My first book was very close to being finished in July 2004. Its proposal had even sparked some superficial interest from a handful of publishers; but it was at a standstill.
I had written Accepting Your Resurrection in small chunks of time – early mornings and late at night – for almost two years. Now, this project needed my daytime hours. I needed to let go of my consuming job as a church office and bookstore manager. Besides, to finish the book I needed to live the kind of courage I was writing about.
Writing helped me to make a life long before it became my way of making a living. Freelance writing was the best possible course for me, but for reasons (and excuses) familiar to all writers,I was not making my living that way.
I had to be willing to become a different person, the kind of person that could imagine freelancing full time and was willing to succeed at what mattered most to me. As I cultivated that willingness through honesty and open-mindedness, I began to have little insights and ideas. More importantly, I began to take action.
I let friends and acquaintances know I’d be making the change. I wrote letters to people I barely knew to offer my services. I gave a month’s notice to my church and signed up with a temporary service, thinking I’d temp to help support the family while I got my business started.
Life responded with a powerful signal that all would be well. Six days after I gave notice at the church, I was washing supper dishes when the phone rang. It was Debbie Luican of the Jodere Group. I enjoyed the first meaningful conversation with a publisher about my book, and I knew I was headed in the right direction.
As it turned out, I didn’t take any of the temp jobs offered to me. I didn’t have time for them. I was working.
Christine McKaskle is the author of Accepting Your Resurrection. Read
an excerpt and/or order the book at
https://www.booklocker.com/books/3347.html and visit her at
www.christinemckaskle.blogspot.com
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