I’ve always loved stories. While my three brothers and younger sister were out riding their bikes all summer when we were kids, I was either at the library or at home reading. Sometimes, I’d gather other children at the local playground and tell them stories I’d read in books and others I’d made up on the spot.
But after I was married for about fifteen years, I wondered if something was wrong with me because I was still making up stories in my head. Only they were becoming a series. I developed stories and kept them going for years.
One day this really bothered me, so I made an appointment to see my father-in-law, a clinical psychologist. I told him about the elaborate stories I’d been making up and couldn’t seem to stop.
He leaned forward and gave me an intense look. “Do you see yourself doing harm to any of these characters?”
“Sometimes things happen to the people like illness and accidents,” I replied.
He leaned across his desk even closer. “No, I mean do you inflict pain on these people?”
I stared at him a moment and suddenly realized what he was asking me. I inhaled deeply, my heart beat faster, and I shook my head vehemently. “Absolutely not! I’m not in the stories. This isn’t some psychotic way for me to hurt people.”
“Good.” Dad leaned back and his face relaxed.
“So, there’s nothing wrong with me making up stories?”
“Not at all. In fact, the only difference between you and an author is that they write their stories down.”
What a revelation! I wish I could say I went right home and started writing, but about three years later, I lost my job at a huge medical company. I collected unemployment, and while looking for work, I sat at my computer and drafted my stories non-stop. By the time I went back to work five months later, I had three books completed and a fourth half-way finished.
That was in the mid-nineties, and the internet was very limited. So, I became intimately familiar with my local library as I searched for books on writing.
Five years went by, and I’d been revising my books all this time. My husband and I shared a computer, and he told me that either I start sending my books out to publishers or give up my computer privileges.
I learned about the Writer’s Market Guide and submitted my first book.
Unfortunately, in 2000, the first place where I sent my manuscript accepted it. But they were an unscrupulous print-on-demand company who ruined my chances of ever getting my Christian historical romance series accepted by a traditional publishing company. (That’s a story for another day.)
The writing world has become much more diverse since then, and the possibilities of getting published has gone up exponentially since I started writing in 1995. The main thing you need to know as an author is that you’re not alone. The amount of information out there on how to write and how to get your book published is endless.
Do your research, and never give up. Remember not to put a time limit on yourself for your first book. God knows exactly when and how your book will be ready for publication, and it will happen in his timing.
