Five Things I'm Thankful I Knew Before I Left The Island with Guest Clari Dees

Hello, everyone! Happy Birthday to Seekerville and all you lovely October-birthday readers! I’ve brought hot chocolate, fresh pumpkin bread with a light glaze on top, and some of my mom’s awesome whole-wheat cinnamon rolls. Pumpkin, whole-wheat, and cocoa beans. Sounds like healthy food to me! 

It’s fun to be on this side of the blog today. When Tina invited me to guest blog during Seekerville’s Birthday Celebration (thank you for inviting me back, by the way), I jumped at the chance and said yes. And then I started thinking. What is my topic going to be? What do I have to say? The things I know about writing could fill a thimble. Ack! And then Tina came to the rescue with another email. She said the overall theme for October’s party was going to be What I’ve Learned Since I Left the Island. And that gave me an idea.

    But before I get started, let me backtrack for just a second. There is one thing I learned before I ever reached the Island.

You cannot leave Unpubbed Island if you never arrive on the island.
 

I know. This should be obvious, but sometimes, the Old Tempter whispers to our hearts that it’s easier not to try at all then to try and fail and make a fool of ourselves in the process. But you can’t chase a dream by standing still. And you can’t hang out with Captain Jack on Unpubbed Island if you’re content to dog-paddle in the waters of the Someday-I’d-like-to-be-an-author Sea. So for those of you who, like me, found those first sandy steps onto the beach daunting… Congratulations! And Welcome!

And now back to my topic. I think I left it around here somewhere.

Oh, here it is.

    Five things I’m thankful I knew before I left the island.

1.    That list of revisions from my editor will not kill me.
 

When I opened that first revision email from my editor after selling my book, I nearly had a heart attack. There were so many! How had I even managed to sell it in the first place? How was I ever going to fix everything that was wrong without losing my story? Or my mind? Suddenly, a calm, rational voice filtered through the panic. Authors face revisions. It’s inevitable. It’s part of the process. It’s doable. Step back, take a deep breath, and work through them. One. At. A. Time.

What do you know?! My story and I actually survived the revision process.


2.    Publishing a book includes a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. It does not mean your editor forgot about your book. Or you.
 

Knowing this in advance saved me a lot of worry and panic and kept my editor from being the recipient of frequent “Is it done yet?” emails. That would probably have gotten embarrassing.

3.    Those one star reviews will come.

 
 Yep. That’s right. When you write a book and it gets published for more people than just your mother to read, some of those readers aren’t going to like your story. A huge shock. Right?! But when that first one-star review appeared, it didn’t cause a meltdown. I’m not saying it didn’t sting. It did. But being prepared meant that when I stumbled across it while at work, I didn’t cry in front of my coworkers.

And then I was even able to sort of smile at it. The reviewer said I must never have ridden a horse bareback or I would know the heroine’s rear would have been covered in horse hair.  My horse and I had a big laugh over that the next time I jumped on him and rode him around the pasture. Bareback. Our favorite way to take a quick jaunt. Horse hair on my rear. Uh, yeah. So? That’s not a big deal and not worth mentioning when you’re a horse lover. Besides, it goes along with the dog and cat hair. I just remember to brush it off before I go sit on any nice furniture.

And that’s how I try to handle other one-star reviews. Make note of anything that might have merit for future writing, then brush the rest aside and move on.

 Okay. Sorry. Got a little distracted there. Back to my list.

4.    Being a published author doesn’t mean you’ll be the next brilliant contest winner. Or even a finalist.

Nope. Not even a finalist. But that’s okay. Because those wildly varying scores might mean I’d sparked emotion in the readers/judges. And that was a positive thing. Now it was time to take a step back, get my initial reaction under control, and start mining the judges’ comments for ways to improve my story. That doesn’t mean it was easy, and it doesn’t mean I didn’t avoid those comments for several weeks after the first read-through, but knowing that better writers than I experienced these same things made setting aside my emotions doable. 

Eventually.

