MLIW

MLIW—that means “My Life is Weird,” right?

A younger cousin posted that as his Facebook status a couple of weeks ago, and it took me a while to figure out what it meant. If I got it right, I think I could keep that as my permanent status.

Case in point. I was offered a book publishing contract, and I turned it down. Well, sort of.

Here’s how it happened. I read an essay by a writer who had recently published her first novel, after a long and frustrating journey that sounded a lot like mine. Secular publishers didn’t like her book because it was “too Christian.” Christian publishers didn’t think her work was appropriate for their readers.

I’ve had exactly the same responses to my writing, so I thought I made a brilliant move. I looked to see the name of the company that finally did publish her book, and I submitted to them.

A couple of steps (query, then full manuscript), and a few weeks later, I was being offered a contract.

Trouble was, they explained that they had several publishing “levels.” The first two are a traditional model, but in levels 3 and 4, they ask for a financial investment from the author. They had decided to offer me level 3 since this is my first book.

Now, honestly, I knew about these levels fairly early on in the submission process, but I thought I had a good shot at getting one of the first two levels (if I were offered a contract at all). Their guidelines stated that unpublished authors with endorsements from published writers usually get level 1 or 2 contracts—and I have good endorsements. Also, I don’t mind the idea of contributing a bit to the process, if this company was on the up-and-up. According to them, they publish books that other companies won’t because the book might be worthwhile, but fit a small niche market, but have to ask for an investment from the author to be able to afford to do this. That sounded reasonable to me—and hey, the “contribution” they ask for is much cheaper than self-publishing, which I’ve also considered.

The trouble was, I started to wonder about this company. The level they offered me didn’t seem to fit with their guidelines. They seemed to move too quickly. I looked at some of their books on Amazon and didn’t like the quality of the book descriptions and covers. But the clincher was, I contacted the original author who got me started on all this and asked her about them. She told me she’s not happy being published with them and frankly thought self-publishing might be better.

As you can imagine, that did it.

So…Glass Houses is still languishing out there with a couple of “traditional” editors. I’m working on a second draft of Jordan’s Shadow. And did I mention, my life is weird?

Just Try to Top This!

Last week, I finally—I can hardly even believe I’m saying this—FINALLY finished a complete draft of a manuscript called Jordan’s Shadow. I have been trying, off and on, to write a complete draft of it for, let’s see…approximately 30 years. Yes, that’s right. Thirty years. I just dare any of you to top that record for persistence. Or procrastination. Or insanity. One way or the other, that’s got to be some kind of record.

The idea for Jordan’s Shadow actually came to me more than 30 years ago. I was casually thinking about time travel. (This reminds me of a Stephen King quote I once heard. He was talking about being in a grocery store and thinking what it would be like if pterodactyls were flying around in the store, because, according to him, that’s the kind of thing he thinks about.) Anyway, I was thinking about going back in time and meeting my parents when they were teenagers like me. As I was mulling this over, another thought occurred to me. Suppose I were able to time travel and become friends with my mother, but she didn’t know who I was—she  thought I was just another girl from her neighborhood. So then what would she think when she had a daughter who started to grow up and turn into a carbon copy of the girl who was her friend in her youth?

This may not do much for you, but it gave me chills. I went even further with the idea. What if the mother-daughter hadn’t been friends, but enemies? What if the poor time-traveling daughter never made it back to her right time, because she died in the past—and maybe Mom was even implicated in the accident that caused it? And now, Mom sees her darkest secret from the past revealed in the face of her adolescent daughter!

Not long after I started playing around with the idea, I heard that a movie called Back to the Future was planned, and I got discouraged and thought about scrapping JS. The ideas sounded too similar. But after seeing the movie, I knew there was no problem. First, for some reason, Marty McFly’s parents were too dense to recognize Marty as the boy they knew twenty or thirty years earlier. Second, Jordan’s Shadow is definitely not a comedy. Maybe I could bill it as Back to the Future done as a creepy gothic.

I realize I’m writing Jordan’s Shadow spoilers in this post and hope I don’t ruin anything for you assuming it ever gets published. But hey, who really reads my blog, anyway?

None of the above explains why it took me so long to write a complete draft. I think, partly, because the way I started this story was so different from the way I usually write. It started with a premise, but aside from the fact there would be a mother and a daughter, I didn’t know who the characters in the story would be. And I really had no plot aside from the premise.

The plot has evolved over the years and has become as convoluted as one of the latter seasons of Lost. Actually, I’m hoping Lost has trained a generation of readers to be able to comprehend Jordan’s Shadow.

I'm not sure why I kept going back to this manuscript. Maybe I've worked on overcoming my tendency to start things I don't finish to the point I'm now obsessive about letting projects go. But I've also always felt there was something to this story, something unique and worthwhile, even though writing it has been about as much fun as a 30-year root canal. And of course, I still have major rewriting ahead of me, but now that the plot is laid down from start to finish, that seems like a breeze by comparison. 

Maybe that will only take five or ten years!

When You Don't Know What to Hope For

Well, I came back from my long blogging break, wrote one in-depth post, and then disappeared again for a couple of weeks. But I’ve had a very good—or very bad—reason.

I had already started my next post. It was going to be called “When You Don’t Know What to Hope For,” and this is how it was going to start:

In The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda has some pretty tough criticism of Luke Skywalker’s potential. “This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away…to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph.”

That was always me. Trying to dash through the boring routine and get through the waiting. Thinking the good stuff was out there on the horizon. We always tend to think of waiting and hoping for something good—like publishing a book and becoming a successful author, for example. But now, I’m faced with waiting through a situation with no good outcome, at least not in the earthly sense.

