When I was in elementary school, I wrote a children's book for a literary contest, and I won. My book, The Girl on the Runaway Pogo Stick was published and put in the school libraries throughout our district. Wow! I knew even then that something really cool had happened, and I was hooked!
I actually remember my thought process while writing that book. I remember the white pages and the markers I used to draw the pictures of the girl hopping through town on her run-away stick. I remember that I somehow knew that as she hopped through each store and past the towns people, she'd have to do the exact same path in reverse order to get home. I knew to have other characters, but not too many. I knew that she had to wear the same clothes on each page and that the end had to make sense. It was a great experience and probably biggest reason I'm doing what I'm doing today.
But, I put writing on hold after that. Oh, I still had school papers and things like that to write, but there were no books immediately following that wonderful experience. Wait, I take that back. There were plenty of books, just not ones that I wrote. I became a reader--a book devourer-er, actually. I read so often that I would run out of books and read the same ones over and over because sometimes it wasn't even about what I was reading, just that I was reading. There was this book-exchange store that my mom and I frequented. We'd take brown-paper sacks full of paperbacks and exchange them for new ones quite often. It got to the point where I was consuming a full-length novel in one sitting.
I remember fashioning crazy devices that could hold my books open so I could read while I did other things...like cook! I love the scene in Disney's The Beauty & The Beast where Belle is walking through town with a book in her hands, completely oblivious to the things going on around her and even some dangerous near misses that she encounters. That was me.
Along the way, life weaved itself in and out of my books. Somewhere between the teen mysteries series, the young-adult romances, adult literary fiction, historical fiction, non-fiction study books, Bible study books and parenting books, my life unfolded. I married, had six children, bought several houses (one at a time) moved across country and back, had health scares, said goodbye to loved ones, etc. All of those experiences and many others too countless to mention, worked together to fill me up with words.
So, I wanted to write, and I did. I started writing Bible studies and devotionals. I also began several fiction and non-fiction projects over the years. Some of them are closer to completion than others; some will never be touched again. But that's okay. That's the process of fleshing out an idea and seeing if it has legs.
Over time, I decided that I didn't just want to write, I wanted to be an author. But, I had no idea how to go about doing that. The publishing industry was such a huge unknown to me. Guess what I bought. Yep! I bought The Idiot's Guide to Getting Published. I read it cover to cover and followed it's advice to the letter--well, most of it. And, I got published.
It started with a query letter (we'll get to that in a later post) and, while my initial book idea wasn't picked up, I was asked to submit sample devotions with the possibility of being a contributor to a devotional book that Barbour Books was about to publish. I submitted my three samples and waited. Over the next several weeks, I was asked to participate in SIX devotional books. To some of them I contributed upwards of 30 writings and to others it was closer to 15. But, I was PUBLISHED in SIX books. You can see those books in the right sidebar of this blog. My resume' had begun to grow.
Plus, I now had access to the eyes and ears of a major publisher, without an agent. This definitely became a case of "It's not what you know, it's who you know!" I was then able to propose an idea for a fiction series for young girls that I had been playing with for a while. That series was contracted before I even had close to a finished product--unheard of for fiction! So, on top of those six devotionals, I now have two Jr. fiction books being released in July of this year and several other proposals on the publishers desk.
I don't write this to toot my own horn, because I don't believe this was my doing at all. I believe with my whole heart that God made a way for me. I believe that He had His hand in this process every step of the way and I give Him the credit for making it happen. But, I know that some of the steps I took were vital to the process.
Over the course of several posts, I'll break down exactly what I did and how I followed the advice I found in that book, on the internet nad through networking...and also where I didn't follow it. I'll share my own tips and recommendations and hopefully other aspiring authors can use this as a resource to jump start their own writing careers.
God bless,
Nicole
Be sure to come back for my next post: "I have an idea...now what?"
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1 friends commented; please leave your comment, too!:
Thanks, Nicole. What an encouragement to read your story! -Mindy
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