{"id":6151,"date":"2009-02-25T12:40:50","date_gmt":"2009-02-25T18:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/02\/25\/major_milestone_my_first_proposal_sent_o\/"},"modified":"2009-02-25T12:40:50","modified_gmt":"2009-02-25T18:40:50","slug":"major_milestone_my_first_proposal_sent_o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/02\/25\/major_milestone_my_first_proposal_sent_o\/","title":{"rendered":"Major Milestone: My First Proposal Sent Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

After three years of research and writing<\/strong>, I have finally sent out my first proposal to a literary agent.<\/p>\n

I had hoped to do so before now<\/strong>, but I learned many things at last fall’s ACFW conference<\/a><\/strong> as well as through two paid critiques of my work by author\/editor\/publisher extraordinaire Jeff Gerke<\/a><\/strong>—and now my manuscript is sharper because of it.<\/p>\n

But it took time.<\/strong> Five months of time to fix my manuscript of all the minor things that added up to make it unpublishable. Five months of writing, and rewriting. Five months of my faithful editors cheering me on.<\/p>\n

And so now I wait and see what happens.<\/strong> But no matter what, this is ultimately God’s work, and He will do with it what He wants. There are many agents, and many publishers. And sincerely, if my book was written only to pass on to my kids and future grandkids, then it was worth it.<\/p>\n

Galatians 1:10 says it this way:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Shadow<\/a><\/div>\n

I like to think back to the time in college<\/strong> when I was reading the life-changing story of Jim Elliot: Shadow Of The Almighty<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n

I was walking through the snow, thinking about the book. And there I saw my footprint. MY<\/em> footprint. Jim Elliot was in heaven, but I was still here. God could use me, in his own way.<\/p>\n

At first I thought God’s call was for me to be a missionary<\/strong>, but that did not work out as I had anticipated. So for the last nineteen years I have worked a day job that I greatly enjoy, given my life to my wife and three children, supported many missionaries, served the church, and reached out to the people God brings across my path.<\/p>\n

But I am still here, and I still make footprints in the snow.<\/strong> And maybe, just maybe, God might choose to use what I have written to minister to someone. It is His <\/em>work done through me, made for His <\/em>glory, for whomever He <\/em>wants.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/center><\/p>\n

So even as I send off my proposal with my first fifty pages (with a brand new beginning to my prologue, nonetheless), I turn my attention to doing some final grammar and readability checks<\/strong> on the rest of the manuscript.<\/p>\n

As well, I have written the first three scenes of The Merlin Spiral Book 2: BLOOD & DARKNESS<\/strong>. And I am excited about it! This amounts to the entire prologue, and the first scene of chapter 1—and it turned out EXCELLENT. <\/p>\n

With my first book, I probably rewrote those first few scenes twenty times. But I am feeling more and more confident as a writer<\/strong>, and I think I nailed it the first time. Wow!<\/p>\n

Views: 48<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\nAfter three years of research and writing, I have finally sent out my first proposal to a literary agent. I…\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “Major Milestone: My First Proposal Sent Out”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,14,15,65,46,9,51,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-merlin-spiral","category-1-merlins-blade","category-2-merlins-shadow","category-activities","category-agents","category-announcements","category-editing-fiction","category-on-writing-fiction","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/562491_1_ftc_dp6.jpg?fit=496%2C758","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1Bd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}