The Publishing Fairy
My 6-year-old niece recently lost her first tooth. A bottom one, right in the middle. Her smile is now so adorably imperfect. She was very excited to tell me about how it all happened: she bit down on something and felt a little crunch, and then her loose tooth was out! That night the tooth fairy visited and left her a dollar and the new Sleeping Beauty movie. (The fairy must have come into some money since she used to visit me. In the 80s, the going rate per tooth was a quarter.)
I finished my rough draft of I’m a Spork back in August. Since that time, I’ve been waiting for the publishing fairy to appear, fly away with my manuscript, and leave me a little advance check and a copy of my book. So far, she hasn’t visited. I wonder if she missed my change of address when we moved to Texas?
Seriously, though, I was feeling pretty discouraged about how hard it is to get a book published these days. From everything I’ve read on writer’s resource forums on the Internet and in my Writers Market Guide, it borders on impossible to get an agent to even look at your book if you’re a new writer, let alone a publisher. There are plenty of writer’s services that, for a fee, will look over your work and tell you what’s wrong with it and possibly send it on to agents. I think that’s got to be a scam. An agent to agents? That just doesn’t seem like it should be necessary.
Besides, people that have read my book keep telling me how great it is, so I’m reluctant to pay someone to read it. Pity I’m not friends with anyone in the literary world. Well, that’s not entirely true. I do have an author friend. She published two secular romance novels ten years ago before coming to Christ. She’s been giving me lots of good advice and I can tell she’s praying for me, too. One of the most important things she told me was that if I really feel that my message is Spirit-given (which I do), then I don’t need to worry about how I’ll get it published. God already has a door ready for me to walk through. Now, that’s not to say it will be easy or fast (though it might be!) for me to get published, but it is possible. I just need to be persistent and faithful, do the legwork, and let the Spirit continue to guide. I am comforted by that thought.
So, here I go, back to working on my synopsis and polishing my draft (and secretly hoping the Publishing Fairy will pay a call!).