the aim all along. I promised I wouldn't set that expectation, however, until we were certain Unbound could meet it. I really didn't want to raise people's hopes and then disappoint them.

Well... there's bad news... BUT there's GOOD NEWS too...

The bad news is that I learned today that, despite everyone's best endeavours, the special edition isn't going to be available in the warehouse until January. At that time I then have to hot foot to Unbound's offices and sign copies for those who pledged for collectible copies, before everything can then be despatched. It's sad, I know. There were people I wanted to send books to for Christmas as well, so I'm just as gutted.

However, I've agreed this afternoon with Unbound that they CAN despatch the eBook edition of the book to everyone before the end of next week. That means that, although you'll still have to wait till after the holidays to hold the book in your hands, you CAN spend the Christmas period reading it with a Kindle, iPad, Kobo, Nook, PC or Mac. What better way to spend the holidays?

So, keep an eye out for emails in the next ten days or so. The way Unbound distributes eBooks is that the email contains links to download your choice of a Kindle (mobi) file, an ePub (suitable for iBooks, Kobo, Nook, Adobe Digital Editions, etc..) or a PDF. You press the appropriate button and you get that file. You can then manually load the file into your reader.

I can't wait for you to be able to read the book that you all made possible. Here is what some reviewers said:

<blockquote>
"A vital record of how we got to where we are. Inspirational!" 
(Paris Lees)

 

"Profound, quiet, agitated and deeply moving ... a powerful reminder that when we enjoy rights and equalities we do so because of the sacrifices of the generation before us" 
(Lord Michael Cashman, co-founder of Stonewall)

 

"Warm, compassionate, inspiring. A much-needed antidote to media scaremongering, and a vital lesson in how to effect change 
(CN Lester)

 

"Bloody good. Meticulously researched history of the collective transgender “journey” in the UK over the last century. Read it" 
(Juno Dawson)
</blockquote>

 

But it's YOUR opinion that counts even more. I can't wait to hear what you think. And you won't have to wait long now to decide.

Best wishes to everyone, thank you for your patience

Christine Burns

 

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7920041.Christine_Burns">Follow me on Goodreads</a> and feel free to ask questions there. Also look out for my 'Trans Books of 2017' reading list:

A Christmas Present to You All

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Dear Supporters

Once again I feel as though I ought to begin with an apology for not updating you sooner. However, the last few weeks have been very hectic, getting the book ready for print. The good news is that it's getting a lot closer to publication now.

Most of the last week or two has been spent with a xeroxed copy of the book, as typeset, going through every page with the proverbial fine tooth comb, proof reading every dot and comma.

Unbound don't leave us entirely to our own devices in this pursuit, I'm pleased to say. Whilst I was spending four or five hours a day working through the pages (and seeing the book as you'll see it for the first time) they also had a professional proof reader doing the same thing. This is on top of the professional editing it had already gone through before being typeset. But that's how thorough publishers are. The photo above shows tabs on all the pages where I found little glitches -- which goes to show that no matter how much you think you've checked something previously, there are always more things to find. This is all so that, when you receive your beautifully bound subscriber edition, with your name in the back, you'll enjoy our best work.

Parcelforce confirm that this huge bundle of paper arrived back safely with Unbound yesterday. They are now merging all our markups into one master set of instructions to the typesetters, to produce the final file from which actual books can be printed. But there is one final step before you get your copy: we give samples first to people to review. We hope that some of them will have great things to say, which we can include on the jacket.

Once the reviewers have had their turn Unbound will then start the print run to bring you your copy. All being well, that should happen sometime in November. My hope from the start was that supporters would receive their books before Christmas, even though the retail edition won't go on sale in the shops until 25th January. The only thing between the freshly printed books and your letterbox will be a marathon session where I sit down and sign the collectible copies!

All this means that you shouldn't have long to wait now. But it also means that if you think you might want to upgrade your order then you'll need to do this before the print run is decided. There are a few reasons you might want to upgrade:

1. Perhaps you could only afford to pledge for an eBook back at the start of the year and now your finances are a bit healthier. You could upgrade to ensure you get the very special First Edition. Much as I love eBooks, I've got to admit that there is no comparison with a top quality hardback that you can dip into and lend to friends.

2. Maybe you pledged for the hardback but now fancy the collectible, signed by me.

3. Perhaps you'd like to get a second copy for a friend? A first edition is the ideal gift.

If you want to do any of those things then you'll need to act within the next three weeks or so. Upgrading is easy: Just go to Unbound.co.uk and click on 'Account' in the top right hand corner. Once you put in your user ID and password, you'll then see a list of all the books you're supporting. Next to each one is an UPGRADE button. Simple, eh?

There's no obligation to upgrade, of course. I'm amazed by your generosity already and I don't want to imply that I'm not. However, I would be failing you all if I didn't explain the option in case it was in your mind. The print run for the exclusive subscriber edition will be determined largely by the list of what people have pledged for. You can of course buy the ordinary retail edition in the shops come January, but I don't want people to feel they missed out by not being aware of the different deadlines.

And finally... The proof reading marathon was the first time I got to see the book as you will see it. It's a long time now since I last saw it as a marked up Word document and it's difficult to judge a book when you've been immersed in it that much. Coming back now, however, I'm delighted by the way the writing of all the contributors works to make a unique book telling an immense story spanning over half a century (and more). These are all people talking from personal experience of events that marked very different periods in British Trans People's history. I think you're going to enjoy what they have to say.

Best wishes

Christine

Publication Draws Closer

Last Chance for Friends to Get Their Name in the Book

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Dear Supporters

I'm delighted to announce that the completed manuscript for 'Trans Britain' was sent to Unbound on Saturday afternoon. They've got a copy editor already lined up to start work on it this week!

The last piece of the jigsaw arrived in the early hours of Saturday. Professor Aaron Devor holds the world's only research chair in Transgender Studies and set up the Transgender Archive at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. He had enthusiastically agreed to write the book's foreword and, in order to do that, he had been spending the last couple of weeks reading the draft manuscript. That makes him the only person besides me and Unbound to have read the book! His contribution was waiting in my inbox as I awoke on Saturday morning. (He likes the book by the way).

So, with Aaron's words swiftly edited (to change those pesky North American spellings) there was nothing else but to grasp the moment and email the whole thing off to the publishing team.

What happens now is the magic that professional publishers do. It's the stuff that your pledges have financed so that the book can emerge as a highly professional finished reality in the shops on 25 January 2018 (you'll get YOUR special first edition copies a few weeks before that).

