If you do what you've always done...

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got" (James P. Lewis).

I thought of this quote last night as I sat down to visit with a friend.

It's easy, very easy, to do what we've always done when it comes to writing, marketing, or anything else we deem important. What may not be so easy to figure out is why the results are the same, especially when we are doing all we can do to make whatever it is we want to have happen - work.

Are you stuck? 

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

I started out as a journalist, and I thought this experience would help me in publishing my first book. My first book was published by a local publisher, so, for all intents and purposes, it did work. But I wasn't happy with the publisher, so after my brother helped me to buy back the rights to my first work of fiction, I began my journey into the self-publishing arena. And I have continued to be self-published, some 21 books later.

Don't get me wrong, the journey has been great. I have sold a "few" books, met some great people, learned quite a few things, and enjoyed the writing process, but it seems to me as if I'm still in the wading pond. 

I have a new manuscript that I have high hopes for, but I am concerned about a few things. The book needs just the right illustrator. It also needs some terrific marketing with a well-known company, to back it up. I do my best with both, but honestly, it would be nice for a change for someone else to take the reins with me as backup.

I sent the story off yesterday and have no idea what will happen. Let me just say that sending it off wasn't easy. It was kind of like sending your kindergartener into the world, hoping, no praying, that he/she will be safe. 

I will need to wait four to five months for an answer, something I haven't had to do for a long, long time.

Will you pray for me? Option two is in the back seat, but I would really like option one to work out. What I know is that the Lord has directed me thus far, and I expect nothing less now. 

Change

I know it's not Christmas yet, but I have been feeling it. Have you?

The weather is cooler, the leaves in my back yard sprinkled across the grass like granola. I have no other way to describe it. I am amazed at the changes that have occurred in only a few short weeks.

Just last month I was in Texas, where the air was heavy with heat and I was expected to drink more water just so I could keep going. Two weeks after I'd returned I began to notice the changes in weather. I called my daughter in Texas. She'd noticed it, too. Instead of over 100 degrees, they were at 92.

Change. All we really know about it is that it will continue to occur. And as the seasons change and fall turns to winter and winter to spring and spring to summer, we'll finish writing that book and start another. We may decide to take a class on writing or to attend a conference.

 

In a nutshell, we'll grow.

I look with wondering awe at some of my earliest work, wondering when the change happened. When awkwardly constructed phrases turned into something worth reading.

And I am glad for change.