90 Days to Published Challenge…

A leap of faith…

“Roll your works upon the Lord [commit and trust them wholly to Him…so shall your plans be established and succeed”. (Proverbs 16:3 AMP)

In 2014, when he was in the 7th grade, I gave my son, Christian, a writing assignment for a fictional story as part of his Language Arts class. I told him it could be about anything other than Star Wars themed, which he was driving me crazy with at the time.

Christian had an enthusiastic and creative imagination, and a natural gift for storytelling. But he hated writing. He said it was hard to put the words on paper because his brain could think much faster than his fingers could write. So, I suggested that he record his story out loud, then play it back in sections and write it down.

He turned in 3 pages a week later, showing improvement in his writing skills. But as I read his story, I was struck by his concept and asked him to share more of his ideas, which he was happy to do…orally.

I told him I thought his story would make a wonderful book, to which he replied, “You’re the author. How about I just tell you the story and you can write it”.

Though I had not worked in fiction before, his story intrigued and inspired me so much that I finally asked him to collaborate, to create a full book and publish it together. He was pretty excited about the idea and agreed.

With daily life activities, school, and work, we didn’t accomplish much with the story that year. But we did manage to get a working outline drafted, and a few pages of scribbled ideas and details.

Christian’s enthusiasm seemed to build each time we discussed the project. He even asked if we could use some of his Language Arts time the following year for working on the book. He told me, “I think it would be kind of cool to see my name on a book and know that I helped to write it”. Then he asked, “Do you really think we can do it”? I replied, “Yes, I promise we will”.

Keeping my promise…

Christian didn’t get to finish that school year, or see his book completed.

But through all of the pain, chaos, and numbness inside my heart since his death, there’s been a fire brewing. I knew I had to keep my promise to him, but for some reason I have procrastinated. Perhaps it’s because of the emotional pain attached to losing him, but it’s been more difficult to work on this book than anything else I’ve ever written.

Yet I can’t deny the inspiration and the drive I feel for seeing this book completed. It is a part of my son’s legacy, and I need to keep my promise to him.

It’s time…

Recently I’ve been working on a series of guides for helping authors through the self-publishing process. While doing some research, I came across a book by Chandler Bolt, titled “Published“.

It is an instructional book designed to take you from the beginning of the writing process through publication in just 90 days.

I’ve previously used many of the techniques described in the book, and helped other authors to publish their books using the same methods, but I’ve never done it in 90 days. I was intrigued with the idea.

So, I decided to accept this challenge, at first intending to use the guides I was working on for the material.

Half-way into the 2nd day, I was hit with a barrage of emotions and thoughts, including a sense of urgency that I need to keep my promise to Christian and publish his story.

That urgency kept biting at me until I finally decided to put away the material for the guides for now, and pull out the outline and material for Christian’s story.

I’ve decided I can’t wait, I can’t procrastinate any longer.

If God be willing, and I get another 90 days on this earth, it is my intention to see Christian’s book in print and my promise fulfilled.

With the amount of time and effort involved in this undertaking, I have decided to reduce the number of posts here to 2 per week, on Wednesdays and Fridays.

I may share some excerpts of the book from time to time in the Wednesday posts, if there is an interest here, perhaps asking for feedback and critique. Fridays will still be reserved for fun and humor, since by the end of the week I usually need to do a little laughing myself.

I hope you’ll bear with me through the next few months, and share in my excitement too.

That’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow for Friday Fun. Until then, I hope everyone has a sun and fun filled day! – Amber