An Open Letter to God

Dear God,

Sometimes, you’re really frustrating.

I want to write Christian fiction. You know that. And you even provided some positive feedback on a novel I wrote. A chapter was published in an online literary magazine, and I placed in two contests, one for some serious money, with another version.

And in the meantime, I kept saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah” to an editor’s nudgings about coauthoring a book to answer the questions of returning Catholics. After all, I was away for more than thirty years, and managed to find the answers I needed by talking to people, reading books, and going online. Doesn’t everyone do that? And hadn’t I satisfied you by coauthoring a book on parish programs for returnees?

It was a bit of a disappointment when an agent initially said my novel proposal was “well done,” then, after showing it to a colleague, said he couldn’t get excited about it and that I should take it to a Catholic publisher. Never mind that he knows, I know, and he knows I know that there’s not much of a Catholic fiction market for today’s writers.

The editor e-mailed again on that returning Catholics book. It turned out my coauthor for the first book wasn’t going to be available, so I pushed off working on the followup.

It was a bit of a disappointment this year when in my day job life, I applied for two promotions outside my agency, jobs that would have likely affected my work-life balance pretty significantly, and was found “qualified,” but didn’t get to the interview stage on either.

I wrote a few thousand words on the returning Catholics FAQ book, but it was hard! It required real research and citations. I wished that I would have kept notes when I did this for myself back in 2005.

“But I don’t know if I want to be a Catholic writer,” I’d say to friends, sometimes shortly after finishing devotions for a large Catholic publication or for a blog to which I’m a contributor. “I think I’m called to be a Christian fiction writer.”

I started a second Christian novel, one that wouldn’t be as controversial or risky as the first. I worked to build up my “platform,” aka contacts and marketing reach–including a Webinar earlier this month with my coauthor of the parish programs for returning Catholics book.

The day after the Webinar, the editor e-mailed again. We need that book, he said; we need it soon.

Finally, I said yes, and buckled down to finish it in two weeks. Two thousand words a day should do it, I thought.

Except that less than a week after I said yes, you sent the Holy Spirit and kept me up the better part of a night, making notes about questions and stories and sidebars and pullouts. And after that, you made this some of the easiest writing I’ve ever done.

Like I said, you can be really frustrating. Almost as frustrating as I must be when I ask for signs and you send them and I ignore them.

Thanks for your infinite patience.

Love, Mel