when it is the acceptable time [or, about a book deal]

I

One of my favourite passages in all of Scripture speaks of the acceptable time.

In the acceptable time things come.

In the acceptable time God hears.

Waiting is the middling discipline, the centring discipline.

II

In my senior year at Baylor, in a whirlwind of happenstance, I got a book contract for a still being hammered out book about reading Scripture and the world as enchanted. They were a small publisher. New.

It was happening. The big dream was happening.

And for a year I worked, thought through, processed, but nothing much came out. It was that season in which God was gone. Absent. Removed.

I wrote what I knew--I knew Absence, so I wrote Absence.

Slowly a new book took shape. A book about that Absence, a memoir of God found, lost, and found again.

When you grow up evangelical in the South, you hear God speak all the time.

That was my dream of a book, a book of learning to journey in and through, of what it means to come out on the other side.

And then I suspected my publisher wasn't legitimate and my then-agent got me out of my contract.

And then my once publisher closed its doors and went bankrupt.

And then my once agent and I had creative differences.

And then it was just me, a manuscript chapter, two years of maybes and somedays and what ifs? and a late evening in early March on the Scottish hills.

III

When I found out, I stood in a field for awhile and tried to find my breath again.

If you've been here for any length of time, you know how much I have wanted this. How many times its fallen through. How many times you said to keep going. To trust. That you would want to read the book that someday might be.

And then it was.

That's the way of these things, I think. You become so accustomed to the possibility of it not working out that, when it does, you need a moment before the charitableness of reality can form in the palm of your hand, before you can accept it, before you can offer back thanks.

IV

In March of this year, I had dinner with John and Debby Topliff. Someday, I'll tell you more about them. For now, what you need to know is that they are a people of tables and grace and baking it out and, well, if you've been around here for a few times over, you know exactly what that means.

John used to work in publishing and offered to look at my book proposal.

Then John sent out my book proposal.

Then John was my agent.

Then John was texting me late at night last week asking if I could meet him for breakfast to discuss news.

Then if I could make a mid-day conference call on Wednesday.

Then John and I were shaking hands and laughing and dizzy with the outrageousness of it all. Because it had been March and now it's the end of April and the whole thing took about six weeks.

But God's like that.

(Particularly, I have found God is very good at making sure I never confuse any good thing as being solely of my own doing.)

V

Last wek, I accepted an offer from Zondervan to publish two books over the next few years with John Sloan as my editor. While the second title is to be determined, the first is confirmed as my spiritual memoir, Tables in the Wilderness, which is tentatively due out autumn 2014.

We're negotiating the nitty-gritty now, but I am honoured to be a part of their house, their team of wise and gracious editors and publishers who made me feel like I had a place at their table, and a people who were willing to dream big along with me.

They loved my writing. Not my platform. Not my social media numbers. My writing.

I remain convinced, as I have said before, that platform building is a cheap and fruitless endeavour. I believe in writing well and in doing good, in being generous with our spaces and others, and from that seeing what grows.

And we've grown some pretty neat stuff here, you and I. I look forward to the days ahead.

I made a little teaser introducing some of the concepts of the book below (watch it in HD!), but, for now, pass the champagne? And please, sit down here with me, have a glass yourself! I've made a few pies and there's some fresh cream to dump over the slices. Let's toast us as much as the wildness of God.

I am here, in so many ways, because of you. Don't you forget it. I haven't. Your names are carried in my heart. Your challenges and laughter and grace have storied my thoughts.

Now it's time to write.

Thank you.

Love,

P

when this is about writing books

When you grow up evangelical in the South, you hear God speak all the time.

Over the mashed potatoes, under the watch of the calligraphic Scriptures on the walls; in Carl Kasell’s voice over the radio on your way to school. You invite God to coffee to study the Bible with you and He sits beside you on the bus to church camp and laughs at all your jokes. You hear Him that night on the jungle gym and that time you stood at the corner of downtown with a sandwich in your hand wondering why you got up in the middle of the Ash Wednesday service and fled. And you keep hearing Him, years on end, even on that Sunday you sit in the parking lot of the small Episcopal church after the Baptist-based ministry you felt Him call you to do has crumbled and you are so vacant and so wavering that you tell Him you’re done, you’re empty, and He tells you to walk into church.

But one September morning, when you least expect it, you’re sitting in a friend’s apartment in the middle of September after a belated celebration of your birthday the night before—in which you drank French 75s and read aloud a short story you wrote about lighthouses and champagne, after which your friend tells you you’re sill in love with the girl you broke up with a year ago and you should call her, find out where things stand—and you’re reading the Gospel of Luke when you feel suddenly, keenly, that Christ the Lord is sitting beside you on the couch as you’re reading. It’s a different kind of hearing. It’s almost the tangible kind. Since this is new, you try to make pious small talk, pointing out that you hadn’t noticed before in the Song of Zechariah that Christ is there called the rising sun.

