It never ceases to amaze me, the number of people who’d like to someday publish a book. I hear it from friends, from acquaintances, from the guy in the airplane seat next to me, from people who sort of knew me in middle school, from eager folks lined up at events and signings.

Those who are somewhat serious about getting published often seem baffled or frustrated by the most urgent-seeming question there is: How do I break into the biz?

As one of those grateful persons who received helpful start-up advice from other writers, and with a couple real-life books under my own belt now, whenever I’m asked this question I always want to help in some way. What I’ve found over the years is that an important first answer to the Biz Question is yet another question:

Why?

There are all kinds of reasons why people think they want to publish something. Here are some of the biggies, with this writer’s response following each.

1. You want to be famous/You want to be rich. This one’s first because it’s the most common. It’s also a terrible and incorrect assumption about writing. Most published writers spend most of their days sitting at a desk, doing the hard and unglamorous work of writing. And for most writers, writing is not an overly lucrative profession. There are a few who pull in huge advances for their books. There are also rockstar types who’ll pull publicity stunts and drum up controversy to sell a book—they can end up being especially well known and selling lots of books. Then there’s the other 99.9% of us. If you want to be a writer, you’re far more likely to land in the latter category. If, knowing that, you still want to write, then it might be something worth pursuing.

2. You have something to say. This is not something to be minimized. One of the incredible things about being people made in the Creator’s image is that we also like to make and express things—in this case, art and poetry and sentences and messages. But a publisher will want to know whether or not people are already listening to you. Within the spheres in which you live and work, are people paying attention? If they are, you’ll see evidence of that. If they’re not, you might be ready to start writing, but the publishing world’s welcome mat likely won’t be rolling your way yet.

3. You have something to say (version B). Are you really ready to say it? With your name written on the front cover? With the words put to paper, with no way of ever fully taking them back? Even if people will think you’re bat-crazy and freely say so all over the Internet? Even if all their friends agree? Even if the sales report is bleak? If your response to any of these questions is “no,” then either your message isn’t precise enough yet or you could use some added humility before jumping onto this train.

4. You want a fast-track or a silver bullet. Don’t we all? Still, at the risk of sounding unfeeling, I’ll say this. Imagine you dream of working for Company Q. It seems like a great place, but you don’t have any contacts there whatsoever. Still, Company Q has 25,000 employees, and most of them have their email addresses posted online. So you pick one that looks nice, and you email Employee X. You write a perfectly wonderful introductory paragraph, then you boldly ask for their advice on how to get hired at Company Q.

What does Employee X do? She, while likely impressed by your earnestness and initiative, might also feel slightly intruded-upon, and as such she deletes the email and gets back to work. Why? Because she has work to do. And because this is the third such email she has received in a month. And because she expects you understand that 1) the two of you are not actually in a relationship and 2) the conventional way to apply for a job when you don’t have any real connections is to build a fitting résumé and send it to the HR Department.

What am I saying? I’m saying that road into publishing is not unique in what it requires. Figure out what the employer (publishing industry) is looking for. Develop your skills. (Write!) Master entry-level positions so you’ll be prepared for the more complicated ones. Foster professional connections over time; then, when opportunities arise, you’ll be in a natural place from which to pursue them. These are the building blocks of any lasting career. If you don’t have connections in the industry but you want some, then do the work of making and having and keeping them. That is a great context for requesting personalized advice.

And if you’re one of the lovely folks who has emailed me lately, asking how to get published, I have not deleted your email. A how-to response is coming in my next post.

5. You love books. A fabulous start. But if you want to be in publishing, you should also love writing. That is: drafting, re-writing, receiving critiques and feedback, re-drafting, editing, deleting. Don’t think these are necessary parts of the writing process? Then you’re definitely not ready to be published.

6. You love books, you have something to say, you don’t care whether it makes you rich or famous, and you’re willing to do the grunt work. Well, nice to meet you. I might like to see your book in print someday. Check out my next post for some thoughts on moving forward.

Note: Today’s blog is an excerpt from my 2011 memoir Craving Grace: A Story of Faith, Failure, and My Search for Sweetness. Used with permission.

