Miracles DO Happen

Let me preface this by saying I believe in divine intervention. And for me that is God, for you it may be something else…but without that intervention…The Secret to Hummingbird Cake would have never happened. During the course of this story I don’t want anyone to construe anything I say as ungrateful, arrogant or pretentious.

Because in reality…it all boils down to just the opposite. I was an IDIOT about how any of this worked. I thought you wrote a book, sent it to some random person post marked New York City, they immediately called you to say it was a masterpiece and everyone lived happily ever after. OMG….

I’ll skip over the part where I actually wrote the original version of the book, which was titled “Save Us a Seat.” All you really need to know about that is one day I was sitting on my front porch (in the middle of a pecan orchard/cow pasture) with my laptop and I started typing out a memory of a few years earlier. That memory eventually became Chapter One. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was beginning the grieving process that had eluded me for nearly two years.

Writing it all down was like therapy for me. After much encouragement from my BFF, I finished the book and after MORE encouragement from her and another very close friend, I decided to seek a publisher. Only I had NO idea what that actually meant or how to go about it. Then, while thumbing through a magazine at my mother’s house one day, I noticed an article on self-published books.

The next day, I did some research, picked a company and got my book published. I figured I would sell a 200-250 copies (basically the number of people I really know) and that would be all there was to it. But something a little bit magical happened and the books just kept selling and selling. I went to several festivals around the State and every time I attended one, somebody had already heard about the book. And I ALWAYS sold all the copies I brought with me.

he more books I sold, the more encouragement I got from people who said I should try to get it traditionally published. Now….I had never heard of a query letter, a literary agent (I thought those were for movie stars) or anything else related to getting published. But since I had always dabbled in writing, a few years ago, my son in law bought me “Getting Published for Dummies” so I blew the dust off the cover and dove in.

The first thing I did was join an online community that provided a complete list of agents and publishers. I began asking questions of the other writers online and I have to say I found them incredibly helpful and forthcoming. They were also very quick to tell me not to get discouraged if I got rejection after rejection because some of them had been at it for years. I thanked everyone and started looking online for a guideline to write a perfect query letter. YIKES!

The guidelines were scary as hell to me because they all said I should “name my last published piece” and “include my most recent awards.” So….ok….my last published piece was an article I wrote in high school for the paper when I was the 4-H reporter. And the last award I won was the Best Free Throw Percentage ALSO in high school. I ended up trusting my instincts and sending a mass query letter out explaining exactly who I was and especially who I wasn’t.

Within two weeks I had five agents contact me. I signed with Liza Royce Agency in New York City because the moment I spoke to Liza Fleissig on the phone, I felt like I was talking to an old friend. And now we ARE friends.

When Liza began shopping “Save Us a Seat” she told me it may take months to stir up any interest. We were hooked up with Harper Collins/Thomas Nelson in within six weeks. So you see, after all these things just kind of fell in my lap…I believe in divine intervention.

Now…remember when I said I was an idiot? It was never more true than after I signed with Harper Collins. Now they wanted me to edit the book. Edit the book? The book was perfect! Hadn’t all my sales from the indie copy proven that? How was I supposed to improve on perfection? Man, did I have a LOT to learn.

I am Baptist by birth, I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the whole family. But…as the sweet little lady told Ellen on national television…”I love Jesus…but I cuss a little.” My new pub family didn’t find that particularly endearing as Thomas Nelson is a Christian publisher.

The book was based on an eighteen-month period in my life and to me, it couldn’t be compromised so we butted heads a few times. But eventually, I understood the book wasn’t really my memoir. Many of the conversations within the book, the old version and the new version, are almost word for word true…while many other things are not. My editors taught me SO much about writing, about getting my point across without screaming *&%^%# and about the fine art of compromise. I am so grateful for the opportunity and the lessons that came with it.

In closing, I just wanna remind whoever is reading this, miracles happen ALL the time, you just have to recognize them.

And the meaning of the new title? Well…you’re just gonna have to read it to find out!

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Tags: celeste fletcher mchale, featured, the secret to hummingbird cake, women writers

Category: On Writing