My Publishing Faux Pas & What It Taught Me

My Publishing Faux Pas & What It Taught Me

I spent the day prior to that evening’s email sending out endorsement requests for my novel, The Alliance, releasing this spring.

For anyone not in the publishing field, this is akin to having one of those “I’m not wearing pants” dreams come to life time and time again.

It’s stressful and depreciating, even for an extrovert such as myself. And, regardless of the kindness and support extended by authors, by the end of it, you usually feel like a schmoozing slime ball, trying to bounce your way through hoops.

So, needless to say, the house was in shambles. I made dinner, but I can’t remember what, and I desperately needed ice-cream. Of course, we didn’t have any in the house, so my precious husband was whipping together a smoothie when I opened the email and read.

I didn’t do much of anything at first. I just read, and my cheeks flamed with embarrassment, as I realized what I’d done and how much inconvenience I’d caused with my ill-timed reveal.

My husband came out of the pantry, where we keep our blender because the loud noise makes our girls cry. He was holding the container, filled with the smoothie. He looked at my face as I stood.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I said, “I got in trouble.” And then I did what any self-respecting dramatic writer does when she feels like she might have stumbled upon fodder for a future blog post.

I stretched myself across the couch and cried.

After a minute, I got up and dried my face. I told my husband what had happened. “What do I say?”

He handed me the smoothie. “You tell the truth: you were excited and weren’t thinking.”

Which is pretty much the story of my life.

So I sat down at the computer again and typed a reply. My daughter came over and looked at my red, tear-stained face. She tilted her head with concern and stepped closer. I could see the cogs of her little mind whirring as she tried to match my expression to her own three years of experience.

She asked, “Do you have to poop?”

Take it from me, it’s pretty difficult to think straight when your daughter is asking about your bodily functions. So I reassured her that this was not the case and went outside to bring in the laundry.

That’s when I saw that our clumsy, lovable—and often quite annoying—Great Pyrenees, Xena, had pulled the clothes from the line.

This is an almost daily occurrence that normally wouldn’t have phased me, but I was craving another excuse to have a cry fest, so I promptly sprawled across the grass and tried to cry some more.

But I found I didn’t have the energy. So I just stayed there, staring up at the walnut tree that had lost the majority of its leaves.

Then Xena sniffed me out. In all the movies, the dog comes over and comforts the downhearted master—making him/her feel better while Disney hearts dance around their heads.

Well, that didn’t happen.

Instead, the big galumph sat on me. So there I was—pinned to our front yard by a puppy who is six months old and weighs more than I do.

The forced quiet and stillness was actually pretty nice, and in that quiet, I did a little introspection and understood that I wasn’t just using a potential endorsement to legitimize my forthcoming novel; I was using a person to legitimize me.

I’d sworn to myself, before I became a contracted author, that I would not lose sight of who I was—and of the people around me—while trying to climb the publishing rungs. A little over three years in and I was already doing it. Using someone. And not just an anyone someone, but someone who is dear to me beyond what she can do for me.

I thought then of standing in the chicken coop earlier that day, watching my chickens peck the ground around their feed. I didn’t like who I was in that moment. I wasn’t at peace. I felt jittery and had a headache and my eyes burned from staring at the screen. I stare at the screen every day while writing, so I knew it wasn’t about the computer.

It was about what I was doing with it: pestering people with endorsement requests, desperate to get my book up and running, but also desperate to get my author name up and running again after a stretch of silence.

Xena adjusted her weight, and this time I did not fight it. Instead, I saw that God had used an email to set my heart back on the right path.

Only eight hours had passed since my endorsement madness began in earnest, and I saw this too as mercy. For I could’ve gone seven months until my novel’s release–working, striving, stressing–while never relinquishing my control over my life and my calling.

Instead, God had stopped me in my tracks with an unlikely service dog, Xena, who was teaching me the peace that comes with complete surrender, and with being still.

How about you? Has God ever taught you a lesson through unlikely means?