A few weeks ago I attended my first dinner at Keipi.
Never heard of it?
Me neither, before that night. They call it experiential dining and that’s about the best description in two words. I actually have a LOT more than two words about the entire experience (are you surprised?) but this isn’t the post for all those words just yet.
This is actually trying to be a post about writing a book and the process to get there. No, scratch that. It is a post about publishing a book - and the process to get there.
So - here goes, in a round about way. (Like I do.)
At the dinner at Keipi, all of the guests, many of us strangers to one another, sat at a community table together. The evening consisted of copious and varied amounts of delicious foods and a guide who led us in toasts made throughout the evening. We were all encouraged to share our own toasts and thoughts when appropriate.
One young lady shared a short quote when her turn arrived.
She said,
“Full effort is full victory.”
And we drank to that.
I liked the words so much that I concentrated on remembering them. I wrote them down as soon as I got home. I even thought - that might make a nice tattoo.
I’ll settle for a sign on my wall.
But I love the idea.
There’s so much in that packed little phrase for me.
Full effort IS full victory.
No - it is not the same as winning the game or the match - or, the marriage.
And that’s what she and I were both talking about after our dinner. We shared a few brief moments. She was young - much younger than me.
Recent was written all over her face and in her laugh and her close to the surface tears.
I looked at her in her own youthful and lovely eyes.
“You are going to be okay,” I told her.
“I’m here. Nearly a decade later. And I like my life. Dare I say, on a night like tonight, I love it.
You might too - in shorter than a decade.
This is not the end.
Although all signs in your mind point to this being the end.
It. Is. Not.
There’s another side and I’m pretty sure you’re going to reach it.”
Okay - so that’s a story about how full effort meant full victory for her in her marriage, maybe its beginning and its demise. She didn’t have to reach the end goal (fifty years! grandchildren! retirement road trips!) in order to be able to say she gave it her full effort. And that total effort is a complete victory.
And this is how I am feeling about my journey to publishing a book.
Stay with me - I promise I’m working to bring it full circle.
I attended high school without computers. I read books and I wanted to write one. In college there was a computer lab but Windows 95 literally came out as I graduated from college. All the things I learned about publishing sounded like, “You need a big name publisher to be a success.” It felt as if there was no such thing as self-publishing. (I mean, that is actually mostly true. It was not a well known thing. It was not an accessible option.)
Plus - there is a voice in my head that started way back then. It said, someone has to see your work and CHOOSE it for it have value. You have to be DISCOVERED to make it. A publishing company needs to say - I PICK YOU. I pluck your words up from the pitch stack and I say - you’re going to Hollywood. (Or whatever the literary equivalent might be.)
And so, writing a book, publishing a book, holding a book of my own making in my own two hands, felt like something I had to wait for. Something that would happen to me if my words were shiny enough, brave enough, smart enough - enough enough. My job was to somehow be in the right place at the right time and to be discovered, found, chosen.
Flannery O’Connor, bless her, wrote - “I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.”
This has been true for me since I picked up a pen and for sure since my high school English teacher, Mrs. Gruver, said I was, in fact, already a writer.
It took a recent conversation to process out loud my fears about self-publishing, the ways in which it felt like a Picked Last So I’ll Start My Own Game of Kickball option.
But the more we talked, the more I wrote posts like this, the more I thought about that quote from the stranger at the Keipi dinner, the more I realized my original thoughts were, in fact, misconceptions. That the world of self-publishing has changed. That there is freedom in this choice. And there is no shame or Less Than in taking charge of my work and handling the manner in which that work is presented to the world.
In fact, it’s the exact manner in which so much of my actual life has been lived. Some hard work. Some good fortune. Some seized opportunity. Some incredible community strength.
Why shouldn’t my journey to publication look a lot like my journey in life?
After that meeting where I said these sort of words out loud, where I trekked back and forth and meandered until I came to rest at a starting point, I took action. Last week I met with a copy editor and with a formatter.
I got quotes on their rates and I scheduled appointments and I felt a little squirmy inside, because it is not cheap. And that’s before the cost of publishing the actual book.
But I feel more confident with every keystroke. Not confident that the book will be some sort of soaring success and not confident that I’ll even make back all the money I’ll put into this project. I don’t know if I will.
Confident, though, that I am worth the risk.
That my story (and the sharing of it) is worth both the labor and the cost.
Confident that I have given this book my full effort. And, regardless of the response the book receives, that is full victory.
Yes! Self-publish the book! We live in an entirely new world than the one in which we grew up. I can’t wait to read it.
And Yes! Always, always-even while we teach our children that obeying our Creator is absolute victory-somewhere deep inside we believe that good results are the only true win. God help us! Absolute effort is absolute victory!
Praying your book makes it into the hands of the readers who will embrace it.