When I was a child, I loved to read the storybook, The Little Red Hen. It made me think deeply. I found myself wondering why no one would help that hen. “Were they all just lazy and apathic? “Did they not trust in her efforts to yield the wonderful bread?” “Could it possibly be that they were intent to profit from her labor later on?” Regardless of the reason, I was grateful for the Little Red Hen and what she taught me! That little hen didn’t give up, instead she did the work herself. When it was time to eat the bread, everyone was ready to help in that process, but the Little Red Hen wasn’t about to share. When I was young, I wondered if her act at the end of the book was an act of selfishness, or was the Little Red Hen withholding forgiveness and compassion in order to hold onto a grudge? Only with age and a few painful life lessons did I understand the lesson being taught, or at least what it meant for me. She wasn’t selfish and she understood the law of the harvest. You reap what you sow. I also learned that it is important to do the work we are called to do, invite others to help (even if they will refuse), and never give up regardless of the effort needed and the obstacles encountered. So, it is with my story of publishing. Much like that poor hen, I found myself with a task that everyone who should have been able to help, chose not to. Yet even though my dream was almost shattered by some shocking opposition, I was determined to finish the task God had given me and God sent compensatory blessings to help me out.
In order to explain my experience I need to flashback a few years and give some most important details. My quest to publish began 25 years prior when I was about 24 years old. I had returned from serving a mission for my Church and was attending BYU. For some reason, perhaps because I had been helped by so many authors myself, I wanted to write. Wanting to write and being able to produce a useful book though was not aligning at that time. I was young and inexperienced. In order to overcome my inadequacies I decided to strengthen an area of weakness. The idea had come to me while shopping at the local bookstore. While there, I noticed the qualifications of the authors attached to their books. I instinctively knew if I wanted to write I needed to work on building a resume that would help me gain the trust of my audience. Since the only things I really felt passionate about was the gospel, cooking, and family, I decided I would pursue writing a religious book. I began working as an MTC Instructor, from there I became a full-time Seminary Teacher who dabbled in teaching at area training meetings, as well as teaching an Institute class here and there. Simultaneously I worked as an EFY instructor, and I thoroughly loved it. After years of serving and teaching with EFY I was asked to be part of Best of EFY. Building a resume was a lot of hard work and effort, but I was learning a lot. The experience I was gaining naturally led to collecting book ideas in the back of my mind. My biggest preparation, that launched my ability to write, happened when I was admitted into the Religious Master’s program. There, I had intensive instruction in both research and writing. There I was tutored and mentored by some amazing Religious Scholars, and I wrote my first book. A Thesis to be exact ~ this lengthy effort satisfied that desire to write for a time and led to working for another department of Continuing Education at BYU, Education Week. I still planned on writing a book, but in a matter of speaking, working on my weak areas had paid off. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I had become a Little Red Hen that could do the work herself.
Education Week brought with it publishing opportunities. By this point I had the much-needed resume, and offers to work with publishers. It seemed to be all I had wanted professionally, personally my life was changing with an unexpected proposal by a widower. Much like the plot-line twist to a virtuous Hallmark movie the choice between marriage and publishing seemed obvious. I chose love and family like those Hallmarks. Unlike the movies, the harsh reality, and little known fact, of that choice was due to my weakened physical condition I could not choose both options. I had just completed an intense thesis project with the general young women’s department while working full-time in S&I, the strain of doing both had injured my health. I knew I didn’t have the energy to do it all. I felt it best to devote my time to improving my health and devoting my time to helping my family heal from the loss of their wife and mother. I too was taking on my new roles as wife and mother and needed time to navigate that world. Somehow a year later, and even with all the strain of my new family life, I was not only blessed with two adult sons, I was also miraculously blessed with a beautiful bouncing baby boy. In the past, my doctor had told me my condition made it so it would be impossible for me to have children. I knew he was a miracle! Due to the way policy with S&I was written at the time, the birth of my son meant an end to my career and contract. There was no surprise there for me and I found myself content and busy with family life. Fast forward five years and you would find me as I was gaining new skills in marketing and managing my husband’s office. During this time I was also teaching Institute again, but this time I was a volunteer. Working as a volunteer meant it was my church calling. I would often joke about the irony that it was so nice of the Institute to let me do for free what I used to get paid for doing. I was usually the only one laughing, but Jesus had blessed me with a joyful heart and good sense of humor. I truly loved teaching and being in the classroom again. I really enjoyed meeting the young adults and using my skills of teaching I fought long and hard to achieve. Working as a volunteer was spirit filled and I loved every minute.