Ash Wednesday, though a noted date on the traditional Church calendar, is not formally observed by many evangelical churches. In my West Michigan neck of the woods, for instance, most Christians think this day is for Catholic types only. Most of us grew up without knowing what Ash Wednesday is about. We’ve never practiced it, and we have no problem finding it odd and a little creepy.

Before Mars Hill [then my local church and my employer] became part of my life, my only formal experiences with the Church calendar had been the more or less standard observances: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter. Sometimes not even Advent and Lent. None of the churches I had been part of in the past had been big on liturgy—when it came to practicing sacred rites and rituals, we were willing to light purple and pink candles around Christmastime each year, but that was typically as wild as we got.

There is a practice on Ash Wednesday called the giving and receiving of the ashes. Traditionally the ashes are burned fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday—those who come to receive the ashes expect to have that fine, gritty palm dust put on their foreheads. They wear it all day in the shape of a cross, given in two small smudges by someone else’s ash-covered thumb. This is a way of remembering and mourning. We remember Christ’s time of temptation in the wilderness and we mourn his death. And we remember and mourn our own dying: the fact that death and sinfulness rule us finally, that even at our best we are full of the deceit and ingratitude and arrogance and self-motives that put holiness on our own strength permanently out of reach. It is a fine, gritty reality.

My first Ash Wednesday service, technically speaking, happened just a few weeks into the Honey Project. Leading up to the service, I kept hearing announcements about it, and with each one I became more relieved that I already had plans to be out of town that day. Truth be told, I questioned whether the service was necessary. It seemed like overspiritualized fanfare—silliness, even. And all things being equal, I wasn’t thrilled about looking like I had dirt on my face.

The next year, the Ash Wednesday just after the Honey Project and just before I joined the staff, we had a service too. That time I didn’t have a prescheduled excuse not to be there. Plus, I was a volunteer leader with a small group of high school students at the time, and those girls asked me to go with them. Feeling I had little choice in the matter, I went.

There were several hundred people there, maybe a thousand. We sang, prayed, and read Scripture together for a little while, then a group of people holding small bowls of ashes walked to the edge of the stage. The rest of us formed lines moving toward them, and person by person we were smudged. “From ashes you came,” the givers said—vertical smudge—“to ashes you will return”*—horizontal smudge. It was a cadence, a buzz that filled the room. They said it over and over, once to each person.

The bowl of ashes at the end of my line was held by a tall, gray-haired man whom I didn’t know. He smiled at me in a grandfatherly way. When I stood in front of him, he marked my forehead twice and told me, his face close to mine, that ashes were my starting blocks and my finish line. I went back to my seat, then for a while afterward I was caught up in watching the room. Everywhere I looked—right, left, in front, behind—there were two solemn gray smudges on every face.

It was half a year after everything. My fast was completed. I had kissed a man twice. I had failed tremendously in all kinds of other ways. Grace had been happening to me with such ferocity that I had actually begun to recognize it and even expect it. For decades of life and faith I had taken meticulous care to keep my nose clean—now I was wearing my sin and brokenness on my forehead.

Glancing around the room, I was glad to publicly admit that I’m fallen. I was grateful for the soot-smudged folks who were there with me, showing me how.

(Want to read more? Order Craving Grace here or at your favorite online bookstore.)

*These phrases are similar to the reference to Genesis 3:19 in The Book of Common Prayer: “You were made from dust, and to dust you will return” (NLT).

Links For Your Perusing Pleasure

Here’s a quick compilation of the articles I’ve had published recently. They’re all online, which hopefully keeps things handy for you.

If you’re a blogger who’s looking for me to guest post or an editor who’s looking to hire me for your publication, I’d love it if you’d email me and say so. If you’re a reader looking for more, you can subscribe to my blog and consider immediately picking up your copy of my latest book, Craving Grace.

*updated Feb 2012

On Writing
“Three Cups of Tea,” Three Cups of Me
Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics blog

On Grace
Good Girl, Sweet God
Susie Magazine, September 2011 (viewable with account)

Better, Stronger, Thinner, More?
Praise and Coffee Magazine, Winter 2012 (viewable in Issuu)

On Spiritual Disciplines
Marriage, War, and Lent: Practicing Love During Separation
Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics blog

The Forgotten Half of Fasting
RELEVANTmagazine.com

On the Military & Military Life
Thoughts on Afghanistan from a Marine Wife
Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics blog

NOTE: Today’s post is a preview of a New Year’s piece I wrote for the January 2012 online edition of Praise and Coffee magazine. Find out more about Praise and Coffee over at their site, or head on over to Issuu to view the full article.

