I remember the first time somebody told me I was an immediate success. Oh, this isn't a humblebrag, I still don't always feel like a success in my field at all, but someone else, looking at my writing career, saw it and said:
"It all just happened so fast for you!"
This friend, a fellow writer with whom I exchange ideas from time-to-time, was referring to the year (eleven months to be exact) I engaged with a traditional publisher and succeeded in landing the gig of being Dick Dickie V Vitale's (ESPN broadcaster) co-writer on the young adult advisory book, Getting A W In The Game Of Life. From my friend's perspective, it was my first long-engagement professional discussion and, through it, I got the job and was experiencing paid (though hardly a retirement plan) writing success. Therefore, 'It all just happened so fast for me!'
I smiled and made some sort of brush-off comment, ultimately allowing this person's assumption.
The thing is, as any writer can tell you (and probably any person experiencing any type of win), there is no "immediate success." SO MANY THINGS have happened before the world sees your final project. I've experienced some of those many "things" in the authors of FEW International Publications' latest collaborative effort.
On Friday, in a beautifully designed, wax-coated cover, 7x10, perfect-bound book with a complex interior, the world will get to experience the lovely gift that is "A FEW Words On Becoming Holy, Whole, & Fit." (Before release day, the link takes you to the adorable puppies of Amazon!)
The book--a 120-day journaling devotional with physical fit tips and themed devotions to improve spirit and soul through Nutrition of the Word, Exercise of Faith, the Rest of God, and the Water of the Holy Spirit--is such a neat little package that it could come across to one of the friends of these women authors as simple. We expect high sales rankings on Amazon, as happened when "The Miracle Effect" (another FEW collaboration) shot up to #1 on Amazon on Cyber Monday last year. An onlooker may see "immediate success" in the women.
What readers likely won't see from these writers (many of whom are first-time authors), however, are the in-depth life experiences and thoughtful creativity that went into the devotional. There was nothing immediate about it.
First are the experiences. The fifteen authors of these 120 devotions (each writer created eight studies), have lived through the trials and triumphs of parenthood, personal and professional successes and losses, the hard hands of hate, and relational joys. They are from all over the country and world with different backgrounds and lives from which to draw wisdom and insight. They have boiled those bits of wisdom down to a few hundred words of personal anecdotes they highlight in order to drive home timeless truths that you can turn around and apply to your own lives. In reading the words of these devotions, readers are being given a glimpse through the windows of the lives of these extraordinary women. Inspiration will surely, easily, (and immediately!) follow.
In addition to the experiences brought to the book, the fifteen "....Holy, Whole, & Fit" authors went through an exacting process to create a book that is as much an application as it is an art. Despite the fact that 84% of adults have "Write A Book" on their bucket lists and 100% of adults have a story to tell, the percentage of authors with published works remains relatively low. That's because it is the PROCESS of book-writing (and marketing) that gets a person from concept to completion. Every single one of these FEW great women went through one-on-one and group teachings and editing sessions over the course of months to ensure that they were able to:
Choose powerful verses that drove home the devotional theme
Learn to dig into the lesson of those verses through homiletics
Boil down relevant and meaningful personal writing into anecdotes and analogies
Drive home God's impactful truths in universal manners
Develop prayers
Create introspective questions and activities for the readers
Discover physical parallels to their chosen verses
Add artistic flair and intellectual research to connect to varying audiences
Present an accurate work
Determine and practice a means of reaching the market that NEEDS this book
Learn a little about their experience in their book trailer (click the words or the picture below):
This Friday, it is my hope that you will be able to have some immediate success with the devotions presented in "A FEW Words On Becoming Holy, Whole, & Fit" from the Fellowship of Extrordinary Women, but I hope you will enjoy the book with the knowledge that the immediacy a reader feels in a work comes from the patient, persistent, perseverance of a FEW great women.
Has your writing experience come to match the life experience you are putting in your pages? If not, it may be time for you to find a new way of bringing your stories from the Bucket List To The Bookshelf. Online courses, publishing partnerships, one-on-one intensives, free learning communities and more when you follow me on a journey to use better words for a better world. Subscribe today!
~Reji