GOOD
NEWS!!!
That was
the subject line of an email I received last November.
I knew
who sent it, and I knew what it was about, but I could barely open it.
It seemed
a bit surreal.
After
all, I’d waited for this particular moment for a while.
Okay, a long
time.
The
picture book in question had gone through about 10 months of revision with my
acquiring editor.
But
that’s not what I mean by “long time.”
The truth
is, I’m pretty sure this entire process began when I was 10. That’s when I
wrote and illustrated my very first “picture book.”
Alas, the
writing was wanting and the plot was thin.
And then
there were illustration issues.
The turtle character I could handle. A rock
with appendages — piece of cake. But the frog dude? Now, that was a lot of leg
to deal with.
Trust me,
you can only hide your amphibian behind a leaf so many times before even a
10-year-old realizes that a book is DOA.
The
project was abandoned. And from then on, I left the illustrations to the
professionals.
Fast-forward
another decade or so, and I was starting to submit manuscripts in earnest.
But the
YES did not arrive.
Sure,
the stories were likely lacking. But I’m pretty certain that the main reason
for all of that rejection was the sad fact that my acquiring editor hadn’t been
born yet.
And then
he was.
Of
course he had to navigate through teething and walking, reading and writing,
and all the rest.
He did
it with flying colors — especially that reading and writing part.
Then he
spent 10 months helping me make my little book the best that it could be so that
he could take it to an acquisitions meeting.
And only
then...
after
all of that...
could he
type the words I’d been waiting for:
GOOD
NEWS!!!
Yeah, it
took a long time...
But not
quite as long as the Cubs.
And YES!
It was worth the wait.
PROMPT:
“Never, never, never give up.”
~Winston Churchill