While teaching I felt the prompting to write again. So I did. I felt I was true to the promptings I had been given, but when I submitted my efforts, my book was rejected not just once but three times. Since I had been approached to publish by one of those companies, I was given a little more of an explanation for this rejection. I was told that marketing turned down my proposal…to them it was too expensive and very unlikely it would sell enough copies to be worth the effort. For a while I was content with the fact that I tried and there was nothing I could do if the publisher wasn’t going to publish it. I was content and moved on. I said I WAS content! All until the day came and I had a prompting that disturbed me. It was, “You did the wrong thing with your book.”
The prompting telling me I had done the wrong thing felt calm and peaceful initially. Yet, the more I thought about it though I found myself becoming uneasy…I don’t like to do wrong things, or feel that I let the Lord down! I pondered and searched for the meaning to that prompting. As I prayed for understanding more information was sent and the knowledge I needed to move forward began to unfold. Thanks to some help from important and experienced friends I began to navigate through the difficulties of knowing what to do. Further information and interviews with the company that had reviewed my book led me to understand that after my manuscript had been lost for months, and it was discovered that the manuscript had been lost, they requested that I resubmit it by email leaving out some of the much-needed details for categorization. Through a series of unfortunate errors my submission was wrongly categorized then subsequently evaluated according to that wrong categorization. Quite frankly, the way it was evaluated even I would have turned it down. Also, since I was new at the whole process, I had made certain assumptions that had also cost me. This was the worst disappointment of my career. Disappointment with my career was not unfamiliar. I was one of the few women in a male dominated field and in that atmosphere I can honestly say it was a recipe for having more than a few unhappy moments. Learning what happened both shocked and devastated me to the core…mostly because now my concept was being published by the very company that I had trusted my concept with two year prior. (This information was given in an unofficial investigation by the former editor of the company I spoke with). While I was assured by the publisher that our concepts were different and the inspiration for theirs had developed differently, I felt uneasy with their explanation. Regardless of how I felt I chose to give them the benefit of the doubt. The improved view of what happened clearly revealed my mistakes but it didn’t change the sad facts of the mishandling of my submission or return to me the opportunity to publish my concept with my preferred publisher. Most importantly my mistake was, I realized I had forgotten to push forward like the Little Red Hen. I realized I had accepted the answer from a person, or company, as an answer of what to do instead of checking with God, the one who inspired me to write it in the first place. Why did I not pray to see what to do after the rejection? How could I have been so unwise? Nephi taught in the Book of Mormon that if God has something we need to accomplish, He’ll also provide the way for us to do the work. I wouldn’t let Him down twice.
At the point of complete sadness, it appeared that there wasn’t a good solution for me. The way I saw it, I wouldn’t have a publication because I couldn’t interfere with their publication. After all, my end goal of helping children understand doctrine seemed to be their goal too. Helping children to understand doctrine was most important to me. Learning from my first mistakes I decided to resubmit my book, with a few alterations as to not compete with the other company, while still remaining true to my original concept I submitted in 2017. God inspired me on who to connect with to make my book even better, and thankfully they were all very gracious and helpful! After I had improved and clarified my original work I resubmitted it to the parent company of the first company I worked with. Again, I was rejected and not just once but I was rejected by all publishers who had any connection to the first company. I was left not feeling like there was another option. I felt these particular publishers had the best skill for the kind of publication I had. I was concerned about what to do next. I had been told that our concepts were not the same, yet other evaluators said they were similar enough to mine to make them uninterested, thus the reason for the subsequent rejection.
