Here’s part 3 of last year’s posts on this incredible experience of writing my first book.

So where did we last leave off?  If I recall correctly (and I know that I do, because I just went back to check) I had just realized that God’s purpose for this whole adventure was significantly bigger than I had first imagined.  I was holding a secret, a beautiful secret of a dream that I’d never even imagined wanting before.  It was impossible, it was insane, but it was there.

And in the meantime I was working on my manuscript, trying to turn my mess of words into a clear and precise expression of the powerful concept that God had placed in my heart.  And slowly but surely pieces were beginning to fall into place.  The hodgepodge of styles and ideas were starting to mesh together into something resembling a cohesive argument.  My words were starting to resemble a book!

But this is the point when things started to get hard – incredibly hard.

Here’s what would happen.  A friend or acquaintance would ask me what I was up to, and I would start to tell them about the book.  They would get excited and ask me if they could read it.  I would gladly say yes, tell them how eager I was for input, and then print out (or e-mail) the latest draft for them to read.

And then … nothing happened.  I wouldn’t hear back.  I would wait for a response for a month or two and then finally ask them about it.  Their response was always the same: “Oh yes, I started to read it, but then …” not one person I spoke to was able to tell me that they’d read the book through to the end.  Not one person was able to give me any kind of feedback whatsoever.  I can not express how frustrating it became.

Now before my friends and family read this and think I’m upset with them I need to clarify that I’m not.  I know, in all fairness, that the vast majority of these people were not avid readers – at least, not readers of this type of non-fiction.  This isn’t the type of book that they typically gobble up, and most of the time their eagerness to read it at all came more from their friendships with me than from an interest in the topic.  And aside from all of that I know without doubt that this was the way God designed the situation to happen – so how could I possibly be upset with anyone for doing exactly what He’d planned for them to do?  But in the midst of all of this, as it happened over and over again, the pattern was more disheartening that I can put into words.

I would work on a draft, run into someone who offered to read it, give it to them, and then hear nothing back.  And so I would go back to the manuscript and work through another draft – trying to make it better, more captivating, more un-put-down-able.  But the response never changed. It happened with my mother, my closest friends, my father, people from church … everywhere I looked there was someone who offered an open door that inevitably led me right into a brick wall.

The silence was deafening.

And the longer I went without any form of encouragement or critique the more the doubt and fear began to nibble at the edges of this dream.  I knew God was faithful – but I began to wonder if I was doing something wrong.  If I couldn’t get my friends to read this book, what were the chances that a stranger would care enough to pick it up, much less finish it?  And how was I ever going to get it published, distributed, and sold if I wasn’t even able to find supporters among the people whom I’ve always relied on?

At this point in my (I won’t say “panic” … let’s go with “struggle”) … at this point in my struggle I began, for the first time, to seriously consider the idea of self-publishing.  The very words “self-publishing” still send shivers down my spine – they conjure images of failure and mediocrity that harken back to those mailings I used to get in high school (We’d like to publish your poem – just send us $100 for your copy of the book).  Of course, now I know that self-publishing has undergone tremendous changes over the past ten years, and that the quality of self-published work has changed dramatically, but it was certainly my perception at the time.

And no, I hadn’t abandoned the idea of working with my church to start their own publishing house, but that dream was still so far over my horizon that I’d never seriously considered connecting it to my current project.

So I started doing research in between revisions.  I learned about self publishing, co-publishing, and what it takes to start a small publishing company.  I learned about the difference between “self publishing services” and websites that expected you to do all the work on your own.  I learned about buying ISBNs, about marketing and distribution, about print-on-demand technology, and about book layout and cover design.  I learned more about the production of a book than I’d ever imagined possible.

I spent weeks pouring over an incredible amount of data, and then one day I just stopped.  It wasn’t like I quit.  It wasn’t an intentional decision.  I had just printed out paper copies of my latest draft, just heard back from another friend who wanted to read the book, just sent her a copy, and was waiting (again) for a response.  And so I took a break for a week – and that week turned into many weeks.  Soon it was six months, and I hadn’t so much as opened the envelope where my latest paper manuscripts were waiting for me.

That was last October, and until this April that was as far as this story went.  I was at a standstill, and there was nothing left for me to do.  I felt like I was idling at a red light, just waiting for it to change to green.  But the more time I spent away from the whole thing, the less stressful it all became.  Yes, I still felt passionate about the topics my book discussed, and yes there was a piece of me that was still hungry for progress.  But in my soul I had nothing but peace.  I knew that this journey wasn’t over.  But I also knew that it wasn’t going to work in my time.

I think that’s the biggest lesson I learned from this period of frustrating silence and brick walls – that I would never be able to force God’s hand to move in my way or my time.  I knew that these dreams, these plans weren’t mine – they were His.  And with that knowledge came the assurance that He already had the answers in place.  He was going to give me exactly what He wanted, and when He did it was going to be glorious.  But until that moment, the best thing that I could do was learn to wait on Him.