My work is far from finished too. It has been an intense four months since you helped the project hit its funding goal back in March. Coordinating the work of over twenty busy contributors has been hectic, but very rewarding too. For the next couple of weeks I get to rest whilst the editor gets to work. After that there will be things to tweak and then a whole series of things that Unbound will need me to do over the months ahead, culminating in signing over a hundred copies (for those who pledged for those) and preparing to promote the book.

So there will still be reasons to update you in the months ahead. In the meantime rejoice! The most critical stage of creating the book has already happened!

Best wishes

Christine

Trans Britain Has Been Submitted

Dear Supporters. It’s time for a somewhat belated progress report…

The last time I wrote to you all was back in April. I feel a bit guilty that I’ve not been keeping you up to date as much as I had hoped to do since then.

The good news, however, is that my lack of updates is because I have been so incredibly busy working on the book!

The three and a half months since the book was 100% funded by your generous pledges have been a period of almost continuous work. If there’s one thing I hadn’t fully appreciated at the outset it was just how much project management is involved in dealing with a large number of contributors to an anthology. My life is dominated by a huge spreadsheet full of dates and ticks and numbers.

I’m pleased to say that this phase of the book’s development is now nearing the end though. All but two of the contributors’ second drafts are now in the main manuscript, chapters have been juggled and I’ve written the editorial backbone to the book. When those last two chapters are received (hopefully later this week) the manuscript will have been assembled, along with some amazing photos and cuttings. The whole thing tells an amazing story.

In other news, we decided to update the original working title and opted instead for the somewhat snappier name ‘Trans Britain’. Finalising the title meant we could also sort out the cover art too. We'll share the final artwork for the book cover in due course. All I'll say for now is that it is VERY striking and benefits from a lot of feedback we received on some initial (and now discarded) ideas.

So all-in-all I’m quite pleased with the way the project is progressing. There are still some steps before I can hand over a completed manuscript to Unbound, but I now know that this will be on time and it will be a cracking read! Being on schedule means the book should be in the shops in time for LGBT History Month 2018 (my ambition all along) and you should be receiving your special editions some weeks before that.

Incidentally, my work doesn’t stop when I hand over the manuscript. In fact, if anything, it becomes more intense. Producing a high quality book with a professional publisher takes many steps — which is what your pledges are funding. There are several rounds of professional editing (which feels a bit scary to be honest) and many other processes that I don’t even yet fully understand. Still, that’s what the people at Unbound are there to do — and they’re really excited by this project. They want it to be as good as I do.

More updates in due course, but I hope this one will reassure you that I’ve not forgotten you’re there. I’m working hard on the book you said you wanted.

Best wishes

Christine Burns

A Belated Progress Report...

My Second Progress Report

Hello Supporters!

I promised from the start that I would keep you all updated regularly (and exclusively) on the progress of the book, but I realised today that I'd not written to you since announcing two weeks ago that the project was now fully funded. I'm about to put that right.

Firstly, a change of terminology: Days after we hit the 100% funding target (on March 5th) Unbound introduced a whole new look for the web site. The change doesn't affect your pledges or how I'll communicate with you, but the new look is designed to make it easier for people to find and purchase books Unbound has already published, or to look for other projects to back. Out go some of the familiar design elements like the big pie charts that marked funding progress, and that cute little stick figure. The idea of 'The Shed' is gone now too and the whole design is much cleaner and more businesslike. Blog posts like this are now just called 'Updates'. Like any change, it'll probably take a while to get used to the new look, but I've decided to embrace the new and also drop the references to sheds!

The last two weeks have been incredibly busy. Anticipating that we were going to reach 100% quite soon, I had already set the book's 25 contributing writers to work on preparations. That meant it wasn't a complete standing start for the project when the time came. Now that creative work is well and truly underway. As I write, just over half of the contributors have already submitted detailed outlines for their chapters — enabling me to make sure they are addressing their respective briefings — and I'm expecting the remainder to complete that stage within the next 7-10 days. Those who have received feedback from me also now have deadlines for writing the first draft of their actual chapters. This means that, by late April or early May, I should have all of the drafts in hand and I'll be able to start editing the book.

Whilst the contributors are writing, I won't be idle. One of my tasks is to interview an additional group of volunteers about the various times and events which we cover. These additional voices are intended to provide extra colour within the text. The scripts to guide those interviews are being written now, as I plan the topics I want to ask about.

So, that's where we are up to. The next six weeks are a really crucial phase, with chapters arriving and being plugged into my template for the book for editing. When those manuscripts are received I'll have more to share. For now, however, I'd like to thank you again for your support. This is going to be such an interesting book to create and I love the idea that I can share the process with you, the people who want to read it.

Christine

My First Progress Report

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Dear Supporters

By now you will have received an email from Unbound announcing that we achieved our first goal in getting the book to you.

'Trans: A British History' reached the funding target at 9.24am yesterday (Sun 5th March) following a very generous pledge from Stonewall co-founder and peer of the realm Lord Michael Cashman CBE. That means that Unbound will now work with me to publish the book.

As of this moment, 422 people like you have supported the project, preordering well over 500 copies of the book. It's a fantastic achievement in just under 40 days. And it's a great motivation for the 25 carefully chosen contributors who are going to be writing their eyewitness views and analysis from down the years.

Thank you from ALL of us. I can't describe how grateful I am for your support, and I feel an enormous responsibility to now get the book into your hands as quickly as possible.

Over the coming weeks and months I will keep you in touch with the production process. It takes a lot of time and the skills of many publishing specialists to get a high quality book into peoples' hands, and I promise that I will use this 'Shed' to share details of the progress with you. In some instances that will include exclusive access to draft content and more details of what goes on behind the scenes.

So that you have an idea of what to expect:

<ul>
	<li>The first step now is that the project changes hands at Unbound. We switch from dealing with our commissioning editor to one of the publisher's production managers.</li>
	<li>The contributors are already preparing outlines of what they plan to write. My first priority as editor is to agree those outlines and then set a deadline for each person to submit their first draft. I expect that the bulk of the first drafts will come in just after Easter.</li>
	<li>Whilst that is going on, I shall also begin interviewing many more people with memories to share. Those recorded interviews will be included into the audio archive package which some people have pledged for. Those recordings will be invaluable for social historians to take the themes in the book to another level. The interviews enable me, as editor, to cross check contemporary accounts and they will also provide quotations which will flesh out the layout of the book.</li>
	<li>Once all the first drafts are in, I will then review what we've got and start stitching the manuscript together. Inevitably there may be revisions required, so requests for those will go back to the authors. I will also be doing additional work sourcing more press cuttings and photos and ensuring we have the appropriate permissions to use them.</li>
	<li>With mutual agreement on the contributors' work in late July and August, it is then my job to polish the parts, and apply literary 'glue' to the joins, so that the manuscript is ready for me to submit in late summer.</li>
	<li>The work doesn't stop there. The manuscript will then go through several stages of rigorous editing -- probably with more changes required from me -- before it then moves on to the layout and design teams. A cover will be designed and agreed. The look and feel of the book will be discussed. This is quite a lengthy and intense process.</li>
	<li>Finally, when all the layout and copy issues have been ironed out, I will have a proof copy to check before the book goes to the printers. It's at that stage that Unbound will also ask you to confirm how you want your name to appear.</li>
</ul>

This complex process is why the book won't reach you until early next year. The intention is to try and be ready before the beginning of LGBT History Month in February 2018. I'll be keeping you in touch with our progress at every stage, so you know how we are doing against that goal. The first and most important element is for me to deliver the manuscript on time later this Summer.