 5.    Just because you sold one book doesn’t mean you’ll sell the next one.

I’ll admit. That one brought a few tears. Rejection is not fun. It’s downright painful. It could almost be enough to make you want to quit. Crawl back in your cave and never voluntarily submit yourself to rejection again. But then I thought about Glynna, Julie, Missy, Ruthy, Cara Lynn, Mary, Janet, Tina, Pam, Myra, Debby, Sandra, and Audra -- The Fabulous Founding Ladies of Seekerville. I thought of all the stories they’ve shared about how rejection is part and parcel of being a writer. They are living proof that rejection letters are not the end of the road.
 

So I dried my tears, got up, dusted off my britches, and as I went back to my keyboard, I realized something. I had now experienced these writer’s trials firsthand, but they weren’t devastating.

Why?

Not because I am emotionally strong or brilliant or better than anybody else (I am, in fact, none of those things). I just had advance warning. I knew they could/would come, and I was as prepared as I could be without ever having experienced them before.

How?

Because other writers had shared their trials and triumphs, their ups and downs, their knowledge and experience.

Where?

Seekerville, of course. A place that is welcoming to everyone, be they self-assured, gregarious types or timid introverts; established authors or struggling wannabes.  
I am so very, very grateful for these wonderful ladies who generously give of their time, resources, and experience to teach, inspire, and encourage others, like me, on this wonderfully crazy journey called writing.

You Rock, Ladies!

Happy Birthday, Seekerville! 

I’m giving away a signed paperback copy or a Kindle version (winner’s choice) of my book The Marshal Meets His Match.

Just mention in the comments if you want your name in the cowboy hat for the drawing, and thanks for stopping by today.









Clari Dees comes from a large preacher’s family that spent their vacations doing mission work. She has visited almost every state in the US, helped teach VBS on a Navajo reservation, assisted with free medical clinics in Mexico, laid concrete tile on a church roof in Rapid City, SD, and laid brick on a church in Kentucky. When she’s not busy saving the world as a librarian—okay, so maybe it’s only a school student with an overdue paper—or tracking down an elusive genealogy question, she can be found at her computer plotting incriminating evidence for hapless fictional characters or enjoying her family and menagerie of animals in the country. She can be found online at www.facebook.com/ClariDees or cdeesbookshelf.blogspot.com

Seekerville 6th Birthday Details Can Be Found Here

Clari Dees FIRST SALE PARTY!!!!!

Hello, Seekerville friends. My name is Clari Dees. I am a former homeschooler who started volunteering at her second home, the public library, the summer after high school graduation. Within a month, that volunteer position had turned into a paying job. With a short-term exception around a major move, I have spent the last decade and a half enjoying my job as a small-town librarian.

While there are some patrons that are more difficult than others—oh, the stories I can tell—that’s neither here nor there.  

Working in a library indulges my love of books and research, and for a while, that was enough. But my job could never quite fulfill that deeper need to create my own stories.

My mother says that as a child, I was such a perfectionist that if I couldn’t do something right the first time, I would quit and not try again. Unfortunately, that personality quirk caused me to bury my desire to write for a long time in fear of failure. There is a false safety in not trying: if you don’t try, you don’t fail and prove to yourself how bad you really are at something. I was focusing on the obstacles instead of the goal or even the journey. 

"Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take your eyes off the goals."  Henry Ford 

For years, I put myself to sleep acting out story scenes in my head, I just wasn’t sure what to do with the bits and pieces of ideas floating around my brain. Finally, I began to pray about it. (Duh, Clari, should have done that a long time ago.) I asked the Lord, if it was His desire for me to write, to show me what to write as well as how to go about it. I prayed this prayer for a couple of years, still too fearful to put my ideas down on paper, or in this technological age, the computer screen. However, I did put some tentative feet to my prayers and began to research “writing.”

During this time, my youngest brother, a homeschool graduate who’d struggled with school work, decided it was time to tackle college and pursue his own dreams. As I checked his college papers for him, marveling at his ability to get his thoughts on paper in spite of some mild dyslexia and watched him grow and excel as a student, I realized my “little” brother (he’s taller than I am, and he loves to remind me of that fact) was much braver than I was. He was refusing to allow fear to limit his dreams, while I, on the other hand, needed a good dose of courage. Either that or a swift kick to the seat of my motivation.

