When Times Get Tough
I was writing a blog a couple of weekends ago because I was tagged to participate in a game that Mary DeMuth started. What were you doing 10-20-30 years ago? This got me to thinking (sometimes a dangerous thing) about what I was doing. Ten years ago I was just starting to sell again after an eight-year dry spell.
In the eighties I sold twenty-one books to Silhouette and Dell. Then Dell closed their line and I was without a home and a direction in my career. I attempted a few proposals but nothing clicked. I went back to school and got my masters degree in education, I threw myself into my teaching job, and I tried to continue to sell another book.
Eight years later I sold again to Kensington’s Precious Gems line. That was the beginning of the second part of my writing career. In those years I didn’t give up although there were certainly times where I thought long and hard on it, especially when I would receive a rejection. The worse ones were the rejections where I came close but just didn’t have it quite enough for them to buy the book.
Sometimes I would put my writing to the side for a while, but I always came back to the story because I finally came to the conclusion I had to tell the story. The characters and what they had to say were a part of me, and they had to get down onto paper whether someone saw them or not.
Then in 2000 I discovered the inspirational romance market and targeted Love Inspired. I sold a book that year that turned my life around. Now looking back, I believe the Lord was pushing me in that direction and I was resisting because even after selling again I didn’t feel I had a direction, a sense of coming home, until I sold to Love Inspired. The stories that are in my heart fit Love Inspired well.
The point I want to make is not to give up. I would never have sold again if I hadn’t kept at it—writing and sending the book out to a publisher. Yes, that meant dealing with rejections, which I still have to deal with. But determination and perseverance are so important in this business.