It’s a fickle thing that can happen, this shift from Christmas into a sparkling New Year. There are only six days between O Holy Night and Auld Lang Syne, yet it could be said that we who sing the songs are vastly changed from one melody to the other.

…by the time our Christmas trees are de-trimmed and hauled out to curbs, we might already be forgetting we are people with a great need who live under great grace. Without even thinking to consider what’s happening, we stow the Gift away somewhere with our ornament boxes, because the calendar is turning and now it’s time for resolutions.

Continue Reading… (links to full article)

It is called the Magnificat, Mary’s song of praise.

Luke’s gospel begins with the story of Christmas, told by way of two pregnancies and of John the Baptist’s birth first. Much is happening—all the noise of eternal change and prophesy-fulfillment and joy—but in the middle of it there is also the song, which reads like a stop. A moment of quiet and, appropriately, privacy.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…Behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me… (1:46, 48b-49a.)

When I was a waitress in my college years, a pregnant woman sat at one of my tables and ordered as her meal a dinner plate’s worth of pickles. I didn’t ask any questions, simply fished 30 or so dill spears out of a jar and found a way to charge them on her bill. Simple—because I thought pregnancy was as straightforward as that. As visible and plain as a bumped-out belly and an empty Vlassic jar on the counter.

But I have been in awe recently at how private a thing this is, pregnancy. That’s not to minimize; the morning sickness, exhaustion, waistline-expansion, crying spells, food cravings, and swollen feet do seem to abound. Yet even if you ran the gambit of obvious symptoms all at once, at the end of the day they would still paint only a tiny fraction of the whole picture. They’d fall alarmingly short of describing what this is.

Because there was that moment when you first knew, when everything changed in an instant. And the world expanded somehow—suddenly everything to do would now be done with awareness of a new life inside. Shockingly beautiful. Then came that day when the button on your jeans stopped reaching, and one day the smell of chicken became deplorable, and one day you sat up in bed and nearly bolted across the room in pain. Who knew?! Apparently abdominal ligaments can hurt like crazy. And then there are those early somersaults: flutters that feel heartbeat-like, but softer and lower in your abdomen and thrillingly rapid. No one can be aware of this like you are. Not even the baby’s father gets to understand in the way you do.

Back to Mary. She is the virgin carrying the Savior-life inside her, but she is also just a regular woman, pregnant. Such magnificent privacy: Redemption is stirring in a way that only she can feel.

Yet Mary’s prayer is not private. In a way it’s as public as can be, because every person everywhere shares in it. Romans tells us that “the creation waits with eager longing…” that “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth…not only creation, but we ourselves…groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.” (Romans 8:22-24)

The world has been pregnant, and the delivery is that we are delivered. Our sin has held us captive, but redemption has been bought through birth and a labor of death. We have been expecting this Savior, our hope, since day one, and he has arrived. We have seen his star. It’s a boy!

My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices. He who is mighty has done great things for even me.

Just yesterday, in a conversation about faith and its place in a person’s life, a friend of mine shared that two types of near-daily observations, more than any other, stir her faith and cause her to marvel: the beauty of creation and the generosity of strangers.

How incredible, she noted, that such life-altering, majestic things are common!

Then this morning, during my standard ten minutes of perusing major news front pages, a headline caught my eye about Kmart and anonymous donors and layaway. When I clicked over to the story and read it, I decided you should have the chance to see it too, if you haven’t already. (A link follows here.)

I know, I know: Christmas isn’t about toys, and general revelation isn’t the same as specific. But we can all agree, I think, that when generosity is the word, something remarkable happens in this creation. When pennies are falling among us, it’s because grace is falling among us too. And when grace is falling, people start looking around, searching for the source of it.

May we find Him again and again, in all our tiny interactions and shopping trips this Christmas.

Referenced Article: Anonymous Donors Pay Off Kmart Layaway Accounts

My dad picks one five-minute span of every Christmas season for gift-guessing. He saves it for the moment when most or all the other family gift-givers are present, simply because he knows how much it infuriates us.