So, that's my life accounted for in 2017...

Once again thank you so much for the support which has made this exciting project possible. I promise that we will not disappoint.

Your adoring editor

Christine Burns

Thank You Everyone!

Hello Supporters!

Welcome once again to my ‘Shed’ — the blog space which Unbound provides for creators of their wonderful books to talk directly to YOU: the people who have pledged to see us produce them.

As I write this there are now 345 of you and the book ‘Trans: A British History’ is 83% funded. Thank you to everyone for your support. I have the feeling that we are on the home stretch now and the book will soon be funded! Of course, you’ll also know by now my standard mantra: Please encourage your friends and associates to pledge as well, then we’ll soon close the gap.

As many of you already know, I’m using this exclusive supporters-only channel as a way of keeping you abreast of developments. I’ve already shared details about the actual contributors. This week I thought I would explain to you about the process of managing an anthology when so many people are involved. The object at the end of this process is a book that feels like one unified whole, with a story that flows naturally from beginning to end and covers everything logically. Yet, as editor, I also want you to see the diversity and individuality of the people I handpicked to tell the tale. These things won’t come about simply by chance. Fortunately, there is a plan. And luckily I’ve had the experience of doing it before.

But let’s go back to the beginning…

‘Trans: A British History’ started taking shape as a proposal in October 2016. The idea was straightforward: to write the previously untold story of where the trans community you see today came from; to do it whilst knowing that very few independent records of that history exist; and to ensure that the account is as authoritative and inclusive as possible.

I had already written about an aspect of that story in my two part series ‘Pressing Matters’. Those books were a personal insider memoir about the political lobbying and educational campaign, ‘Press for Change’, founded in 1992. I went to great lengths to ensure that account was accurate, given that it was told by just one person (me). The anchor in that case was the contemporaneous correspondence and newspaper cuttings. But I knew how much history I couldn’t include — either because it was outside of the remit, or because some events weren’t mine to tell.

A new book would enable me to fill in the gap that I had left, and it was immediately obvious to me that I couldn’t do justice to the story simply as a sole researcher and narrator. Reliable historical accounts really need multiple viewpoints. Human memory can sometimes be unreliable, so having several perspectives on events can help identify where there is consensus on the one hand, and conflicting recollections on the other.

The subject matter for the book was easily decided too. When writing a history of people who’ve always been there, you need to decide on a start and end point. Pressing Matters was about a particular phase of activism that began 25 years ago and ended around 2005-7. But that activism was borne of an earlier and underpinning phase of community building which began 50 years ago. It has also been succeeded by another wave of development. So, the scope of the book was easy to define: we’d tell the story from the origins of that community and through to the present day, where it continues to develop and evolve. Fortunately, I knew I could find people in their sixties and seventies today who would be able to recount those early developments; I could find people who were my contemporaries in the middle years; and I could certainly give a voice to the younger generation who succeeded us.

Next, to flesh out the book proposal, I started thinking of a wish list of those possible contributors. This seemed to me a bit like creating a fantasy football team. During November and December I began approaching some of the names on my list. After all, I needed to show the publishers this proposal wasn’t simply a pipe dream. And these were no random approaches. Everyone on my shopping list was there because they had a particular part of the tale to tell. Happily, everyone I approached jumped at the idea. In fact this was a brilliant test of whether the book was something people wanted. It turned out that people wanted the book with a passion! There is a real gap, and the people I approached were all desperately keen to help fill it.

We fast forward now to the last week of January, when the crowdfunding campaign for the book was ready to launch… Until this point I hadn’t introduced any of the contributors to each other. I’d mentioned a few names and topics when recruiting them, but now I told them all for the first time who they were working with. This was a really good test of whether I’d chosen well. Many of the contributors know each other of course — they’ve all worked with or known me. Also, the community, especially in the early years, was small and tight. Still, you never know how people will react to finding themselves in the same book project. Again, however, it was reassuring to see that everyone felt their co-contributors were logical choices.

I was very keen not to start people on any substantial preparation or writing work until the funding of the book was well advanced, so the only ‘homework’ I gave the contributors for most of February was to help with encouraging people in their networks to pledge. And they’ve done that admirably. Now we are moving forwards…

So how do you coordinate 25 very different people to write a chapter that will fit with all the others when delivered? Fortunately, this is a problem I was trained to deal with in my days as an Information Technology consultant, project managing large teams of developers tasked with slotting together the parts of big software systems so that they will all work together. It’s all down to preparation and specification.

The first stage goes back to when I recruited each contributor to the project. It was then that I outlined the brief for each writer, within the broad sweep of the overall history. We talked about what they could contribute, and in some cases I adjusted the plan to accommodate what they thought they couldn't do. These briefs gave me a rough sketch of the book, so I could see how the parts worked and whether I might have left any gaps.

Next, whilst everyone was busy crowdfunding, I prepared more detailed briefings. The publisher provided a style sheet. This ensures that everyone’s writing uses the same conventions for punctuation, abbreviation and so forth. At the same time I drafted a detailed 'Master Timeline' of 50 years of events, based on previous research. Against this I could suggest to each writer things that they could logically include in their chapter. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the chapters will run in strict chronological order — that’s not possible, because stories inevitably overlap. However, the function of the timeline ensures that I can identify if anything important is being missed — and the contributors could tell me if I’d missed historical waypoints too. Above all, the grand plan (like the birds eye view drawings used by builders) enables everyone to see where their work sits alongside other people’s and within the whole story. This helps to avoid needless duplication; however, I’m also strongly encouraging people to provide alternative viewpoints on some things.

There are now two more steps before anyone writes a word…

The first actual creative step that I’ve asked for from the contributors is to write a one page skeleton of the points they envisage writing about in their chapters. For me, this is the first BIG editorial stage. It lets me see whether anyone has got the wrong end of the stick with their brief, and whether their chapter fits into the big plan. I can also throw in ideas. For the less experienced writers it also allows me to see whether their chapter is structurally sound. There’s nothing revolutionary about this of course: which of us wasn’t taught how to prepare an essay or exam answer by plotting it out? Above all, I want to avoid contributors submitting a first draft that might need significant revision. Spelling and punctuation we can deal with, but going off on a tangent can mean much more painful conversations.

