Guest post by Becky Van Volkinburg
I've been in love with books my whole life. I love how they feel in my hands, how they smell (yes, I'm one of those people who gets some crazy high off of smelling book binding), and how they look lined up on shelves. When I was little I loved playing teacher and holding up one of my books between my pinky and thumb out to my side so that all my “students” could see the pictures while I read the story. I love wandering around a library or a book store and getting lost in the landscape of imagination.
Perhaps my love of books is also very closely tied to my love of words. I have always loved writing, whether it be poetry, short stories or my first attempts at a novel when I was in middle school. There has always been something magical about creating people and things and places and controlling it all. Nowhere else do you have that kind of power, except in your imagination. I remember my first semester in college in English 101, my very first writing assignment I chose to write about the night my father died. It was a simple paper, raw, with nothing held back. Just me and the most profound experience of my life on an 8-1/2 x 11 canvas.
I clearly remember meeting with the professor to review my paper. I was terrified. Before he showed me my paper and ultimately my grade, he expressed how what he had read was perhaps the best first paper he had ever read in his teaching career. Then he added the "however." He handed me my paper with a C grade (apparently I needed an editor even then). The content was great; the punctuation was not. I was easily defeated and never finished the class.
Fast forward eighteen years and I now have my first book being published. Never saw that coming. I never stopped writing, mostly just in journals for my own cathartic reasons. Then one afternoon, while my kids were outside playing, I was thinking about all the books I had recently told my son he couldn't read due to the content, even though “all the kids” were doing it. I picked up my netbook and started typing. I can honestly say it just fell out of me. Every afternoon I would read to my kids the new chapter I had written and we all laughed and were surprised at the fact that I was the one making this stuff up.
I decided to send my book out into the real world and see if anyone else liked it as well. Rejection after rejection came back. I deleted and threw out every single one and decided to just be happy having written something for my kids. I put the book away and carried on with life.
About a year later, I remembered that long forgotten file on my computer. I decided that I would research self-publishing and focus on turning this into a gift for my kids. In my research I found one more publisher that would accept unsolicited manuscripts. I hesitated, not sure if I could handle any more rejection and then decided, why not? So I sent it off one last time. Six weeks later, I had a contract in my hands.
Linc Adams and the Freddie Fantastic Summer is my first book and still, a surreal sight. The process from contract to release date will be almost a year exactly, but the process from me being just a lover of books to a creator of books has been thirty-six years in the making.
After getting my first book out there, you would think I would be satisfied and sit back and enjoy my accomplishment. But I am finding that having your work out there for others to see and enjoy is very much addictive.
A few years ago I had an idea for a book and like most things, I let it go. Then, recently, I remembered my idea and decided to have a go at publishing an ebook. Within a week I had two ebooks up and available for purchase on Amazon. One is title God's Voice, Your Words: How to Speak Blessing and the Promises of God Over Your Son's Life, and the other is God's Voice, Your Words: How to Speak Blessing and the Promises of God Over Your Daughter's Life. The process was simple and relatively painless and I would (and hope to) do it again.
I am finding that there is a difference between writing books and being an author. Being an author is a lot of hard work that goes far beyond writing. With the ridiculous numbers of books being released into the marketplace every single day, you really have to work to get your title noticed. I thought being rejected by publishers was painful, just wait until all your “friends” who were so supportive when they heard you were writing a book are nowhere to be found when it's time to buy your book! Or the pain of someone un-liking your author page or unfriending you because they're sick of hearing about your book, or worse--not liking your book! But the amazing joy of selling that first book, of signing it for someone (my hands shook and my signature rivaled a doctors), the excitement of seeing others read and love your book, well, it makes all the hard work worth it.
For anyone who is somewhere on this journey of being an author, whether you're just fantasizing about seeing your name on the cover of a book or you've already written the book and are trying to figure out what's next, I say to you, keep going. Don't give up. Who knows where I would be today if I hadn't have given up on that English class eighteen years ago. That thought brings tears of regret to my eyes. Make a choice to live your dreams, not to simply visit them while you sleep.
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From Jevon
I ventured out and tried something different on my blog today and let you hear from one of my dearest friends Becky Van Volkinburg, who just became a published author. Becky and I have sang together, cried together, prayed to gather, dreamed together, vented about "stuff" together... I am so proud of her journey and I wanted to share it with you today. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you will comment on this and share with me: What dreams have you fought to see come true in your life?