When I moved into writing along with my career as a statistician, I felt led to write a book titled: “Seek and you shall find” intending it for a non-Christian audience, possibly young adults, weaving my memoirs into my path to Christian faith. After consulting 8 publishers I gave up. However, looking back, it was a tremendous learning process and thus in itself worth the time and effort:
I got an impression of Danish publishers and their mindset. I would start my inquiry with “Do you accept a manuscript with Christian content?” One or two said “As long as it is not poetry, it’s OK, just send it.”
During the writing process I consulted with a former Danish missionary, who had lived in India when I lived there. We met regularly, she was keenly interested and at the end of not being published, she had an optimistic view. She thought that one day in the future it might be published and that at least 8 publishers had already had the opportunity of reading a Christian testimony!
Another learning item was that I consulted people in different fields and they read selected chapters. One of these was a Danish-Jewish-Israeli journalist living in Israel when I lived there. He showed me that I could hone my writing skills. Thus, he became instrumental in my path to learning more about the writing craft and when I completed a course with Christian Writers’ Guild, I wrote him a thank you letter.
Since then, I have rewritten the manuscript many times – also inspired by a course with the Danish writers’ association – and turned it from a typewriter manuscript to a word document and eventually stopped adjusting it and just printed it onto paper.
Someone once said to me: If you mostly write articles for magazines, your name will become known and then – if the manuscript is published – you may have a larger audience than without those published articles. Today I really don’t want it published because it is personal and now there are so many testimonies available contrary to 1988 when I wrote it!
All this just to say that a perceived failure may potentially mutate into a fruitful learning experience and thus lead into new unknown territory!
…a perceived failure may potentially mutate into a fruitful learning experience and thus lead into new unknown territory!