So I told the Lord, “If my brother can chase his dreams, I can too, but I need help and direction.” (When courage is lacking, sometimes sibling competition is the next best thing. Sorry, bro. J)

Then one morning, I awoke with an idea for a story and a scene that absolutely begged—no, demanded—to be written down, and I applied fingers to keyboard. I was following several writing blogs by this time (Seekerville among them), and although I was alternately encouraged by other writers and discouraged by how much I didn’t know, I continued to work on my story, trying to apply the writing instructions so generously shared by other authors. It wasn’t exactly easy, but I was finally doing what I had only dreamed about. I was putting a story on paper.

Several months later when I wrote “The End,” I knew I wasn’t done and spent more time rewriting and polishing before letting my family read what I had written. Now I know they’re not exactly unbiased critics, but they did give me some good feedback, and I polished some more. I was reaching the end of what I knew to do on my own and prayed for direction as to my next step—continue working on my current story or move on to something else?

Then Seekerville hosted another contest. A query letter contest. I had only just learned what a Query letter was but decided to stretch my learning and comfort zone. I would write a query letter. The cowardly lion had finally found a bit of courage!

 I’m still amazed I took that leap–-an eyes-closed, don’t-look, audacious leap—but I did, and several weeks later I received an email saying my query letter had finaled and would be going on to Melissa Endlich at Love Inspired.

I was ecstatic and scared all in the same breath! I had actually written something that finaled in a contest!? Surely they’d contacted the wrong person? Ruthy must have made a mistake! (Not that I was going to correct her.)

I waited with bated breath (no, I wasn’t chewing on fishing worms, they were gummy worms, in case you were wondering).

Eventually, along came another email. The editor actually wanted to see my manuscript! Wow! Oh. My! My miserable lack of writing skills was about to be found out. By a Love Inspired editor, no less. To keep my mind off the waiting, I delved into a new story idea and tried to forget that I’d put my writing out there for someone outside my family to read.

 When a couple of months had passed and I was wondering if my rejected manuscript was lost in the mail, I received another email. This one from Tina James, Love Inspired editor. She wanted to set up a time to call and talk to me about my manuscript. Every possible and impossible scenario ran through my head as I waited for that phone call. And the most impossible scenario happened. She wanted my story!  

Please don’t wake me up if I’m dreaming! Because suddenly, against all odds, a deeply personal and closely guarded dream is coming true! A dream I’ve only shared with my family up to this point.

God has gently directed my path, graciously opened doors of opportunity, and given me the courage to walk through them, showing me the steps to take only when I was ready to take them. He has proved He does indeed give us the desires of our heart when we seek Him, even when we have all the courage of a frightened mouse. He also used the gracious and willing hands of Seekerville writers to encourage and provide those doors of opportunity, and for that, I offer an enormous…

I’m still pinching myself to make sure I’m awake as I work through the list of revisions my editor sent me. The Marshal Meets His Match, will be published by Love Inspired Historicals sometime in the near future. I’ll keep you posted as to a publication date. In the meantime, I’m gettin’ my exercise with a certain white and black beagle…

I am not the cook in my family (I’d rather be reading or writing), but I can bake, and there’s plenty of piping hot apple-cinnamon muffins, strawberry muffins, orange juice and chocolate milk this morning. Enjoy!

Clari comes from a large preacher’s family that spent their vacations doing mission work. She has visited almost every state in the US, helped teach VBS on a Navajo reservation, laid concrete tile on a church roof in Rapid City, SD, and laid brick on a church in Kentucky. When she’s not busy saving the world as a librarian—okay, so maybe it’s only a school student with an overdue paper—or tracking down an elusive genealogy question, she can be found at her computer plotting incriminating evidence for hapless fictional characters, or enjoying her family and menagerie of animals in the country. She can be found online at cdeesbookshelf.blogspot.com