Roads We Travel to Publication

In American Christian Fiction Writers we all serve one God, but there are many roads we travel in his service. Sometimes the path can veer from the course we think is appropriate. It may even wind down shadowy valleys we don’t want to walk or lead up mountains that are daunting. As long as we are on the track as he directs we are exactly where we should be.


My children graduated high school in the mid-nineties and it was then that a story began to weave itself into my thoughts. The path to publishing that first novel seemed clear. Write it. Edit it. Get published. I wasn’t prepared for the twists and the turns that followed. As I look back, I can see God used each new job experience to teach valuable lessons, learn needed skills, provide funds, and mature me.

Poetry is one of those routes that I considered to be a detour, but which has proved to be a divine plan. Merging fiction, poetry, and Bible truths has been a profitable pleasure as well as deepening my understanding of the Word because of research. This weekend I’ll be e-publishing “Ten Days to the Empty Tomb” for Amazon’s Kindle. Please be on the lookout for it. Meanwhile, here are a few words of encouragement:

1. If you have a dream for a certain novel, don’t give up on it, even if the road seems circuitous.

2. Don’t fight the way that the Lord leads. He doesn’t delay capriciously. There are skills to be learned or heart lessons to be absorbed for our safety and protection. After all, what good would it be to have a best seller and lose our souls to greed or pride?

3. Perfect obedience the first time is the best. Even if we don’t understand God’s reasons, He will always prove true and right.

4. If we miss opportunities God will keep steering us back onto His plan. No one wants to wander in the desert for forty years, but in the end God brought the Israelites to the Promised Land. Following through on point three will lessen the times we have endure point four, for there is always something lost when obedience isn’t prompt and complete.

Have a wonderful March and a great INACFW meeting this month. Hopefully I’ll make it. 

Mary Allen has authored numerous articles and two books of poems "Journey to Christmas" and "Ten Days to the Empty Tomb". She hopes the road leads her back to focusing on her first piece of fiction in 2013.

Happy Labor Day! (Sort of.)

Source: Wikimedia Commons

 Labor Day!

The kids are out of school. No one has to work.

Right?

Uhm, not if you're a writer. Writers making a living at writing are almost always writing. Deadlines are deadlines and if there's a deadline, it may mean you're writing on a holiday.

And if you're not writing, you're scheming, planning, plotting, dreaming.

At least that's how it is with me.

Because of my type-A personality, I have to make myself take a break. Get out of the chair and do "real life" things. I need to do these things because life is the stuff stories are made of.

I can't take my books with me to heaven--but I can take those I love.

Life is about loving those around us and most people spell love T-I-M-E.

If you're the kind of writer that has their nose to the grindstone and is more task-oriented than people-oriented (like me), then you'll have to get wisdom on the issue. Pray about it. Ask the Lord to help you stay balanced.

Our families and friends need us more than our books do. But then, we also have to know when to say "no" so that our writing isn't neglected.

If we seek the Lord first, He will provide all the time we need (not all the time we want). If we delight ourselves in Him, He will give us the desires of our heart, and if that desire is to be balanced, then He will not fail us.

 "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes..." 

Proverbs 3:5-7a.

 Karla Akins is a pastor's wife, mother of five, grandma to five beautiful little girls and author of the best-selling Jacques Cartier (that went #1 on Amazon in its category) and O Canada! Her Story.  One of her columns on MNN.com was featured on the CNN homepage. Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, she lives in North Manchester with her husband, twin teenage boys with autism, mother-in-law with Alzheimer's and three rambunctious dogs. When she's not writing she dreams of riding her motorcycle through the Smoky Mountains.

Times and Seasons ...

Given that Indiana's two seasons are winter and road construction, of course I was in a "cone zone" on the way home from work. As I waited, the radio station played an old song by The Byrds, "Turn! Turn! Turn!" which is surprisingly based on Ecclesiastes: A time for every purpose under Heaven.



(Hoping that the linkie works!)

I had not heard that song in years. I remember listening to it as I drove down to Huntington years ago on assignment to take livestock photos for The Farmer's Exchange newspaper. At the time I was single and figured it was statistically improbable that I would ever marry and have a family of my own.

Some of my newspaper assignments made me feel like I was on the outside looking in as others lived more meaningful lives. People my age were married, had families and some of their older children were showing their animals in 4-H. "Lonesome me" took their pictures, then returned home to my little apartment and whatever the cat had fixed for supper.

Those years at the newspaper were one season of my life.

Seasons change as the Lord works in our lives. Along came my husband, and children of our own, cows, calves, a horse and a pony. Any and all of them could be at the Elkhart County 4-H Fair this week. Along with me -- the tired mom dealing out sandwiches, washing cow tails and keeping track of kids' show clothes and entry numbers.

Seasons can change over a long period of time, or in a day. Although we are in a drought, today the farm was blessed with almost three inches of rain. The season changed from certain disaster to hope that the hay and soybeans at least will make a crop. We're not sure what will happen to the corn.

And so it is with writing. For me there have been seasons of doodling and writing stories in long hand on legal pads. Then came college classes in English and news writing. After a brief season of unemployment I began working at the newspapers and thinking "All grist to this mill"as journalism took me way outside my comfort zone. Later I was a stay-at-home mom and farmer's wife starting on an epic 400-page romance about a farmer and a news reporter. That story is under the bed somewhere. But somehow I blundered onto the Internet, discovered ACFW and writing friends including Lisa Lickel and Mary Allen. So now I'm in a season of writing fiction.

You might be in a season that looks like a long drought, or worse yet, a permanent late February and early March mud season.

But seasons change, and the Lord guides us on our writing journey as in everything else. Sometimes it seems to take years for a season to change but other times just a day.