The next step will be some more guidance notes from me, which I’m preparing with the book’s commissioning editor. These notes cover matters of style and practical issues that keep publishers up at night. This isn’t about squashing individuality but, again, seeking to ensure that when contributors turn in their first drafts (which they’ll start once we reach 100% funding), they are pretty close to the mark. It’s a matter of respect for the contributors — I don’t want them having to do extra work because of things we didn’t anticipate — and it’s for my sanity too. Having 25 chapters drop into your editorial lap means a lot of work as it is. My aim is to reduce the potential for crises.

Of course, that’s not the end of the story. A book with a lot of first draft chapters is really only the beginning for me as the editor. But I hope this gives you an idea of how 'Trans: A British History' will be put together to produce a flowing story from 25 very different people.

Christine Burns

Writing A History With 25 Separate Contributors

Hello Supporters!

Welcome once more to my ‘Shed’ — the blog space which Unbound provides for creators of their wonderful books to talk directly to YOU: the people who have pledged to see us produce them.

Each week I intend to use this channel to bring you something special from Burns Towers here in Manchester. Previous instalments revealed details about the contributors whose writings will make up the largest part of ‘Trans; A British History’. Later on in the book’s development I will also share draft material from inside the book itself, as it takes shape. This week, as promised, I’m going to talk about the tools I use for writing.

First, the usual housekeeping announcements: Hello first to the new supporters who’ve arrived in the last 7 days. There are now just over 250 of you and the book is 60% of the way to its funding target. Thank you everyone for that support. Please keep encouraging people you know to join us. If everyone persuaded one extra person to pledge then we would complete the funding challenge.

You’re seeing this message because you’ve already pledged support for ‘Trans: A British History’. As promised, I’m using the facility to give that bit extra back to you all for doing so. Most of these Shed posts won’t be visible to casual visitors to the web page. They are ‘supporter-only’. So welcome to this exclusive club.


 Writing Tools


‘Trans: A British History’ will be either my seventh or eleventh book, depending how you count. It’s the seventh conventionally book-shaped-book since I supposedly retired from my day job four years ago. The list includes a poetry anthology (‘Fishing for Birds’); a two part memoir about the ‘Press for Change’ trans rights campaign ('Pressing Matters'); a book about Equality and Diversity practice (‘Making Equality Work’); a short book about travelling around Australia (‘Letters from Australia’) and a very quirky book based on letters both ways between me and an American pen friend 25 years ago (‘Life by Satellite’).

But my work career actually began as a writer. I was employed by a large British computer manufacturer in the 1970s to design and write self study courses for their customers. The first job my boss gave me was to write a dictionary of computer terms.

The dictionary was a fun assignment. Have you ever thought how you’d compile one? Working out how to do that gave me a whole new respect for Samuel Johnson. One problem was immediately obvious: you just don’t tend to think about terms in alphabetical order, from Aardvark to Zebra. I was also travelling a lot at the time. How on earth could I safely organise a precious paper manuscript when tripping around the country on British Rail during the industrial unrest in 1977?

My solution was disarmingly simple: I went down to the stationery cupboard and requisitioned all the packs of index cards that I could find. Big ones. On the top of each card I wrote a word and in the body I wrote the definition of that computing term. When new words came along I just slotted them in alphabetically. When my boss wanted to copy edit my work I could give him a handful of cards and let him critique my precious ideas whilst I continued working on a different part of the alphabet. And when I travelled I just took as many cards as I planned to work on, leaving the bulk of the manuscript safely ensconced in a drawer back at the office.

Later, of course, there were computers for this sort of thing. Most of my work as an IT / business consultant involved writing reports. You seldom write these in a straight line. It was not uncommon for me to start with the conclusion and finish with the introduction. I went through several so-called ‘outlining’ tools in the course of my career. These kinds of programs are great for long pieces of work where you may first need to get your ideas down as notes and then juggle them around into a sensible order. Even Microsoft Word has an outlining mode, although I doubt whether many people use that.

Of course I’ve used several word processors to write. My first was WordStar and then I progressed, via an early Macintosh computer, to the very first version of Microsoft Word. Indeed, I’ve written dozens of book length reports and proposals with Microsoft’s venerable word processor. One of the last was a 70,000 word book about policy for the Department of Health — nicely laid out, printed and bound — so I’ll count that as a book-shaped book.

But the problem with a big all-things-to-all-people word processor like Word is the sheer clutter. When you’re actually writing that can really get in the way. A third of the computer screen is taken up by menus. There’s stuff going on all over the place. If you type quite fast, as I do, then you can keep getting interrupted. Often I used to end up pining for the simplicity of a blank piece of paper and a pen.

The next tool I turned to was just that — a blank white space and absolutely no clutter. Indeed, I’m using it right now to type this article. It’s called ‘iA Writer’ and is really simple.

The beauty of a tool like iA Writer is that it just lets you get on with writing. You get nice big characters on the screen and there are no menus because there are no fancy format options. It’s just A to Z, 0 to 9, punctuation and line breaks. The result is that you type much faster because you’re not constantly stopping to format text and wiggle the mouse.

One of my first eBooks, ‘Making Equality Work’ was drafted entirely this way. In fact I could write over 6,000 words in a matter of hours. I used a different document for each chapter and could pass those to my two co-writers to edit whilst I got on with the next.

That’s all very well. As I say, I use iA Writer a lot for drafting. But you still need something else to take all the raw material youve written and build a book made of chapters and special parts like title pages, indexes, and so forth. At that point I reach for another wonderful tool called Scrivener.

Scrivener is not a mere word processor. It contains one, but to describe it as ‘just a word processor’ would be like describing the Space Shuttle as ‘just a rocket’. In reality it is a complete system for managing the process of creating a book or script. It can hold your manuscript for sure, but it also manages your research, web links, background notes, the structure, previous drafts, and the status of every part. In fact it is so all-embracing that there can be a bit of a learning curve for using it effectively. Don’t start on Scrivener if you’re on a deadline!

The central aspect of Scrivener projects is something called “The Binder”. If you’ve used any other kind of outlining tool then the idea of this is quite straightforward. It’s conceptually like a ring binder. You can use it to break down your project into pieces — chapters in a book, or even the separate scenes in a chapter if you wish. In the early stages of a project you can just move these parts of the manuscript around by dragging and dropping them. There's a lovely 'Corkboard' feature for this. It mimics the way some writers start with bits of card and shuffle them around. Later, when you’re ready, you can press a button and Scrivener will export your entire manuscript in a variety of professional formats to send off to your publisher. It will even export the finished article to an eBook format ready to upload to the retailing platforms.

