Taking a flying leap

I have tried and tried and tried to write the true rest of the story about my getting-an-agent story. But it doesn't feel right somehow, no matter how I explain it. So I give up. If you don't know already because you forget (as I do kind of a lot lately) that I even have a blog, I got an agent for my Hoarders meets Project Runway contemporary YA novel and getting an agent is a very hard thing to do and I'm excited about it. The story is here. 


The extremely abbreviated version of the rest of the story is this: when I realized I had a national market story on my hands, I got a little nervous because that was never my plan. Publishing in the national market didn't make sense to me. Dither, dither, dither. Finish the story or go back to the sure thing? Finally pray. Hear with clarity that I should submit to the national market. Freak out because suddenly I'm dealing with a test of faith. That won't make sense to most of you. *Shrugs.* It'd take a really long time to explain why. Trust me. I drafted that really long blog post twice.


I'll skip to the embarrassing part now. I really admire Janette Rallison. Love her books, admire her standards in her writing, would love to emulate her career. In the midst of doubt and "Why on earth am I doing this?" in regards to my national book, I approach her as almost a total stranger at the LDS Storymakers conference last May. I ask her advice. She listens. I cry. I cry some more. I feel completely stupid about crying so that makes me CRY MORE. This goes on for a half hour that she probably should have been doing other things. She is patient. She says, "Trust the Lord. Go for the national market."


I know this all sounds very dramatic. Just trust me that this was never about the book or being published nationally. It was about having faith to do something that made no sense. I'm not good at faith.


But I decided to exercise some. So I finished and things went really well. And it helped my faith a lot. And I realized something: it's probably not very important to the Lord that I publish in the national market. But I think it was very important to Him that for the first time in a very long time, I who have weak faith approached him with a question where He set me up to test and prove Him. And it was not a request for a favor, either. It wasn't a prayer of, "I really want this, please make it happen." It was a prayer of, "What do you want me to do?"


So He granted me an experience He's probably been wanting to give me for a long time but I was never asking the right question. And I learned from that. 


Trust me, it makes sense in my crazy head and only in my crazy head, I get it. 


I guess my only point here is to say a public thank you to someone who put up with an emotionally unstable woman for thirty minutes she didn't have to spare. And to say that I learned a lifelong lesson about listening to the spirit, and for that I thank my Heavenly Father.


And that's enough about the craziness. In other news, the finalists for the Whitney Awards were announced on Friday. My name is in there and I'm STOKED. Check out all the nominees and find some great new books to read here


And for more fun, the LDS Publisher blog has chosen finalists for the best book covers by genre from last year, and mine are in there. To check out all the covers and vote for the COVER you like best, you can check that out here. It's fun to browse.


Good Monday, everyone.