My personal goal is to have skin like cowhide

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cowhideThis didn’t just happen.

I’ve been writing and submitting…and been rejected for years. So when Walnut Springs Press emailed me in October wanting to know if I still had that manuscript I submitted a year and a half ago and could they publish it, I sat and stared at my computer for ten minutes without blinking. Rick thought I got a hold of some bad Diet Pepsi.

I started writing in earnest while working on an MA in English. I was super-de-duper bored of writing academic papers and needed an outlet. At the same time, my daughter Sarah and her friend Shandi were dragging all kinds of LDS young adult romances through the house. Occasionally I would pick one up, read a few chapters and, appalled, think “I can write better than this.” This was pre-submission-rejection-prideful-Amy. So I took Sarah and Shandi’s challenge and began writing my own story.

And it was hard, really hard; harder than anything I’d done academically. I worked on it for a few years, in the cracks of my days, while I finished my graduate work and took care of my family. I gained a deep respect for writers and what they do, and the time it takes to do it. I hired a contract editor – because we don’t catch our own mistakes, no matter how good we are – a darling girl who I love with all my heart. She taught me and I listened and we worked together to improve the story. I began submitting and was promptly rejected…and would re-write and submit again…and was promptly rejected…and would re-write and submit again, you get the picture. I could wallpaper my family room with all my rejection letters.

It hurt.

I thought I had gained some “thick skin” in graduate school…I was wrong, like I was wrong about a lot of things. My personal goal is to have skin like cowhide.

I know what you’re thinking, “why put yourself through that and who in their right mind wants skin like cowhide?!” I do it – and want the skin – because of what happens to each of us when we read a good story: we feel a little less alone and understand ourselves a little more. I want to write a story that does that, no matter how hard it is.
So I’ll keep working on my writing and my goal of cowhide-like skin and hope both keep improving.

Changing Worlds

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A humble first effort

A humble first effort


I’m happy to announce the publication of my first novel, Changing Worlds. Look for it mid-March in Deseret Book stores and on Amazon.com. Thanks to Walnut Springs Press…they’ve been wonderful!
I’ll post more about this soon.

Welcome!

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jane eyre3“Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even set up in bed till dawn throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack simply to find out what happens to some people who ~ you know perfectly well ~ are made up.” Barbara Kingsolver

Okay, I’ve said it – I admit it: Go away I’m reading! And the truly ironic part is that I was in the middle of Jane Eyre, a book I’ve read at least five times. I was at the part where Jane is abandoned, cold, starving. I know she’ll be rescued and cared for and get to have this amazing Christmas with long lost cousins, Mary, Diana and St. John Rivers [how do you say his name?] and eventually put on a path back to Mr. Rochester where she belongs. I know this because I’ve read it before – five times.

And yet I still told my daughter, who had interrupted my reading, she had to go away so I could find out what happens to poor Jane. Why did I do that?

I did it because the story had captured me and I believed it. I believed in a setting so vivid and rich I could smell it, characters so vulnerable and human they were as real as the daughter standing before me rolling her eyes [she knew about the five times], and situations so compelling they evoked my deepest emotions; I always cry. Like Ms. Kingsolver confesses, we will ruin our tomorrow – or irritate our daughter – to know what happens next [apparently, in my case, even when we know full well what happens next].

This is the magic of good writing, and what this blog will explore. Thanks for joining me.

Lovely books