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Step Three – Made a decision to turn our writing and our writing career over to the care of God

 

So we’ve prayed and turned our writing over. Suddenly, we feel a peace that surpasses all understanding. Our work is flowing. We are sure and proud of what we have written. All the people in our writing group loved it! Our best friends want to read it. We have a true sense that we have written what God has wanted us to write and that we have given it our best time and talent. We have edited it dozens of time. We have had beta readers review it. Our local priest thinks it is wonderful. We have had it professionally edited.

We research the best potential publishers and follow their submission guidelines to the letter. We post our work and, returning home from the post office, find ourselves feeling as if we just left our child at his first day of kindergarten or packed our teenager off to college. Suddenly, everything is out of our control. We don’t know who will have our package land on their desk. Will they be in a good or sour mood? Have they just read a dozen similar stories or are they sick of characters similar to ours? Heck, did they just have a fight with their husband who acts a lot like our protagonist?  Our baby, the one we protected and coddled, is out in the cruel world and we have no idea how they are being treated.

Is my baby lying beneath other babies in a large heap called a slush pile? Is some editor in her bed and drinking wine as she laughs derisively at my prose? Is she allowing my baby to come apart and disheveled as she lets the pages fall aimlessly to the floor? The thought of what is happening to your baby book, article or novel after it leaves your care is not bound by any truth. We are writers and our imagination is wild with possibilities. Those possibilities can be mythically great. I can imagine an editor disrupting a board meeting to announce that she has found the great American novel. She announces that everyone is to drop their current project to get this masterpiece out in the next week. Or I can imagine an editor with piles of manuscripts spilling their diet coke on my manuscript (which they used to protect their desk) and tossing it unread into the waste can as they lick the seam on a form rejection letter addressed to me.

The possibilities are endless, and so is my imagination. How do I let go? How do I give my writing and its care over to God? I have to or else I can let my faith in myself and my works weaken with every rejection. If I trust that I have done my best and faithfully followed the Divine lead, I have to let it go.

I find the best way is to do just that. Say a prayer and start another work. Get myself caught up in the new work and forget about the finished work that is floating around there in the publishing cloud. When I try to find a publisher, I make a list of possibilities. If my work is returned with a form rejection letter, I immediately repackage it to the next publisher on my list and mail it or email it to the next publisher the very day I receive it back. If an editor takes the time to critique the work, I carefully go over the suggestions, and make the changes that they propose. That is, if I find merit in their work. If it doesn’t compromise the story or change the intent of the piece, I humbly make the changes and send it back to the same editor.

I don’t hold on to it. I have already sent it out to the world and I don’t take it back. I have to trust that God will find just the right person to publish it. Sometimes it just takes a few mailings. Sometimes it takes numerous mailings. If I reach the end of my list, I trust that God still wants the work published. I don’t doubt my gift or my calling. I, after exhausting my list, self-publish my work. I believe in God. I believe in myself, and I believe in my work. Next post, let’s talk about handing our writing career over to God.

Karen Kelly Boyce is a mother of two and grandmother of two who lives on a farm in N.J. with her retired husband. She and her husband love to camp and take ‘road trips’ around the country. She has published four novels and three children’s books. Her website is www.karenkellyboyce.com

 

 

Karen Kelly Boyce lives on a farm in N.J. with her retired husband. She is a mother and grandmother. She is the author of “The Sisters of the Last Straw” series published by Tan Books. You can see her work and learn more about her on her website: www,kkboyce.com

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