Three Cs

I’ve wanted to become a published author since I was seven or eight years old. For years, I thought all I had to do was write a book, send it to a publisher, and the rest would be smooth sailing. It wasn’t until college that I began looking into what it actually takes to have a book published. And as with most things in life, it turned out to be much more complicated than I expected.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a lot of information online about how to get a book published, so much that I really didn’t know where to start. Then, the library in my hometown invited an author to come as a guest speaker. Since I was in college a few states away, my mom went to hear the author in my place and took excellent notes. One thing the author emphasized was the importance of having publishing credits. Many publishers and literary agents like to know that you have had pieces published before.

Now, at first glance, this sounds like a paradox: you can’t get published without having publishing credits, but you can’t get publishing credits without being published…Kind of like needing experience to apply for a job. Fortunately, the author also shared a solution to this problem. She recommended writing short stories and submitting them to literary magazines because having shorter pieces published would help establish your credibility. She also warned aspiring authors to be prepared for rejection and to keep submitting despite it.

Like a child playing “Simon Says,” I obediently decided to start writing short stories that I could submit to magazines I found in the Poets and Writers literary magazine database, a great resource the author at the library had recommended. Deciding what to write about turned out to be harder than I thought. My focus had always been on the kinds of novels I could write. Outside of school assignments, I’d only ever written one short story, and it was geared toward young adults.

Then, one day, I was reading the Gospel of Matthew and came across the verses about Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law. That made me start thinking. If the Apostle Peter had a mother-in-law, it means he also had a wife, right? But she isn’t mentioned anywhere in the New Testament. The Bible tells us nothing about this woman, so I started asking questions about what her life might have been like. How did she deal with Peter being gone so much? Did she support or resent his desire to follow Christ?

Personally, I do my best writing when I try to put myself in my main character’s shoes, so I tried to imagine how I would feel if my husband suddenly decided to follow a man he claimed to be a savior. That led me to write a short story that fleshed out how Peter’s wife might have felt at different times over the course of her life. I titled it “Simon Says,” because her husband’s name was originally Simon, and based on how he is described in the Bible, he undoubtedly said a lot.

When the story was finished, I tried to find the perfect magazine to submit it to. As it turned out, I didn’t have that many choices. There are tons of literary magazines out there, but only a handful of them consider Christian fiction. I decided to submit my story to TWJ Magazine. Much to my delight, “Simon Says” was accepted for publication and appeared on their website in July 2016. Since it is no longer available on that site, I have a link to it on the short stories page of my author website.

Since that time, I’ve learned how very blessed I was for my story to be accepted by the first magazine I submitted it to. I’ve written more short stories over the last few years, and almost all of them have been rejected numerous times. As the author advised, though, I’ve continued submitting, and in the midst of the many rejections, there have been a few successes, too. Each story, poem, and novella I’ve had published has encouraged me not to give up. I like to think there’s a magazine or publisher out there who will accept all the pieces I’ve written…I just haven’t found them all yet. And I will continue submitting until I do.