I was debating what to post today when I went on Facebook to see what my friends are up to. That’s when I saw Kay Shostak (who may come and beat me up for writing this). It occurred to me then that the story of Kay has never really been told here, but it’s important.
To shorten the long part of the story, I walked into a room filled with writers the first full day of my first real writers conference, and a stranger looked at my name tag, looked up at me, and said, “You’re Jodie Bailey! I was hoping I’d get to meet you!” She was actually excited to see me. It was… very weird. As we talked, she finally told me she’d read my blog and wanted to meet the not-so-very-smart person who sent a proposal with no SASE or contact info and yet still managed to get a request for a full. Well, burst my “famous” bubble, why don’t you. But then, the two of us proceeded, in the course of the first ten minutes of our friendship, to plot the novel that will change the CBA world FOR-EV-ER. Please don’t ask what it’s about… that’s top secret. And it will probably remain top secret FOR-EV-ER.
Kay became a friend of my heart that day. And the longer we stayed in touch, the more I saw God’s hand in it. Because He seems to have equally paced our writing journeys so that we have someone there for us, going through our very same waitings. Both of us had requests from agents for full manuscripts at roughly the same time… which required waiting to see if those manuscripts would be accepted or rejected. Both of us were accepted by agents at roughly the same time. And now we both sit waiting (roughly!) to hear the results of queries to publishers. (I think both of us are waiting for the other to get a book contract so we can see if this streak continues…) We went through the ups and the downs and the uncertainties of waiting–and having our work judged–together.
The take away? Look around you. God has given you someone to walk with on this road. Whatever you are going through, it is not unique. If you stop and look around, a stranger (or perhaps not-a-stranger) will grab you by the hand (or stalk you at a writers conference) and tell you they have walked–or still walk–the path you are on. God’s cool like that.
And Kay is pretty cool like that too.
-JB
[…] That’s how I felt when I read my buddy Kay Shostak’s blog post earlier this week. (I blogged about Kay a year ago, oddly enough.) She’s one of my blogging heroes. She challenged herself to […]