My dad has been getting more and more frail and sick, day by day. He and my mother can’t be left alone, which means my sister and I are either at work or taking care of Daddy about 95% of the time. Sometimes it feels as though it’s been going on forever…and will continue to. Even though we’re happy to do all this for our dad and mom, it’s exhausting and sad, and sometimes we feel trapped.

And yet…what do we hope for? We’d like some normalcy and freedom again, but we don’t want to lose our precious father. With him being 85 years old, with an incurable and progressive condition called microvascular ischemia, there don’t seem to be any good possibilities out there.

So that’s what I had started writing. And then suddenly…the wait was over, and my dad was gone.

Daddy at home in 2008.

Isn’t that the way of this life? Sometimes it’s hard to remember that nothing is permanent. Life is change, even when it seems as though we will wait forever.

It’s too soon for me to say anything terribly profound about all this. I do know that—most of the time—I valued those times with my dad. There were many days I was able to enjoy his sense of humor, his gratitude, his sweet smile even in the midst of all we were going through.

I believe the secret to the days ahead will be to focus on the eternal, the good things that really are out there on the horizon, beyond this world, for those who love the Lord. And my daddy did love the Lord.

I’m not there yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

New way for me to reply to your comments!

I've been wishing this blog had a feature so I could hit "reply" and write you back when you comment on one of my posts. And finally, I figured out how to set it up! Your comments are really important to me, and I intend to make every effort to reply when you leave one. You should also be able to reply to one another's comments so we can have good discussions, and even subscribe to follow-up comments from one particular post.

Looking forward to talking with you!

Happily Ever After Takes Work!

This past weekend, Dave and I celebrated our twenty-third wedding anniversary. We went to Hilton Head Island, which was also where we spent our honeymoon. Even though it rained all weekend—until the morning we had to leave, of course; isn’t that always the way?—we had a wonderful trip. We walked in the rain, climbed to the top of the lighthouse, ate fresh seafood, and in the evening built a fire and ordered pizza.

Getting married was another one of those dreams of mine that seemed to take forever. I was a few weeks shy of thirty-one when we finally walked down the aisle. At the time, I thought I was ancient. I thought ice ages could have come and gone in the time I spent fretting over whether I would be single forever!

You know, in fairy-tales and movies, getting to the “I Do” is the happy ending, but in the real world, that’s just the beginning. Dave and I had both been single and independent for a long time, not to mention we’re both very stubborn people. So the adjustment was extremely difficult, and I don’t mean for a few weeks or even a few months. Sometimes I think back on the years he had to put up with my attitude and am amazed he’s still around.

Truth be told, if we hadn’t both believed that marriage is forever we probably would have separated in those early years. But we hung in there, and miracle of miracles, today we’re best friends. Happily married—ever after, I hope. But I know it’s easy to slip, and we have to guard our relationship constantly.

I try to remember all of this when I start to despair of my other dreams. I try to remember that each day is a gift the Lord has made, and that if and when I manage to cross over that magic line into fulfillment, well then…that day will have its joys and challenges just like the others.

Then again, I also know that dreams are worth working for. Even on the days when you’d rather throw the whole mess out the window. Looking at my best friend and husband of twenty-three years makes me remember that.

Why I'm Coming Back

I am absolutely thrilled to hear from so many of my wonderful cyber-friends again! So touched you responded. I have missed interacting with all of you.

Which is one of the reasons I decided to start blogging again. I’m lonely!

Seriously, I haven’t been networking much of late, other than a quick check-in to Facebook occasionally. And my sister fusses at me for not posting enough there.

But for awhile there, I was putting more time into writing blogs—and reading blogs—than I was into my actual writing. With a full-time job on top of all that, something had to go. So I decided to just concentrate on writing for a little while.

That little while turned out to be longer than I expected, for a number of reasons. But I did do a lot of writing. I’ve worked with a professional editor on a complete overhaul of one of my older novels, and I’m a couple of scenes away from finishing a new one. And guess what? I’m STILL not published!

But there are some developments, including a proposal or two out there in which they ask about my online activities to build a platform. So there’s reason number two for blogging: I guess I should actually have some online activity to report, not just a dormant site or two.

And now for reason number three. I called myself “The Queen of Perseverance” sort of facetiously, of course—but also because the major thing that God has wanted me to learn in life is how to wait. How to have patience and trust during the waiting. Generally, that’s been how to wait for good things, and on occasion (as in the case of having children), how to let go.

I have a totally new waiting and perseverance situation going on now, as I spend another 40 hours or so every week (in addition to the 40-hour a week job) taking care of my elderly parents. My dad has dementia from microvascular ischemia in his brain (sort of like constant mini strokes), and this has been going on for years. This experience has taken the patience and trust and hanging-in-there to a whole new level. It’s made me want to start sharing again…sometimes because I’ve learned a thing or two, or I’ve had an interesting revelation. Sometimes just because I want to give a huge primal scream and can’t figure anything out and want some input from my wise friends out there.

So anyway, hope you’ll hang in there with me! And let me hear how things are going with you. If any of you are still blogging and want to mention it in the comments, I’d love to start following you again, too.

The Queen's Coming Back! Anybody Still There?

After a long, LONG break from blogging, I'm about to take another stab at it. A lot has happened--and trust me, God is still teaching me about perseverance and hanging in there!

Are any of you folks still out there that used to be kind enough to subscribe and read my posts? If so, give me a shout-out!

Thanks!