Strolling up to the tree, he gives a lift and a few quick shakes to each present that’s for him. Then one by one, he calmly and nonchalantly names exactly what’s inside. Every year, no matter how strange or off-the-wall our gifts have tried to be, after his brief inspection it’s always clear: he knows what’s coming already.

“This is my new shirt.”

“Socks.”

“Golf balls.”

“Golf tees.”

“Duffel bag.”

“Ratchet set.”

Several years ago, my mom decided to get the better of him, so instead of filling out the “To” fields normally on that year’s Christmas gift tags, on every gift under the tree, she normally filled out only the “Froms.” That year, each “To” was in code. So instead of seeing our names on any presents, all we saw was a seemingly random scramble of numbers. If we wanted to know which gifts were ours, she announced—with a spiteful giggle directed toward her hubby in particular—we’d have to crack the code first.

That was what started it all. If you could only see us now.

Every year since, The Code has become more elaborate, more frustrating, more time-consuming. We Velthouse siblings spend hours hunched over our code-cracking sheets of paper. We write down every piece of personal information we can think of: phone numbers, birthdays, cities of residence, addresses. We copy and re-copy what’s written on the gift tags. We trash-talk when we’re stuck. We search under the tree to make sure we haven’t missed a clue.

One Christmas each person’s individual code was his/her birth month number multiplied by shoe size, with age subtracted after that. So I was 9 (September) times 11, minus 19: 80. One year our Social Security Numbers were converted to shapes, one shape for each digit 0-9. The worst was the year that our mom came up with a nonsense “code” on the gift tags, involving hieroglyphic-like symbols borrowed from an old dictionary in the house, while the actual code was that there were different wrapping paper prints for each person. Some of us still haven’t forgiven her for that one.

We have a system and rules for The Code now. It doesn’t get released to any one sibling until it can be released to all. (Giving hometown siblings no advantage.) Cracking the code means telling our mom what the code would be for our dad. (In recent years, they’ve teamed up and are trying as a pair to thwart the rest of us.) New grandkids and in-laws have seen no mercy—they have to fumble in the dark along with everybody else.

First to crack The Code gets his or her choice of a Pounder bag of either Peanut or Plain M&Ms. The rest of the family is to split the consolation prize. If nobody cracks the code, my parents keep the M&Ms for themselves, sharing only if they feel extra generous.

With less than 2 weeks left until another Competitive Velthouse Christmas, it’s almost time for The Code 2011. If I recall correctly, my brother Noah and I are the reigning code-crackers, but this year I’m gearing up to earn the whole bag of plain M&M’s by myself. I’ll let you know how it all pans out.

In the meantime, what’s your favorite Christmas family tradition? Share it!

Previous “Twelve Days of Christmas” Post: Day One: The Weight (and Wait) of Joy

It is snowy out but not icy, darkening but not yet dark, and still in a 45mph zone the car in front of me is holding steady at 15.

I have nothing to rush home to tonight, just some tea in a mug and some pages to turn in a book, yet as I accelerate and swoop ahead of this other driver I am starting to get a little huffy.

For several weeks now I have been waiting for something to happen. The specifics aren’t helpful to share; the point is that with all of my breath I have been waiting. Wishing. Wanting. Hoping. Praying that it would happen. And what I have been telling myself is that if this something were to come true it might possibly change my whole life for the better. The day would open up like a gift, and joy would arrive—enough to float on for a while.

So with every day that there’s no new news, I stomp a little harder on the gas pedal.

There is this crazy tendency I have—and maybe you have it too—to believe that joy is a single shining moment of happiness. That it’s the high peak on a line chart, the instant when everything comes together and adds up and is good. Something spectacular happens, and joy is the light, airy space afterward that fills up your lungs with dizziness and makes you grin like an idiot. So it is always the moment, or the next moment at least, that we are waiting for. Right?

But in stooping to peer under the rocky entrance of a Bethlehem stable, I find that my theory falls apart. Because here is Joy to the world: his skin red from birth, limbs flopped to his sides in newborn-sleep. Here is a mother—exhausted? A father—scared? Amid the chill of night, here is the stink of manure, the quiet chaos of new life. The unsettling hush of a place that is not home.

Here is Joy: an infant in a feed trough, low enough for the sheep to be curious and to knock him awake with their chins. Our Redeemer? At face value nothing aligns, and it doesn’t make a drop of sense.