But He doesn’t want to make small talk.

“It’s going to be about trust with you."

Eight words. Ten syllables.

Then He’s gone. And you stop hearing God speak altogether.

It’s just you, the King James, and the Silence, which is really, truly, a feeling of Absence.

And you think it might be the middle of something, or the end. Eventually, nearly a year later, you see it as a beginning. But the seeing takes time. For a little while, it’s just going to be you and the Silence.

The first section of my memoir. The first words I wrote after I said, I think I'm writing a book.

I spoke to my agent yesterday about by varying book projects, the what, the why, the how.

We both agreed, after months of prayer and wondering, that writing my memoir first was the best thing to do, honoured best the readers who helped me raise money through Kickstarter so that I could be in Scotland at school and writing at the same time in the first place.

And so, samsara, the bending in of self back onto self, here's the announcement: I'm writing my spiritual memoir and I'm sending it out to publishers soon.

A Common Faith: A Memoir of God Found, Lost, and Found Again.

I suppose it could be alternatively titled, How a Conservative Southern Baptist Learned to Read Saints, Cross Himself, and Became a Theologically Conservative, Politically Liberal, Christian Feminist, and Idealist Pacifist Who Also Understands the Need for Civil Defense, and Who Also Bakes ... and likes bourbon.

... or something.

This is the first book that birthed in my heart two years ago, about the day God left and the journey I went on before and after that helped me find Him again.

I'm thrilled to someday share it with you. Soon. Someday.

I'm off to write.

when you don't have a book contract anymore

Shut the door, have a seat, we need to talk this one out.

Really, we need to bake this one out.

So imagine that you are here in my flat at the end of the world, in my kitchen where Thanksgiving happened and where the writing, on the nicer days, happens. Imagine that you're at my table and I've opened the wine, that I have pulled out the bowls and the chocolate I keep stashed behind the Arabian spices, the chocolate I only ever use for the best things. I've set out butter and eggs, I've preheated the oven, I've glanced around the kitchen, around you, out the windows, and have stood in front of the open refrigerator for a few minutes before pulling goat cheese out, because I am convinced that chocolate and goat cheese cupcakes can and should happen.

Perhaps I've just finished weighing out the cocoa, perhaps I've just taken a sip of my wine, but I'm over the mixing bowl when I take a deep breath and say, "I spoke to my agent a few weeks ago."

Then I turn to look you in the eye. Then I tell you the whole thing.

I tell you about how there was some potential problems with my publisher that slowly became more and more apparent the closer we were to turning in the manuscript. I tell you about the rumours, about a friend or two who were coming away from working with them a little suspect, about my agent calling me and saying that there was some shady business in all of this, that it might be time to pull away, that it might be time to save the book I've invested heart and will and time and chocolate and coffee into for months now---over a year, in fact.

And then I tell you about prayer, about wondering, about pulling the trigger and thinking if it was as easy as to not even be believed, it was the will of God.

And I tell you that my agent moved to withdraw me from the contract, that they didn't put up a fight, that in that motion alone, they confirmed how in trouble they may or may not be in, that it was good that I got out, that it is going to be hard couple of months now.

Now.

Perhaps the cupcakes are in the oven now and we're halfway through the wine, or onto the second bottle, and I'm telling you about writing a book proposal for the book I never thought I would have to propose, about sending it off to a publisher, about how hard it is to wait now, about how I have slowly, quietly, expunged my about pages and book page and CV of a specific publisher name, that I have waited to tell you until there was something to tell, that what I am telling you now is that all there is to be done is wait, wait, wait.

And write.

I tell you that I still believe Tables in the Wilderness: Scripture and the Enchanted Creation needs to be written, that I want to speak of God's glory in the everyday, in the midst of us, in how His word is the fabric of our being and the rhythm of our lives. I tell you about how I'm still writing it, still working on it, still pushing forward.

But for now, I'm waiting to hear. I'm waiting to hear if Tables has a new publisher.

And I tell you, too, that A Common Faith: A Memoir of God Found, Lost, and Found Again is not so far behind, that I plan to write it after Tables, that I don't know what it all means yet, what it will mean, but that there are words that need writing and things that need saying and I'm going to ink out all of it, every last bit, because it's all I know to do and how I know to love.

When the cupcakes are between us, still too warm to frost, I place the bowl of frosting along with a knife beside, raise a cupcake, mound frosting though it runs, and share with you the messy uncertainty of it all. I tell you that I need you to stick around, if you would, because these days are hard and lonely and scary and beautiful and awe all at once. I tell you that you, as a reader, mean more to me than I know how to say well, perhaps say ever. I tell you that I did this, in part, because I want to give you my best. I tell you I hope that you understand. I tell you I wish I could bake like this for you all the time.

And that's where things are now. That's where thing are going to be for a little while.

Hope. That's where we'll be. In this kitchen, with these messy, impossible cupcakes, hoping.