One part of Scrivener’s Binder is for your manuscript. A separate section is provided where you keep all your notes and research. For the last few months, as the ‘Trans: A British History’ project took shape, it is this second area of the binder which has gradually filled with information. It contains the structural plans for the book, the details of all the contributors and their briefs, images of press cuttings, early drafts of ideas… even the contractual material with the publisher. As the project progresses, the manuscript section will fill up with chapter submissions from the contributors. This is when I’ll be able to swap the chapters around, if necessary, to improve the flow of the book. It’s also where I can keep notes about each chapter and track the status of the parts — from first draft to final.

So that’s a brief canter through my creative world. A nice simple uncluttered drafting aid like iA Writer is the go anywhere tool for just writing a single piece of work like a blog or a magazine article. And the full glory of a writing management system like Scrivener keeps control of the bigger picture and the multitude of scraps that accumulate on a larger project like a full size book.

Next week something else to entertain and inform. I haven’t decided what it will be yet. I may share some thoughts about the process of managing a book when you’ve got 25 different writers contributing. That’s a really interesting aspect of this project.

For now, please remember to keep encouraging people to pledge. Without those pledges there can be no book. And we’ve come too far to let that happen

Christine Burns

The Tools I Use To Write

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Hello Supporters!

Welcome once again to my ‘Shed’ — the blog space which Unbound provides for creators of their wonderful books to talk directly to YOU: the people who have pledged to see us produce them.

As promised last week, today I’m going to complete my reveal of the 25 contributors who are going to be writing chapters for the book, based on their eyewitness and insider knowledge of events that have shaped the emergence of the British transgender community over the last 50 years. They range in age from their early twenties to their mid seventies. It’s an amazing group of writers, and it took me several months to choose and bring them on board.

First, a bit of housekeeping: A big welcome to the new supporters who’ve arrived in the last 7 days. There are now well over 200 of you and we are already almost half way to the funding target. Thank you EVERYONE for that support. Please keep encouraging everyone you know to join us. If everyone persuaded one extra person to pledge then we would complete the funding challenge.

You’re seeing this message because you’ve already pledged support for ‘Trans: A British History’. As promised, I’m using the facility to give that bit extra back to you all for doing so. Most of these Shed posts won’t be visible to casual visitors to the web page. They are ‘supporter-only’. So welcome to this exclusive club.

Last week I revealed the names of about half of the people who are going to be writing the chapters of the book. That list began with people who can remember life in the 1950s and 60s as though it were yesterday. If you experienced it then I don’t think you could forget. The previous blog’s roll call ended with the lawyer at the heart of the first successful trans rights case in the European Court of Justice. So, now to the rest of the writers.

I said to friends last week that I’d not seen so many MBEs and OBEs in one place since I visited Buckingham Palace to get one myself. The second half of the list doesn’t disappoint. And think of the rest as people who are, by now, in a Cabinet Office file awaiting another New Year or official birthday…

The Reverend Tina Beardsley — The Revd Dr Christina (Tina) Beardsley is a Church of England priest and hospital chaplain who has worked for over three decades in pastoral ministry. She is the author of The “Transsexual Person Is My Neighbour: Pastoral Guidelines for Christian Clergy, Pastors And Congregations”. From 2006 to 2014 Tina was a Changing Attitude, England Trustee for Transgender people. She co-leads the Sibyls workshop ‘gender, sexuality and spirituality’. Tina has a personal story to tell about transitioning with the support of her parishioners in the mid 1990s, but also an excellent insight into the various viewpoints advanced within Christianity in Britain — some of which were to have an impact on the campaign for trans people’s privacy and marriage rights.

Claire McNab MBE — Claire’s background is (or was) in lobbying, among many other interests. When she joined the inner group of 7 vice presidents running the trans rights campaign “Press for Change” in the mid 1990s, her expertise in both Westminster and how to create online communications made her indispensable. The full story of that campaign is told in my earlier two part history “Pressing Matters” so we won’t be rehashing that in this book. However, as our representative regularly prowling the corridors of Parliament during the debate and committee stages of the Gender Recognition Act, Claire has a previously untold insider tale to share about dealing with politicians across the House and our slightly unhinged religious opposition.

Dr Jay Hayes-Light — Jay is Director of UK Intersex Association (UKIA), an advocacy group for Intersex individuals which campaigns against non-consensual surgeries and hormonal treatments on intersex babies and young people, as well as working to promote intersex rights and awareness. During the 1990s, transgender and intersex people were working out how to campaign on their quite different agendas, whilst acknowledging the overlap in membership and interests. The relationship was quite testy in places. Even today, some intersex people want nothing to do with trans people and even accuse them of claiming intersex status themselves when perhaps they shouldn’t. Jay was an ally at the interface of that conversation and so he has a really interesting and informative perspective for people confused about the difference between trans and intersex, and about why relationships can still sometimes be tense.

Carola Towle — Carola is UNISON's national officer for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. At the end of the 1990s and early 2000s she was a key figure in the fraught debate about expanding the union’s LGB group to be inclusive of trans people too. It was fraught because, 17 years ago, there were still a lot of gay and lesbian people who harboured discriminatory views about trans people and wanted them to have no part in their group. This wasn’t just UNISON but across other unions and the whole LGB landscape too. Carola’s advocacy prevailed in the end, and unions are an important part of the modern landscape for protecting the rights of trans workers. She is in the book to reflect on that tense struggle and the tensions that drove it.

James Morton — is the Transgender Alliance Manager for Scotland’s Equality Network. When we talk about “Trans: A BRITISH History” it is vital to ensure that this is not, by accident, just an English history. James joins the story in the early 2000s to explain the separate emergence of trans activism North of the border, in conjunction with wider LGBT lobbying and the Scottish Parliament. There are similar stories to tell about trans people building support and activist communities in the other countries and provinces making up the United Kingdom, and it is possible that by the time we deliver the manuscript to Unbound we will have managed to include them as well.

Dr Jay Stewart MBE — Jay is the co-founder of Gendered Intelligence, a non-profit organisation whose vision is of a world where people are no longer constrained by narrow perceptions and expectations of gender, and where diverse gender expressions are visible and valued. A lot of GI’s work has focussed upon developing and supporting young people who are questioning or actively changing their gender. Jay’s place in the book is to describe how that mission came about, within the wider context of growing support for young people. Jay’s contribution is one of several which focus on the world after the initial legal struggles were over, and when the trans community needed to renew and refocus on wider objectives.

