This past weekend we headed to Nacogdoches for Ransom's birthday celebration with family. While we were there, I sat down for coffee with my friend Esther who had taken on the job of doing a grammar edit of my book. Essentially I had given it to her in a hot mess of runon sentences and an over use of ALL CAPS and she had returned it to me covered in a sea of green ink (so kind of her not to use red. It might have killed me.)
As it turned out, I do not really write with punctuation in mind at all. I know this doesn't surprise you in the least since you all read this blog and it is never well edited either. But, I was an English Major and I DO ( see?!?! I can't stop it!!!) actually know how to write a proper sentence. The thing is, every time I tried to edit my book for myself I would get caught up in the weeds of making some sentence sound better. It was horrible. I could NOT get it done. NOT EVEN A LITTLE. Besides, it took another person doing an intervention to make me take out all those ALL CAPS. Because apparently I like to YELL AT PEOPLE in written form.
IT'S MY THING, OK!?!
Annnnyway, so there we sat, and as I passed her a big ol' fat check it really hit me that this can not just be a trifle that I'm doing as a cute little hobby in my spare time any more. For one thing, you just don't invest this much time or now-money, without it holding a little bit more weight than that.
It's an awful feeling, because now its starting to hit that once again I've gotten myself into one of those "rejection" type situations. You know, like apply for college or deciding to cast all caution to the wind and date that cute boy with good hair, or submit your resume for that job you really want- all those things are now happily in my past. Right where I want them to be, because I do not enjoy rejection. It didn't help that at that moment when I realized how serious this was all becoming- Esther asked me casually "Just what made you decide to write this book, anyway?!"
In that moment I wanted to run away, crying "I don't knoooooooowwww!" But instead I think I smiled and said, "Because God told me to!" -which is entirely true...I never would have started this endeavor if I hadn't heard it quite so clearly. And yet. And yet, now that I'm here, 3 years in...wondering where I'm going to go once I put all these corrections into my digital copy. Thinking that the response I get from second person (other than myself) to read it through is "Why did you write this!?"- well...sigh....isn't probably a great start.
I have a feeling this whole "book business" is going to be a Personal Growth Endeavor. Which I hate.
So, the bottom-line is: This fall I should be ready to start looking for a book agent and that is a nightmare of a thought.
1 comment:
I will purchase your book at full price when it comes out! I will not wait until it is on clearance at Half Price Books! That is saying SO MUCH because I don't read anything current ever. But I cannot wait to see what God told you to write. If He did it, it will be great!
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