Category Archives: writing

Big News: I Have an Agent!

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Hi friends!  I have some exciting news on the writing front.  I now have a literary agent!

agencyagreement

What this doesn’t mean:

A book deal.  Not yet.  🙂

What this does mean:

I am one step closer to a book deal.  Most publishers don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts, so authors need an agent– a middle-man– whom publishers trust and who will represent the authors.  Steven Chudney of The Chudney Agency thinks my manuscript is lovely, and he already has ideas about which publishers he’d like to send it to.  I’m so grateful that he’s taking a chance on me and Truest!

I had no idea that querying was going to be such an emotional journey for me.  I’ll be blogging about it soon!

For now, I just wanted to share this fun news with my blogging community.  I am so grateful to Steven Chudney for this opportunity and so grateful to you blog readers for faithfully reading about my life, experiences, and opinions, and for caring so deeply about my personal writing journey.

Next step: revisions!

Landing on a Dime

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Recently, I was over at my friend Kristin’s Minnesota house (she spends most of the year at her Kenya house), discussing writing and Christian art.

Kristin is lovely and brilliant and so terribly wise– and she gets me, gets my heart.  She knows how the desperate cry of my heart is to honor God in my writing through creating a book that is excellent and thought-provoking while avoiding mawkish sentimentality and all cliches, Christian or otherwise.

It’s so hard.

dime“I feel like I’m parachuting,” I told her, “and trying to land on a spot the size of dime.”

That is how precise my goal seems.  I want my stories to be just offensive enough to disturb someone’s thoughts– but not so offensive that they’ll put down the book.  I want them to be full of mystery– but with enough clues to find the answer.  I want them to reflect the trials, confusions, and joys of my deepest heart– but in a way that no one will find cheesy or trite.

Again: the size of a dime.

I’m not sure that I am a good enough writer to hit such a bullseye (in fact I feel quite confident that I am not).  So, what then?  Do I stop writing?

Of course not.  Not when that’s the goal of my life and the best worship I can offer.

I tell myself, You’re 31.  Keep writing and you’ll be better at 32 … 33 … 34.  But I am a perfectionist, an achiever, a go-getter, and terribly impatient.  I get frustrated with myself (see here, here, here, here, here, and here) and get so down and low, or else frantic and scared.  But the best I can do is to keep writing, continue praying, practice grace, revel in creation, and gauge my faithfulness.

And my faithfulness looks like persistence, like fidelity to Christ, to his gifts, and to showing up.

C.S. Lewis on Fan Fiction

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fan fiction

Now here’s where I show just how big of a Narnia nerd I am.  C.S. Lewis made a mistake in his own quote.  I know the scene he is talking about with “plenty of hints”– it’s in The Last Battle, and it’s a conversation between
Jill and the Unicorn actually.

I’ve been known to dabble in a little Narnia fan fiction/fan poetry myself:
Nine Names
Cor & Aravis
Susan of Narnia
Edmund
Castle
The Professor

I’m a little out of control.

Opus on 1st: Yellow

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So, here goes nothing!  If you have your own Opus on 1st piece to share, please post a link to it in the comments section! 

yellow2

Yellow

He is silent at the table, staring down at the place setting.  She had thought it a good idea, but the China seems a mockery. 

She knows he knows.

The roast is warm, and the potatoes too, but still she is chilled by his strange presence.  If only he would just seem as distant as usual.  This odd attending splits her nerves like firewood.  The facts she’d recited like a rosary for the last six months trip like dominos. 

It’s fine, she reassures herself, taking a seat across from him.  It wasn’t wrong.  It couldn’t have been wrong when it’s been so long.  

She helps herself, and the serving spoon is shaking in her fingers.  Shit.  He continues to stare at his empty plate.  She wants him to speak—

—until he does. 

It’s her name, and it’s a whisper, and the quiet resignation of it seems to break apart every dish on the table, seems to shatter her eardrums.  How can a whisper have such talons?

It couldn’t have been wrong, not when it’s been so long.  Not when he cared more about the newspaper, the dry cleaning, the dog. 

The damn dog.

She wishes it was last week—last week, when everything was so perfect and she’d felt such freedom.  She had owned herself.  And now, today … she wants absolution.  Instead, his eyes are accusations, but not like bullets, more like questions.

“I forgot the wine,” she mutters, getting up from the table and going into the kitchen.  She comes back with the bottle, reaches for his glass, and with a shaky hand, she pours the white wine that is not really white but yellow.

How I Feel Tonight (and it’s not good)

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Let me be clear … I have had an overwhelmingly positive response to my novel so far.  Right now, two editors and six agents are reading part or all of my novel, including one who said she was “captivated.”

But tonight I am anticipating rejection, and it’s as if my own mind is sabotaging itself.  I am preparing to be let down.

I feel foolish.  I feel silly.  I feel like, How could I have thought I could write something good?

I think I’m just terribly stressed– the wedding is two weeks from today, and I have convinced myself that no one will like my manuscript, and I’m not eating bread or sugar, and I feel like I want to eat Nutella with a frickin’ spoon tonight.

I keep saying to myself, “Who did you think you were– C.S. Lewis?  It takes someone much more special and gifted than yourself to write about Christ in a way that is accessible to non-Christians.”

It is SO HARD to write about Jesus in a way that is free of oversentimentality and yet full of mystery and meaning.  I so desperately want to be that writer who can do so– but I feel like I’ve been kidding myself.

I want skill and talent and truth and the right words, and I feel so frustrated and foolish.  And those eight people have not even said no.  Why do I do this to myself?  Does anyone else prepare themselves for rejection in this way?

mockerycollage2

My First Draft Disclaimer/ Declaration/ Manifesto

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I am going to write an absolutely terrible first draft, and I’m not going to apologize for it.

The characters will be inconsistent, the exposition will be bare-faced, the details will be absent, and the climax will be boring.

I won’t care.

I will neglect the setting.  I will force the dialogue.  I will let the characters do whatever the hell they want.

It doesn’t matter.

I will use cliches.  I will info-dump.  I will rely on stereotypes.

It’s all right.

Because it’s a first draft.

All that matters is that I put words onto pages.  Every day.  Bad ones.  Lots of adverbs.  And the word nice.  The phrase “nicely nice.”  All of it in passive tense.

I will be kind to myself and to my first draft.  I will let it get its way.  I will baby it and baby myself.

But you’d better believe that once I have this first draft done, I will wring it out and make it surrender.  

write your book

And, now, for your viewing pleasure, my Second Draft Manifesto.