It’s a fun week around here: Lily Huckleberry Around the USA is now out in the world!
A few years ago, this epic adventure was only fragments of ideas and scribbles in notebooks. As the beginnings of the story formed, one thing felt obvious—no Lily Huckleberry road trip in the USA was going to be complete without a yellow VW bus sporting a Worldwide Adventure Society logo.
On the very first storyboard, I drew a rough image of said bus. (Aren’t we glad Audrey does the illustrations?)
At our first brainstorming meeting, it also seemed obvious that we were going to need an ACTUAL yellow bus to bring the Kickstarter video for the book to life. Being so close to San Francisco, we figured we could track down one to rent, because if California is good for anything, it should be easy accessibility to vintage VWs. The video shoot was a long way off, so we decided to cross that Golden Gate Bridge when we came to it.
First to write the story.
A few days later, I was sitting in my local coffee shop getting the storyboard into a Google doc, when I kid you not, the heavens opened and the exact yellow bus of my dreams and schemes pulled up and parked smack in front of the window where I was working.
HERE SHE IS…
…ISN’T SHE BEAUTIFUL?
I gasped and raced outside, practically accosting the gentle driver of the magic bus. “Hiiiiii!” I cooed, trying to catch my breath and tone down the crazy in my eyes so I looked like a human you could trust with your vehicle. “I write children’s books, and you are not going to believe it, but this bus is exactly, I mean exactly what we need for our next project! Do you live around here?”
Gentle Driver stared at me, a little taken aback with all the gushing. “I do live around here, but I’m running late. Here’s my number if you want to get in touch. We could probably make something work.”
Though I was not convinced he’d given me his real number, I was more than giddy when I returned to my seat inside. It took everything in me not to twirl around my fellow coffee shoppers, grabbing their shoulders and yelling, “What a day, what a day! The world IS big and beautiful, Lily Huckleberry was right. We needed a yellow bus, and a yellow bus came. Don’t you see it, can’t you feel it, this ridiculous, whimsical miracle?”
In the musical version of my life, this would have been the cue for a jaunty dance number where the whole shop joins in, even the grumpy baristas, and everyone sashays down the street in clouds of confetti.
In the regular version, no one seemed ready for that kind of perkiness. I kept my jazz hands to myself and sat there grinning like a fool for a long, long time.
I’d landed in a glorious moment of big magic, as Elizabeth Gilbert calls it—the height of the creative process: ideas sparkling, stars aligning, beauty twinkling. What was an invisible, unarticulated thought mere days ago was becoming visible in a truly delightful way.
If there is anything I’ve learned, you’ve got to slow down and savor these moments because the big magic is mischievous. You never quite know when she is going to make an appearance, or when she is going to hibernate while you slip into the pit of despair where a rude inner critic arrives to tell you that your ideas are terrible, your jokes are terrible, and you should probably trash the whole endeavor and never do anything creative again. Oh, and just for kicks, you are ugly.
This my friends, is the pits. (Okay, maybe the jokes are terrible.)
We need the magic to get through the pits, or we’ll never make anything. And where would we be if no one made anything?
It turns out, we made something with the most delightful crew of humans. Gentle Driver did not fake number me. Like a darling, he showed up to the photo shoot, let the kids roam all over the bus, and even put on a bear mask for the video, the true victory by any standards.
The bus made it into the book and Lily’s USA road trip dreams came true.
And me? I’m trying to slow down and enjoy this moment as everyone discovers the nuggets in this story and laughs at the jokes, terrible or not—it’s truly the USA as you’ve never seen it before.
Then soon enough, I’ll start roaming the streets, on the lookout for more magic.
Need some Lily Huckleberry in your life? Find the book Here.
Want to see all the bus magic in the film? Watch the Kickstarter video Here.
Got your own big magic story? Or questions about the creative process? I’d love to hear. Drop them in the comments!
This is AMAZING!! And every time we pass a yellow bus in Sacramento, our kids go "Lily's here!" which I absolutely love!
The coolest ride for the coolest girl! Loved this bit of BIG MAGIC from the coolest storyteller too....