Dr Meg-John Barker — is a writer, therapist and activist-academic at the Open University specialising in sex, gender and relationships, as well as mental health, mindfulness and therapy. They co-edit the major journal, Psychology &amp; Sexuality (Taylor &amp; Francis) and have become an internationally recognised expert on gender, sexual, and relationship diversity (GSRD), and therapy, with numerous academic books and papers on topics including bisexuality, non-monogamy, BDSM, non-binary gender, sex advice, sex and relationship therapy, and mindfulness. Meg-John will be describing the emergence of other ways to be trans besides the historical categories of cross-dressing and transsexualism / transgenderism. “Non-binary” is a term that may appear to have come from nowhere (rather like people might thing being trans is a new fad) so Meg-John will be collaborating with various people with non-binary or genderqueer identities to explain what they mean and how they emerged.

Sarah Brown — is a transgender activist and Liberal Democrat politician. She was the Cambridge City Councillor for Petersfield ward between 2010 and 2014, serving as Executive Councillor for Community Wellbeing since 2013 and currently also serves as a member of the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats executive. She is a trans woman and, for several years, was the only openly transsexual elected politician in the UK. Sarah is in the book because of her position of being able to describe the emergence of a new generation of transgender activists from around 2007/8. For people who might not have been watching, the emergence of this wave of new faces and ideas came as if from nowhere, although it is quite logical for movements to refresh in this way. So Sarah’s principal brief is to write about that emergence: the things that drove the passions and the desire to not simply follow but lead. Given space, I’m hoping that she’ll also be able to explain the phenomenon of the transgender politician, of which there were a record number in the 2015 General Election.

Annie Wallace — Annie is best known nowadays as a regular actress in the TV soap “Hollyoaks”. But Annie’s story — and her involvement with Soap and acting — goes back further than that. The way that trans people have been portrayed in TV and film drama had a significant effect in creating and sustaining public misconceptions about trans people for the whole of the last 50 years. The idea that trans people could play the part of trans people, or write scripts, is only a very recent phenomenon — and Annie is perfectly placed to discuss that.

Helen Belcher — Helen is a co-founder and co-director of Trans Media Watch, one of two media-focussed trans advocacy and outreach organisations to emerge in the current decade. Helen appeared as a witness at the  Leveson enquiry into the standards and practices of the UK Press and provided so much evidence that she was invited back a second time. Trans Media Watch is one of the key modern trans organisations, occupying a position similar to Press for Change for the previous generation, and tackling what remains one of the biggest bugbears for trans people: press behaviour. Helen will tell the story of how TMW came about and illustrate the kind of examples which continue to impact on trans lives and require the continued existence of vigilant activism and lobbying. Helen is also the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for a seat in Surrey, where she lives.

Fox Fisher — is a film maker, trans campaigner and artist who first came to prominence through his appearance in the Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall documentary “My Transsexual Summer”. Following that he founded “My Genderation” and Lucky Tooth Films, developing a distinctive look to educational outreach using YouTube. Fox’s contribution will be to examine how the new generation of trans activists have embraced new media to get their message across in the decade since they came to the fore.

Stephanie Hirst — is a national radio disc jockey who successfully transitioned in that high profile career, beginning in 2014. Since demonstrating that you could transition and survive in the public eye she has been followed by others such as India Willoughby. Having transitioned only three years ago, Stephanie is perhaps one of the newest entrants to an out and proud (and effective) generation of trans people who confront the problems that still exist in the world, two generations on from those back rooms in Salford and London. It is for that reason I’ve asked her to round off the book with a chapter that is essentially forward looking and optimistic, for this history is far from over.

And that (for now) completes a truly stellar line-up of contributors. I say “for-now” because there are a couple whom I’m still trying to squeeze into a packed book.

Careful planning means that I’ve hopefully represented all the decades and some of the geographic diversity. I’m also aware that I need to address the ethnic and cultural diversity too, so some development remains outstanding. But these really are the people to best describe the journey that trans people have been on over fifty years.

Next time I’ll take a diversion into talking about the tools I use for writing.

For now, please remember to keep encouraging people to pledge. Without those pledges there can be no book. And we’ve come too far to let that happen.

The Contributors Revealed - Part Two

Hello Supporters!

Welcome once again to my ‘Shed’ — the blog space which Unbound provides for creators of their wonderful books to talk directly to YOU: the people who have pledged to see them produced.

You’re seeing this message because you’ve already pledged support for ‘Trans: A British History’. As promised, I’m using the facility to give that bit extra back to you all for doing so. Most of these Shed posts won’t be visible to casual visitors to the web page. They are ‘supporter-only’. So welcome to this exclusive club.

In months to come, I’ll be talking about the writing tools I use and the process of managing 25 very diverse (and busy) contributors. I’ll also be sharing excerpts and drafts. You can use the comments to feed back too. I want the development of this unique and collectively-written book to be inclusive.

Last week I promised that I would use this space to reveal to you all the names and details of the 25 contributors. We decided to tease you in the book’s synopsis, but that was just to allow me to get some vital admin completed, and also to build a bit of creative tension. You’re now the first people to know!

Before I get to that list, I just want to say a brief word about the campaign. So far it has been amazing — well, you’re here for a start! In one week the support has grown from a standing start to reach 35% of the book’s funding goal. Almost 150 people have made pledges. That’s an indication of how much people want to see this book produced. And who can blame them? Nobody has ever done this before in the UK. It’s a genuine first. And one reason for that is the difficulty that historians would normally have in sourcing the story. That’s where the 25 contributors come in. They are the people who’ll make this book compelling.

But let’s not get complacent. We are one third of the way to the funding goal, but that still means we have to achieve the same twice more. We have to find up to 300 more people like yourselves who are equally keen to see this history down at their bookshop or library. That’s where I hope you can all help. If you all persuaded just one person you know to equal your own pledge, that would project us to 70% and we’d be nearly home.

Today is the start of LGBT History Month, and that’s a perfect opportunity for persuading people to come on board. This book goes to the very heart of what the month long focus on LGBT history is all about. It’s about revealing and teaching the hidden history of LGBT people. Books like ‘Trans: A British History’ are the lifeblood of the mission. We want to put this book in people's hands, which is why I'm working with a publisher that makes bestsellers (like 'Letters of Note') and gets Booker shortlisted titles (like ‘The Wake’). There is precious little UK trans history in the literature right now. We can only change that with the support YOU give to get this book off the ground.

OK. Lecture over. Now to the big reveal…

I explained in last week’s post how I came to the decision about focussing this book on the last fifty years. I’ll certainly mention the individuals who came before, but the 1960s were a very special moment in history. That was when trans people stopped being just singular individuals and began creating safe spaces and groups to meet and support one-another.

