Getting the story out there
Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good.
-William Faulkner
I was fortunate enough to be at a university with a robust creative writing program while working on Forth From Eden. When I finally got that letter of acceptance from a publishing company, I was overjoyed, but a little suspicious. I wandered up to the creative writing wing of the Humanities building and approached one of the professors who I knew specialized in fiction. He dismissed the acceptance letter, telling me that the publisher didn’t look reputable, and that I should hold off on publishing the book until after I completed an MFA. The implication I took away from it was that my writing most likely wasn’t good enough, and that I would regret having the book out there.
BYU Humanities Center, where I spent much of my time in college.
I didn’t take his advice, and I moved forward with publishing anyway.
He ended up being right about the publishing company, though, and after a few years, I paid a sum of money to take back the rights, whereupon I self-published through Amazon’s digital platform. It taught me that there are companies out there willing to exploit a new author’s reverie at having just finished as large an accomplishment as a novel.
I don’t lament the experience, though. My writing has surely gotten better since that first novel, yet I am not ashamed to have it out there. I still love the story I told, and I am glad I was able to share it with the people I did at that time.
The three novels I currently have out.
A few years after it came out, I attended the wedding of an old high school friend. At one point during the night, he pulled me aside and thanked me for my book. “It helped me work out some issues I was having at the time,” he told me.
Another individual, who is well respected in both his professional and religious spheres, told me that a certain moment in the book struck him. It’s a moment near the end where Mike, the protagonist, after enduring betrayal, death of friends, battles, infighting, and torture, concludes that he will no longer base his mood on the weather. He’s kept this line in his back pocket, and he’s since used that line in public speaking engagements.
A third individual who was struck by the novel was the woman who would eventually become my wife, though at the time she read it, we had spoken no more than a few times. When one writes a 157,000 word book, one’s identity is going to come out, and by the end, she felt strongly that I was someone worth getting to know better.
Had I waited to publish, these moments wouldn’t have happened. I am glad I followed my gut to get the story out when I did. Although it didn’t fulfill my dreams of becoming an international bestseller or writing an iconic 21st century piece of literature, it affected a few individuals in very profound ways, including me.
