A Writing Journey Story, part 2

Did you think I was going to make you wait a whole month for the second half? Naw, I'm not that mean. If you missed the first part, scroll down and read it first.

BEYOND THE MIDDLE:
It’s not right putting “the end” for this last part, because the end doesn’t come until the Lord takes her home. Her story is an ongoing one.

Anyway . . .

So the grownup little girl started writing fiction for adults; prairie romance, contemporary romance mystery, even a futuristic adventure romance. She joined a writing group and started attending writer’s conferences. She submitted novel proposals and got no thank you letters in return.

She submitted a couple of sample chapters at a conference for an author to review. A new editor had come to that publishing house and assumed the slot that the author was going have, including the chapters she had to review. The grownup girl was mortified. It was hard enough to have a favorite author of hers read her chapters, but an editor, and particularly this editor. She was scared witless. She wanted her chapters back.

A friend of hers sat at this editor’s table at lunch because she knew the grownup little girl needed to talk to this editor. The editor wasn’t there yet. Her “friend” finished her lunch in a hurry and left. The editor arrived and sat . . . right next to the girl. The editor kindly asked each person around the table what they were working on. Lunch was almost over and there wasn’t going to be time for the grownup girl. Yes! She had succeeded at being invisible.

But the editor turned to her and asked what she was working on. Immediately every thought, story idea, and all words fled her brain.

Uh . . .

She did manage to get out a word or two about the editor having a couple of her sample chapters. The editor said she had them in her bag but hadn’t read them yet, but the grownup little girl should make an appointment with her. “Sure,” she said, while wondering if she could snatch her chapters from the editor’s bag. It was right there on the floor between them. She could drop her napkin and when she bent to pick it up, she could slip the pages from the bag. Well, it was more like she would have to rifle through the editor’s bag and search for them. She didn’t know how to do that all while looking like she was picking up her napkin. The editor walked away with her bag and the grownup little girl’s chapters.

The grownup little girl walked into their meeting with fear and trepidation. She figured if she could get through the meeting without fainting or throwing up, it would be a raging success.

She didn’t embarrass herself too bad, even found a word or two in her empty brain, and the editor liked one of her story ideas. The editor was willing to work with her. It took a few years to go through the process, but finally her first book was born. Someone had finally chosen something she had written. Since then, she has been chosen many more times.

The grownup little girl’s writing journey is far from over, so this is not “the end” either. The Lord has been with her through it all, guiding her and teaching her. If not for Him, she’s sure she would have given up a long time ago. She’s a better reader now than she has ever been, even if she still reads slow, still has difficultly writing, and her spelling still couldn’t save her life, but she’s so thankful for Spellchecker, even if it doesn’t know what she’s trying to spell half the time.

And the journey continues . . . . . . . . .

A Writing Journey Story

As others have posted their writing journey, I thought I’d tell you a writing journey story. The Lord takes us all on this writing journey in a different way.

THE BEGINNING:
Once upon a time there was a little girl who couldn’t write well, could hardly read, and couldn’t spell her way out of a wet paper bag to save her life, but she was creative and had people running around in her head with whole lives of their own.

The little girl thought she was stupid and people told her so. But not the people in her head. They liked her and told her she was smart. When other kids were reading chapter books by the armloads, she struggled through a simple picture book.

The little girl loved creative writing in school. The teacher would give a prompt and a story would immediately start swirling in the little girl’s head. She would start scratching out words with her stubby little hands. The letters were crude and the spelling atrocious, but her story was fun and adventurous. She couldn’t wait for the teacher to choose those few stories that would be read aloud in class. She was sure hers would be chosen this time. She had a great story and everyone would see that she was not stupid.

The stories were chosen and the little girl sat disappointed while others read their stories aloud. No one would know that she wasn’t stupid.

She continued to make the space between her ears a haven for characters to live out their lives.

THE MIDDLE:
The little girl grew up and married. She decided to write a special story for her new husband, a picture book. She typed it, edited it, rewrote it, typed it up again. When she had it perfect, She typed up each page, leaving room for the planned pictures. Since her typing ability wasn’t any better than her spelling, she had to type some of the short pages several times before she had one good enough to use.

When the pages were all typed, she sat down to do the artwork. (FYI: She was not artist. Not by a long shot. But she loved her hubby and would do the best she could.) She first drew rough drafts then held them up to the window to trace them onto her finished pages and colored them in, afraid of making a mistake that she would have to type the page over again.

Finally all the pages were complete. She bound them together and created a fabric covered cover. She even made a teddy bear to accompany the book. Her hubby loved it. Her family loved it. Her mother had the audacity to say, “You should get this published.”

She almost laughed out loud. Her? A published author? That was about as likely as getting oil and water to mix on their own. Maybe her mother needed helped. Don’t worry her mother is perfectly sane, but she got the grownup little girl thinking. Eventually, the grownup girl enrolled in a correspondence course.

She started writing children’s stories for magazines. But like with her teachers, her stories weren’t chosen to be published.

This is too long for one blog post, sooooo . . .

TO BE CONTINUED