The beginning of the contributor list reflects the need to tell the story of those tentative beginnings…

Alice Purnell OBE — Co-founded the Beaumont Society in the 1960s and later the Gender Trust in 1990. She’ll be writing about those milestones and the bits in-between.

Adrienne Nash — Not a familiar name to many, but Adrienne is penning a chapter about an ordinary trans person like her in the 1960s, and the struggles in dealing with doctors and psychiatrists who were either completely non-plussed or wanted to experimentally put her to sleep for three months (a bit like switching your computer off and back on again in the hope that fixes it).

Dr Stuart Lorimer — Senior Clinician at Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic (GIC). I’ve persuaded him to do some research in the archives and tell the history of that clinic and how GICs came to be the way they are today. That’s something which I thought might mystify a lot of outsiders

Carol Steele — A founding organiser of the Manchester TV/TS group, which first met in a back room in “Camp Street” Salford in the mid 1970s. Carol has an extensive experience with local support groups through to the present day, so her contribution will chart their development.

Linda Bellos OBE — The first name in the list to perhaps surprise many people. But this book will not only feature trans writers. Linda is a Jewish-Nigerian feminist lesbian former politician (she reckons she beats me in the diversity box-ticking olympics). She was active in second wave feminism from the early 1970s and was actually in a relationship with trans-critical feminist academic Sheila Jeffries at one time. Linda is a great trans ally nowadays and rose to the challenge when I asked her to write a chapter explaining where it all went sour between some feminists and the body politic of trans people. She promises it will be controversial and my ambition is that her contribution will serve to at least partially explain where all that animus came from.

Kate Hutchinson — Rock Musician, LGBT History Month board member and Stonewall advisor Kate transitioned during the 1980s. That period was, for many trans people, the decade that time forgot. It was a difficult time and my brief to Kate is to write about that experience within the Rock circle.

Jane Fae — Jane is a feminist and writer on issues of political and sexual liberty. In 2010, she was author of Beyond the Circle, for which she was awarded the title Erotic Writer of the Year. She has written widely on subjects including climate change, medical ethics and online censorship but our brief to her is to forensically examine the history and evolution of how the press have reported trans people. This again is a topic which may mystify newcomers to trans politics, and our hope is that Jane’s contribution may explain why trans people today can sometimes seem to be on a short fuse.

Sue Sanders OBE — Sue is a co-founder of both Schools Out and LGBT History Month, with a lesbian activist history which stretches back to the days when gay and lesbian teachers could be sacked when their sexual orientation was revealed. Sue is an example of an activist who needed to make the personal conversion from talking about ‘LGB’ and into ‘LGBT’ — a phenomenon of the mid 90s. As a teacher, Sue was in the direct firing line of the notorious ‘Section 28’ in 1988 — a piece of legislation whose rhetoric was totally at odds with what the government was telling the European Court of Human Rights about trans people at the same time. Sue’s contribution is in the book to provide that historical context and remind readers that trans affairs didn’t occur in isolation.

Jacqui Gavin — Jacqui is today a very senior civil servant. She’s the sort of person who is on regular speaking terms with ministers and permanent secretaries. Jacqui worked for a time as a fashion model — a role which she could only maintain at the time by living in so-called ‘stealth’. Many of the writers in this book transitioned and lived lives where most people knew of their trans background and I decided it would be invaluable to have her perspective on living life in a different way out of necessity, where your whole world could be destroyed by exposure. Jacqui has also got some fantastic insights into the other side of later trans activism — how it was seen inside government.

Stephen Whittle OBE — A founding member of Press for Change in 1992, inspired to become a lawyer by the case of Mark Rees at the European Court of Human Rights in 1987. Mark will also be featured.

Former MP Dr Lynne Jones — Who set up the Parliamentary Forum on Transsexualism in 1995. This group had a pivotal role in bringing politicians from across all parties together with activists and clinicians to develop the case for legislative advances. She stepped down as an MP in 2010 but has an unrivalled inside knowledge of the campaign as seen from Westminster

Madeleine Rees OBE — One of the lawyers very much involved in presenting key cases on behalf of trans people in the courts during the 1990s. Madeleine was at the centre of a landmark case which brought about employment protection for trans people in both the UK and throughout the European Union. Like some of the other contributions by cisgender allies, Madeleine’s chapter is there to provide a 360 degree perspective on how trans rights came about.

 

That brings us to roughly half way through the list and to the latter end of the 1990s in terms of the historical narrative. As it’s a long list I propose to stop here and complete the reveal next week.

Until then, do please keep encouraging friends and associates to pledge. You can now tell them just how unique and comprehensive this anthology of expert testimony is going to be.

Best wishes

Christine Burns MBE

The Contributors Revealed

Hello supporters!

As always, thank you for your pledge if this is the first exclusive shed post you're receiving. Your support really matters. And if you received my previous message on Wednesday (with the MacBook balanced on my lap on the loo), I promise that I won't be inundating you with these things. I don't want to have you looking for the unsubscribe link! I'll probably settle down to a much more sedate pace now. However, I wanted to make good on my promise to reward supporters with exclusive content from mission control. I'll be writing about the contributors; about the process I use to write books; and about the history too. I'm definitely hoping to try out draft ideas with you and to share snippets of the contributed chapters and the interviews. But I'm going to start this share-a-thon with a bit of background on how we got to here.

As many of you will know, I've already written a two part historical memoir. Pressing Matters was the inside story of the major trans activist campaign which began 25 years ago this year (27th Feb 1992). It was the campaign that brought about employment protection, the right to NHS funded treatment, a series of legal precedents, and ultimately the Gender Recognition Act.

I was a central player in that campaign, so it was a history told from a first person perspective, coupled with contemporary material fished out of the archives. I never thought I was ever going to read another diskette or Zip Disc until I embarked on that project! After Pressing Matters I genuinely thought I'd done my bit for trans history, but enter Katy Guest...

I've known Katy now for about six years. She was the Literary Editor for the Independent on Sunday, until the Indy went out of print last spring and made most of the daily and Sunday staff redundant. Aside from reviewing books and writing about publishing and selling, Katy also organised the Indy's annual Pink List (latterly renamed "Rainbow List"). Back in 2011 I wrote a haughty comment "below the line" when that year's list was revealed online. I was dissatisfied by the fairly tokenistic attention to trans people in every Pink List to date. Katy wrote to ask for help. I put her in touch with some people to help judge the list better in 2012. And then I eventually became a judge myself, cementing our friendship in the process.

After leaving the Independent on Sunday Katy went to search for work that would fulfil her love of books. She found the ideal work-life marriage in Unbound -- a publisher with a unique way of supporting the books that authors want to write and readers want to read. Even before she was in the door, Katy was in touch with people she knew, to ask if they had exciting book proposals they wanted to discuss.

