Welcome 2018!

I love the look of fresh fallen snow ... as long as I am safely inside a warm house when I'm looking at it. Growing up in Africa, snow took some getting used to but I have grown to love it (as long as I don't have to drive in it.)

As a writer, seeing a scene like this pulls at me the way a blank page does--it almost begs for me to venture out there and leave my mark.

2017 was a busy year for my writing endeavors and 2018 looks to be just as busy. Here's what it looks like so far:

Magazines:
I have three articles coming out it "The War Cry" (Salvation Army's magazine) in 2018, the first being in January. I will author articles in several issues of SEEK in 2018, and The Secret Place, and those are the ones I have already been contracted for. Hopefully there will be others too.

Blogs:
Along with keeping up two blogs of my own, I will be guest blogging on Inspired Prompts Blog, as well as occasionally contributing to my publisher's blog: Write Integrity Press

Books:
I will have at least one new book released in 2018--an anthology compiled by my friend Shirley Crowder and me. I will say more about that in the days to come. At the moment we are working feverishly to have the finished manuscript to our publisher by mid-Feb. We are hoping for a summer release. Shirley and I are also working on some other book ideas and hope to make more announcements in the days to come about those. And a manuscript I co-wrote with my husband is currently under consideration by an large, traditional, press. I will share more about that if and when we know more. For now suffice it to say that this is a book we have poured our hearts and lives into and we covet your prayers that God will see us through the publishing process and land it with the right publisher.

Teaching/ Speaking:
I am excited to have been asked to teach two workshops at the Kentucky Christian Writers Conference in June. Though that seems like a long time away, the committee has been working hard for some time to put together a great conference and I am humbled and honored to have been asked serve on the faculty this year.

Lessons from the Trail

In future blog posts, I will share more insights about prayer that I learned in my quest to better understand it. Today, however, I’m continuing to share my writing journey.

 

Writing is a new work God is doing in my old age. It’s a huge blessing to me and I can only hope it will bless others along the way too. I thank Him daily for opening these doors, even though as is often the case, it was born out of a difficult and even dark time in my life.

 

I have a close friend named Susan Siami, whom I love to quote. I find her spiritual insights so inspirational. She once said, “I am so committed to my own agenda. And that agenda is zero pain for myself and those I love. God’s agenda is far greater than mine. He is producing a work in me and through me and often pain is the very means He uses to produce it.”

 

That certainly was the tool God used to begin my writing journey.

 

In 2009, I attended the Kentucky Christian Writer’s Conference, hoping to learn how to get my manuscript on prayer published. I came home thinking that goal was unachievable, at least at the time. I could self-publish but I had learned three things: 1) I knew very little about the publishing world, even after the conference, 2) I have editing issues. 3) I didn’t have a platform

 

I now know that I can pay an editor, and hire out other parts of the publishing process. And in fact I am in the process of self-publishing a small devotional book co-written with a friend. But at the time, getting a book out seemed impossible.

 

Writing still intrigued me. Actually, it did more than that; it pulled like a magnet. I had words I wanted to share and had spent the previous four years honing my ability to put them down on paper. (Learning to write on a computer came later. My 60,000+ word manuscript and my first few articles and devotions were all hand-written and transcribed onto a computer.)

 

The wheels started turning in my head. If I could start getting small pieces published, then I would be scratching that writing itch while building a platform too. A platform, for those of you who are not writers, was defined to me as the number of people who would read something simply because it was written by you. For me at the time that number was a big zero. Well, my mom and dad would probably read it, so maybe that number was more like two. J

 

So, I sat at my kitchen table one day, shortly after returning from the writer’s conference, sharing my thoughts with my daughter. I sheepishly told her about the great workshop on how to freelance small pieces and confessed my desire to try my hand at it. But who did I think I was fooling? I was not a writer.

 

My daughter looked up from her orange juice and said, “You know mom, the average American reader only reads at a sixth grade level.”

I burst out laughing and replied, “I can write at that level!”

 

And I sat down immediately and began transcribing a devotion I had hand-written in my journal onto my computer to send to The Upper Room. That devotion, titled, “The Day of Small Things” based on the question posed in Zechariah 4:10, “For who has despised the day of small things?” became the first piece I ever submitted. It was not the first piece I ever had published, because it takes a very long time from submission to publication with some devotional magazines. It was published a year and a half later in the February, 2011 issue of The Upper Room.

 

 

 

 

 

Who Knew?

Last weekend I had the privilege of serving on the nonfiction panel at the Kentucky Christian Writer’s Conference. One of the participants directed her question to me, asking about my journey to publication. As I shared with that group, I realized some of my readers might like to hear the story too. I will tell it in a series of blog posts in the coming few weeks. Today I am reposting a condensed version of an article I wrote a few years ago titled, “Who Knew? I Became a Writer After All.” The original article was published in Writer’s Weekly, May 2011. It tells some of my writing journey but I will tell more in the next few blogs. Here’s the article:

 

The year was 1976. Our nation celebrated its bi-centennial anniversary and my community held a writing competition. Students from several area high schools were asked to write short essays called “Bi-centennial Minutes.” I participated because I had to…it was a required assignment in my English class. A few weeks later, a reporter and a photographer from the local newspaper walked into my high school and interviewed me. Why? –Because I had won the competition!

 

Another spring a year or two earlier, at my high school’s awards ceremony, my name was called as a “Laurel Leaf” winner. This award, given to a written piece, which I had submitted because, again, it was required in my English class. In other words, I had to. No one was more surprised that I won than me! You see, I could not spell or punctuate–at all. I punctuated written pieces like some people sprinkle salt and pepper on their food; I just sort of sprinkled some around in my written pieces, or so it appeared. I loved to write, but I grew tired of all the red marks my papers collected so when college came, I majored in nursing.

 

Several years ago, someone I loved struggled severely and I struggled along side of her. I longed to be able to pray more effectively for this person. I began a personal study of prayer, journaling as I gained insights. After a few years, my friend was better and I had a manuscript written. I discovered I loved writing, now that we have computers that can spell and punctuate for me.

 

A few summers ago, I read a newspaper blurb about an upcoming writer’s conference in my area. I longed to attend but I was not a writer, at least not a published writer. I showed the article to my husband, sheepishly confessing my new silly dream of becoming a writer. He encouraged me to attend. I laughed as I made plans to attend. I decided I would simply declare myself a writer.

 

The conference was wonderful! The speakers were great. I came back greatly encouraged and more excited than ever about writing. In one of the sessions, took a class taught by Lettie Kirkpatrick-Burress http://writingforhim.com/ where I learned about writing small pieces like magazine articles and devotions, as well as how to find magazines in need of articles and how to write query letters.

 

I came home and tried what Lettie taught and to my surprise, I began getting contracts for my submissions. The money I spent on the conference was earned back and turned a small prophet in the first year. And guess what? Though no one saw it coming, I turned out to be a writer after all!