I recently reached a “finished revisions” milestone. (Yay!)

Congratulations on your current milestones and many more to come in the future!

My milestone- I came across a website (Actually two) that has given me inspiration and encouragement. It just so happens that your persistence through the time and energy crunch that you battle has allowed us the opportunity to visualize our own milestones, one at a time!

Thanks and have a Blessed day!

I DO have an important milestone. A year ago this month, I FINISHED my first novel.

Finished the first draft anyway, but writing ‘The End’ was a huge accomplishment.

At the time it was truly a miricle of God that I finished. I’m a mother with 3 young daughters and a pretty demanding day job. I started the book in August and wrote during my brief lunch break, at the airport during business trips (we were going through a merger) and late into the night. It was a labor of love, except instead of lasting ten hours it lasted three months, and the tweeking continues!

I like to write on a Dell lap top. Several months ago my fingers were flying nimbly above the key board when a small black and white piece of hard plastic fell into my lap.

“Wow!” I thought. “What was that?”

I picked it off of the floor and saw it was my h.

“Bummer.” I said. I looked to see if maybe I could snap it back in its place but apparently the little snapper thing was broken as well. I thought about using super glue so I stuck the h carefully into my wallet determined to make it the store after work and buy the magic adhesive that holds almost everything together.

Several days went by and when I looked for my wayward letter it had disappeared. I turned my wallet upside down and inside out but my h was definitely gone.

I still write. I did still have the remainder of the alphabet. I still had another twenty five letters.

In fact there was a small hard rubber point protruding from the place formerly occupied by my h, and if I struck this little thing carefully and deliberately I could still form the letter…..h…that is….

Months later I was still writing….but without my h. It turns out h is in the center of the keyboard and it’s almost impossible to write a paragraph without it. The becomes te and without becomes witout…you get the point.

I made do without the h for quite some time and didn’t realize till later that it began to affect the rhythm and structure of everything I wrote. Writing became a much more deliberate exercise. I would have to go back over each paragraph and then fill in the missing h’s. Writing wasn’t as much fun and I spent less and less time at it.

Eventually I called my computer guys and bought a new keyboard.

After submitting to 48 agents, God took me in a different direction. . . straight to Barbara Scott, Abingdon’s fiction editor. My historical, ‘Surrender the Wind’, will be released in the fall of 2009, when Abingdon launches their fiction line. This is a huge milestone for me.

You caught my eye with your Yo-Dawg-Show-Me-What-You-Got contest when my lovely CP (waving at Gwen) mentioned your blog. I’ve been a follower ever since.

I’ve had 3 major (for me) milestones in the last couple months:

1. I attended the ACFW conference and met 2 real live editors and 1 super agent (Is there somewhere we can nominate you for ‘Blogger of the Year’ or something?

2. I finaled in 2 contests with the same ms.

3. Last week, for the first time ever, I sent a partial ms off to New York. (Yes, there’s a story there.) I held it in my hand so long the postmaster left me so I could be alone with it. I’ve had one child leave home and this feels the same. I put everything I could into it but is it enough to make it in the big world? We’ll see if it comes back…

A milestone for me came in 2006. I had been dabbling in writing off and on since high school (mostly off though), but in 2006 someone told me about faithwriters.com and I visited the site. To make a long story somewhat short, they have a weekly writing challenge where you can end up being published in one of their quarterly books (if your piece places in the top 8 of the editor’s choice picks). Anyway, my second story ever submitted received the number 8 placing of the Editor’s Choice, and was published in the book for that particular quarter!

I still can’t believe my own MM, in having the good fortune to sign with (drum roll!) Rachelle Gardner.

I also survived a huge professional edit of my novel, and feel that I learned so much in the process.

As for milestones, I’m coming up on a big one next month – my 30th birthday. 🙂

Thank you for your blog!
Mary

My milestone just lately has been the sale of my tenth book. Not all of them were to the same publisher or even the same genre–but that’s ten books to NY publishers, so I’m happy.