Joy is not the froth and lightness we tend to long for and expect. Joy is an anchor; it is heavy. It falls into the coldest, deepest dark places, where the current and pressure are enough to crush bone, and it holds there. On the surface waves crash and roll, and we are not steady but we are held, and that is beautifully enough.

So when the soldier is not yet home, when the cure has not yet been found, when the loneliness hasn’t yet faded, there is Joy.

When the hurt hasn’t yet seen its end, there is Joy.

When we wait and wait and all for nothing because the happiness we’ve asked for doesn’t arrive, there is Joy. The Lord is come.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser… Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me… These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Jesus’ words in John 15

Note: No, it isn’t snowing in coastal Southern California. This piece is something I wrote a few years ago in collaboration with an Advent project at Mars Hill Bible Church.

]]> http://lisavelthouse.com/2011/12/14/the-weight-and-wait-of-joy/feed/ 5 http://lisavelthouse.com/2011/12/12/bump-ahead/ http://lisavelthouse.com/2011/12/12/bump-ahead/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:04:34 +0000 Lisa http://lisavelthouse.com/?p=1434 Or, more aptly titled, Bump In Progress.

In a classic example of professional life bowing to personal, the excuse for my recent blog absence is that rumors are true: The first trimester of a pregnancy can be brutal. I will not get into the gory details or attempt to explain morning sickness to anyone who hasn’t been there. The point is: Hooray, there’s a baby on the way!

Now that I’m back to feeling well, I’ll thank you for your patience if you’ve been waiting on a new post here. Be on the lookout later this week—I’ve got a few Christmas-y things up my sleeve and in my drafts folder. See you again soon!

For me, now, worry is my husband and Afghanistan. When I worry (more likely than not, some days), it is always about Nathan and the war.

I worry about the upcoming deployment, about combat zones and mortars and grenades, about ambushes and IED’s. I worry about snipers. I worry about torturers. I worry about suicide bombers. If it can be worried about, I am worrying. This is not uncommon for military spouses and family members, but I have to accept that from a biblical perspective it’s not OK.

At issue here is not the Afghan war or war in general or my husband’s safety or the safety of his men or the horrible “What if’s” that could happen or any of the other worrisome things that tend to crisscross and crisscross in my head these days. From a biblical perspective, the biggest threat to me and the thing that should concern me most here is my worry itself.

The problem with worry is not that it’s a waste of resources, ticking away minutes and hours that could otherwise be spent trusting. This is not a time-management issue, no. The problem with my worry is that it forgets God is supreme. It denies how he moves powerfully in circumstances that don’t necessarily make sense to me. How he uses pain and tragedy and even unthinkable events to shape people and to shine a big light on his glory. How his ways are not our ways.

Worry begins and ends at me. My wants, my fears, my horrible “What if’s.” It refuses to acknowledge that even one of them could be slightly out of joint.

And worry also doesn’t lead to a loving God. Not to a self-giving God, not to the God who is good. It leads away from him, says “I can’t trust him,” or at least “I’m not sure I can.” It says, “I’d rather let this fear fester like an ulcer than feel like I’ve put things in his hands.”

This is why, I think, the Apostle Paul writes that prayer—not just any prayer, thankful prayer—should be our approach to circumstances. (He writes this in Philippians 4, which presents anxiety as our other, bad, option.) Because to be thankful in prayer makes focusing on God’s goodness a necessity. You cannot give thanks while also believing that God is a spiteful jerk. You can’t give thanks when you think he’s holding out or on a power trip. You can speak words of thanksgiving, but you can’t actually be thankful saying them.

The word of the day is NEAR.

The Lord is at hand, Paul says. Amid all that is or could become painful and scary and terribly sad, the maker of the universe is close enough to touch. He has made himself accessible to mere people; he has poured out his own blood so that we can find him and be found in him eternally. This is the one thing we can’t survive without—by comparison, all else is trivial.

God’s nearness is the proof and the reason that our concerns are safer in God’s hands than they could ever be in our own. He has shown, once and for all, that he is for us. This is the fix for our worst worry, the source of all gratitude.

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. -Philippians 4:5b-7

*From For the Love of God, Vol I. Crossway, 1998. October 10 entry.