My Author Anniversary

It's been a year since Persuasion came out, and I'm still a little reluctant to call myself an author. When I signed my contract almost two years ago, I thought I'd be lucky to make $50 from this whole author gig. Lucky for me, Persuasion has sold well. It's been fun to hear from readers who've enjoyed Persuasion. I've loved going to signings, meeting great bookstore peeps, and meeting people who've already read my book.

Another great thing about being an author is meeting other authors. Authors are loving, happy people (and I'm not just saying that because I am one.) I had kind of an epiphany at my last writers' conference. When we all brought out our stuff for the potluck lunch, everybody brought about the same thing I did—there weren't any fancy jello salads, homemade pastries, or crockpot casseroles. Nothing was homemade, and people actually ate what I brought. It was so life-affirming.

The absolute best thing about being an author is that I now have an excuse to write every day. Yep, I'm a published author now, so it's my professional duty to sit down at the computer and create a story. It's not too hard since I'm addicted to writing. You could call it my drug of choice.

There is a downside to publishing, of course. That is that you never know quite what to expect. Sometimes it's kind of like being in a French prison. In case you don't already know, in France, the prisoners don't know when they're going to get out—they just sit in there day after day not knowing. That's why people hardly ever go back to prison in France. They hate the not-knowing. Being an author is sometimes like that. You wait and wait to hear about your sales numbers, wait to see if your next book is accepted for publication, wait to hear if your rewrite is okay, wait to hear back from agents, etc.

That brings me to my last point--the one thing that's even cooler than getting to write every day. That is knowing that God is on my side. There's a Michael McLean song about adoption that's called "From God's hands to my hands to yours." I feel that way about my writing. It comes from God first. As I was stressing out about my submissions last summer, I said a prayer and told God how worried I was about getting this next book published. The answer surprised me in a way that assured me it didn't come from me. It was essentially this: "It's my book, too, so don't worry about it." Of course, I'm not the only author who feels that way. I've met a lot of others who also feel that writing is their mission. God needs a mountain of clean, uplifting books. He needs an army of writers.