Even though I felt nothing could be done at that point, thankfully my associates didn’t. The Lord helped me through them to not quit. I was prompted to keep going by an unexpected friend and contributor to my book. All my artists agreed to stay with the project regardless of who published it, that too was astonishing to me. I chose to have hope and I chose to turn to the Lord. To help you understand the desperation I felt, I would liken my predicament to be very similar to our Red Hen. All the farm animals that she approached seemed to have the time and skill, but chose to do nothing helpful, and it really didn’t matter why. Yet unlike the Hen, I knew I couldn’t do this myself. The feeling of devastation, along with the wound that came from mistrust, burned in my soul. I felt emotionally gutted and spiritually injured. Yet, at this low point I still chose to trust the Lord, and I turned my pain and desires over to Him. I knew what to do, I chose to ask Him for His guidance.
So, “What do I do now?” became what I needed to focus on. As I prayed, I was given clear insight without any specific direct path. I was told, “Don’t focus on what they did wrong, focus on who the book is for.” I was also told, “You have everything you need.” I was not yet over the pain from the loss, because it was excruciating, but those words somehow soothed my soul and gave me purpose! In moving forward I desperately sought the Lord’s help and healing. At this point I felt completely abandoned by earthly help I sought to resolve the matter with, I felt the only way to heal was to forgive and leave the outcome in the Lord’s hands! I found healing as I worked towards the goal that God had blessed my heart to carry. As I pondered on what to do and sought heavenly direction, I did get it. I received further insights and spiritual drive to continue. I applied every spiritual direction I received. I sought to forgive and think of who this was for, it was then I remembered the publisher that had been contacting me for a month. This publisher had worked with members of my faith before, but they didn’t have the religious knowledge and skills I desperately needed. I also knew there were advantages working with this company and so I accepted the terms of the contract and found myself reaching beyond my comfort zone for three more years!
Due to the fact that I needed help from those experienced in the doctrine and gospel of Jesus Christ, I set about hiring my own illustrator and religious content editors. This move was expensive for our family, but feeling a drive to help those children and at risk families, we invested our saving to make the best book we possibly could. There were plenty of issues along the way to work through, but I had learned my lesson to not quit or pause, but rather I was to push forward and trust the Lord. Along with the difficult days and heartbreaking delays added to the stress and pressure. I realized after three years of sacrificing my weekends, holidays, and vacations, because none of them came without me needing to spend significant time working on this project, then somehow, it was finished. Not to mention there were difficulties besides the publication. I had worked through difficult personal trials, the terminal diagnosis for my Dad, and need of my help in his treatment plans and death of my father-in-law. I continued to help with the farm, run our business where I worked full-time during the pandemic and supervised my young son’s education at the same time. Later, when the school opened again, I continued my volunteer work there and at the LDS Institute, and last but not least I produced and hosted a podcast called Gather in Christ. Somehow in the midst of everything I now had a beautiful book that not only described miracles inside its pages, but I knew the miracle the book was itself! I knew for a fact that when I helped others God lifted and helped me. I was grateful I had been true to my original prompting, and I knew that book had power to heal hearts. “Why did I have that confidence?” you may ask, because I was echoing God’s word and I had felt healed by those words myself.
“How are things going now?” you may curiously wonder. Well as any author knows, the book is only half of the battle…it takes getting the word of its release out there as well. I found that the Lord prepared me and my help not only for the writing portion of my book, but to assist in the marketing of it as well. While I still need His daily help and strength, He had blessed me with long history of marketing because I worked many years in a family business, and I had some amazing connections to professionals that were happy to help. After only a day of promoting my Ebook on Amazon it reached Amazon best seller status in three categories. I don’t even know how to process this.
If I could pass on any wisdom it would be, if you would like to write a book…the best advice I can give you is to join with the Lord in all you choose to do and trust His promptings! Trust that He has a way for His words to be accomplished and when He prompts you, He trusts you to be part of the process! Understand that hardship doesn’t give you an excuse to quit. We need to understand that the adversary is seeking to destroy you and the Lord’s work. His opposition will always come when we seek to do what is right. I have also learned that God will send friends to help us and more importantly He will be with us. May God bless you to do the Lord’s work and participate in Gathering Covenant Israel. Like the Little Red Hen we can persevere and gain new skills as we make the efforts that bring about eternal growth.
Thanks for taking time to read My Publishing Journey. I hope it helps you to understand how sometimes even the unexpected road can still be a good road.
If you would like you can order your book here!
https://bookstore.dorrancepublishing.com/collections/amazon-bestsellers/products/gods-plan-book-1-of-the-true-doctrine-series
