Every year in the closing session of the Colorado and Greater Philly Christian Writers Conference I encourage conferees (faculty and staff too) to make a commitment to complete in a year what they believe God is calling them to write.
It’s the challenge Lee Roddy gave his class at the St. David’s Christian Writers Conference over 40 years ago. Father had nudged me to join Lee’s continuing session on writing fiction after I heard him keynote Sunday evening. I didn’t understand why since I don’t write fiction, but I’m so glad I listened.
Not only did I learn how essential it was to use fiction skills in the personal experience story I was writing, I needed Lee’s challenge to get it finished. PTL I did. Not early, but not late. A year to the day I completed the book and mailed it to a publisher who had shown interest at the conference.
And then the waiting began! And the rejection slips. But my writing papa, Lee, who is now home with the Lord, encouraged me to persevere.
How Our Family Coped with Incest
was returned by 42 publishers during the next six years. The book that no one wanted to publish is my testimony to how God enabled us to care for my half-sister who came to live with us when she was not quite fourteen because her father, my step-father, had been sexually abusing her. Editors I met at conferences where I now served on faculty told me I was a good writer and the story needed to be told. BUT they admitted they did not want to deal with the topic.
Finally, at the end of those six long years I met a publisher at the St. David’s conference. He called me three months after the conference to offer me a contract.