As I say, I didn't really plan to write another book anytime soon, but one doesn't turn down the possibility of being commissioned to do something interesting! So, I sat and I thought and I scribbled on the back of an envelope, and I soon realised that there was a much bigger story that I'd left untold. To test the idea, I sketched what this more ambitious book would look like. My first key decision was that I could not again be central to the story. I've done that. And I certainly didn't want to write any more about the years before I became an activist. Then it hit me: Everything about trans support and activism has always involved teamwork. Our advances were guided by collaboration. We grew up to always pay respect to the part that others play. So, an anthology perhaps? Give up the role of sole author and become an editor instead?

The next question concerned the scope of the book. You can't pin a date on the beginning of trans history per sé. We can talk about figures before the common era whose behaviour definitely involved gender crossing. There's the tale of the Chevalier d'Eon. Some cite Joan of Arc as a sort of proto trans man. Then there are all the individual stories from Lili Elbe (in 1930) through the war and the arrival of Christine Jorgensen in the headlines.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that something really crucial took place in the 1960s. This was the point where the history of trans people stopped being about those kinds of individuals, who just sorted their own problems and tried to disappear. The 1960s were the time when trans people started forming groups with the specific intention of supporting one-another. And they soon needed that support when the controversial divorce case of April Ashley came along and ripped away some of the 'grace and favour' support which trans people enjoyed. Until then, transsexual people (with the support of their doctors) were able to get their birth certificates altered. Some of them (like April) married. They had the chance of a private life and to obtain jobs without their documents instantly outing them to strangers.

Justice Ormrod delivered his judgement on April Ashley's official status in February 1970. He said that April and transsexual people like her were to be treated as their birth gender for the purposes of marriage. In practice that also meant denying the right to correct or annotate birth certificates and it just got worse as the decade went on.

So, that era struck me as the ideal place to start a modern history -- back in the sixties.

After that, it struck me that progress back from that legal mess was really marked by long periods of everyday struggle, punctuated by the odd event which would become a milestone or turning point. And I knew exactlty the right people to tell the story of those big moments -- first hand.

So that's what brought us to here: A book to span 50 years of social and legal progress, from the shadows to Acts of Parliament and trans people on Eastenders.

In a future installment I'll tell you about some of the handpicked contributors that are going to write this book. All I'll say for now is that they are all experts, and they are not all trans -- there are some great cisgender allies on the project too.

For now I'll just end with the routine plea: This book needs more supporters like you. It can only go forwards when we hit 100% of the target. So please try and recruit your families, friends, colleagues or whoever. And you can tell them that, only by pledging support will they be privy to these insider briefings from the shed.

Till the next time

Christine x

How We Got To Here

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Hello everyone!

I'm in a frightful rush this morning as I'm heading to Unbound towers to attend a course in crowd funding, but I just wanted to say a very quick thank you to all the project's supporters -- 49 of you just now when I checked!

You are the people who, by showing you want this book, will help make it happen. We can't do it without you.

49 supporters on day one is a brilliant start. I can tell you that not many Unbound books achieve that. It's a tribute to the desire which people have for a book about trans history. But we are going to need more -- many more than in my personal address books in fact.

So, my plea to you, whilst I'm off gallavanting, is to tall to your friends and colleagues about the project and explain to them why they'll be doing themselves and us a favour by supporting the project as well. Just think, if 49 of you got just one friend or colleague on board we could turn 10% into 20% by the time my train comes back this evening. That would be amazing. It would also turn heads and add to the buzz that already surrounds this project.

And when I get back I'll also start to make good on that promise of exclusive content for supporters.

Thank you so much for your support.

Christine

Thank you dear supporters!

This project is about the history of trans people in the UK, but why is that important I hear you ask?

<a href="http://lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/documenting-trans-history/">Here's a link to an article</a> that I wrote for LGBT History Month (of which I'm a Patron) two years ago.

Why Document Trans History?

Hello and welcome to my shed!


… Well, my figurative shed anyway.

Some people actually write in sheds. It gets them away from the distractions at home — whether from the family, delivery drivers, or daytime TV and social media.

My shed is for gardening. It’s got a fancy electric leaf blower and a hedge trimmer which frankly terrifies me every time I have to get it out. If I get through this project this summer without accidentally cutting off a limb it will be a miracle. (Unbound, are you insured for my gardening mishaps?)

No… My writing place is in the third bedroom of my house here in South Manchester. I’ve got a nice big desk. Plenty of space for paper research and notes alongside. And my much-loved MacBook has pride of place in the middle.

Anyone who has followed me on Facebook will know I chat a lot — whether it’s about the pre-development of this book over the last three months, or what tickles my fancy. You can find me there quite easily.

But I want this shed space to offer a little bit more in return for the support you’ve given with your pledge. So, I’ll be talking about the process of conceiving and planning the book; how I picked the contributors; and the challenges of inspiring and encouraging 25 of them to pour their best efforts into this enterprise. I also hope to share some goodies — the occasional snippet from a draft chapter or maybe even a chapter from one of my published books.

It’s going to be fun! Having you here will be the constant reminder that we are working to make something really special for an audience that obviously cares.

See you soon!

Christine


 <img alt class="doksoft_image_img" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0728/3615/3620/files/IMG_1698.jpg?v=1690909251" width="500" height="375">

Welcome To My Shed (No Wellies Required)

Over the last five years, transgender people have seemed to burst into the public eye: Time declared 2014 a ‘trans tipping point’, while American Vogue named 2015 ‘the year of trans visibility’. From our television screens to the ballot box, transgender people have suddenly become part of the zeitgeist.
This apparently overnight emergence, though, is just the latest stage in a long and varied history. The renown of Paris Lees and Hari Nef has its roots in the efforts of those who struggled for equality before them, but were met with indifference – and often outright hostility – from mainstream society.
Trans Britain chronicles this journey in the words of those who were there to witness a marginalised community grow into the visible phenomenon we recognise today: activists, film-makers, broadcasters, parents, an actress, a rock musician and a priest, among many others.
Here is everything you always wanted to know about the background of the trans community, but never knew how to ask.
'A vital record of how we got to where we are. Inspirational!' Paris Lees
'Bloody good. Meticulously researched history of the collective transgender "journey" in the UK over the last century. Read it' Juno Dawson
'Warm, compassionate, inspiring. A much-needed antidote to media scaremongering, and a vital lesson in how to effect change' CN Lester
'Profound, quiet, agitated and deeply moving ... a powerful reminder that when we enjoy rights and equalities we do so because of the sacrifices of the generation before us' Lord Michael Cashman, co-founder of Stonewall

Trans Britain: Our Long Journey from the Shadows

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