Become One of my Fifty

It takes a tribe of ten thousand fans to make a viable career as a writer.  Ten thousand people to anticipate, buy, and read my books.  I learned this at a writer's conference in Texas, and driving back to Iowa, God and I had a long chat about it.  "You've called me to write, God, so I have to write.  I have to do this.  But God, ten thousand fans?!"

Like the number 10,000 daunts the Creator of the Universe.

But God knew that I was overwhelmed, so He gave me a new number.  What about 50?

Would you like a front-row seat to the life of an emerging writer?  Would you like to join me on my journey toward publication, and more importantly toward the task God has laid before me?  Would you consider coming alongside me?

Will you consider being one of my fifty?

I have a quarterly newsletter to let you in on where I am in my writing pursuits.  You can see what I'm up to, what I'm reading, what I'm writing, what progress I'm making.  You can be the first to hear about the details of my website and blog launches, you can receive shorter pieces I have written, and later on you can be the first to hear about release dates.

Send me an email to kaycee_pancake@yahoo.com, and I will add you to my list!

I have just sent out my first issue of my newsletter, but it isn't too late!  If you send me an email within the next week, I'll be sending out one more round of this newsletter next weekend.  Please join me, and I promise you an adventure!

Seattle: Hashtag, First World Problems

I just returned from a week long missions trip to Seattle, Washington in which we worked with the homeless community.  We kept finding ourselves shaking our heads together and saying to each other: "Hashtag, first world problems."  Obviously, we were still in the first world and serving people who were also technically in the first world, but the sentiment applied.

Statistically speaking, the percentages of people in Seattle who not only attend church but even affiliate with a faith at all nearly constitutes an unreached people group.  Seattle doesn't even pretend to be Christian.  Politically speaking, Seattle is, erm... Well, let's put it this way: I'm a fairly moderate conservative, and I felt exotic in Seattle's political ecosystem.  They have a socialist political party--literally, you can register democrat, republican, or socialist if you want.  They have legalized marijuana.  Their minimum wage is $15 an hour.  And they have nude espresso bars.  Literally.  One of our girls walked up to an espresso bar to order a coffee to find the barista wearing nothing but a thong and two little stars.  We were just glad it was one of our girls who made this discovery.

Seattle is also the best place in the country to be homeless.  We heard this both from the organizations as well as the homeless people themselves.  People literally travel to Seattle from all over the country to be homeless.  We did an urban plunge on Monday in which we had a checklist of things to find ("If a homeless person were in this situation, what resources would be available to them?" "Where would a homeless person go to find this?" etc) and had nothing but our IDs on us.  My group ate lunch in a ministry called Bread of Life, and we had crab legs.  For free.

Over lunch, my group also met B, a young woman my age to whom I'd served breakfast that morning at Union Gospel Mission.  We ultimately adopted her, and she helped us with many things on our list, and then tagged along wanting to know the answers to a few other things on the list.  When all of our groups reunited at the end of the day, a few people good naturedly teased us for cheating (sure, maybe it was cheating a little bit), but becoming friends with B was a highlight of my week.

We were able to say hi to B while we were volunteering at Union Gospel again the next day, but Monday was really the only time we had with her to learn her story and love on her as much as possible.  When we left her on the sidewalk in front of the mission to pile into our van at the end of the day, I couldn't shake the feeling that it hadn't been enough.  There should have been more I could do, something else I could have said, something more I could have done for her, spiritually or otherwise.

But we loaded into our van to go feast on walking tacos, take some rooftop pictures of the Space Needle (and then run back inside because it was getting cold), and then return to our host families for desperately needed showers and a soft bed.  I hadn't brushed my hair since before church Sunday morning, we'd helped with Search and Rescue (bringing food and blankets out to the homeless in the streets) in the rain on Sunday night and only gotten a few hours of sleep on the floor in a shelter that night before our urban plunge.  I wanted to put on clean socks and wash and brush my hair.  I had college homework to do.  Hashtag: first world problems.  B sleeps among the laundry in her boyfriend's car that doesn't run well enough to get far from the curb where it's parked, and by some homeless standards, that's pretty lucky.

I've always assumed that mission trips teach you to trust God to get you there.  Mission trips are expensive, and they take time.  Time and money are sometimes tough to spare.  When it came to pass that I had both to go on this trip, I was so excited that God had come through, and now I would get to do Kingdom Work like I've never been able to before.  But on Monday, I realized that getting there isn't even half of the trust mission trips require.  I also had to trust God to give me the words to say.  I also had to trust God to give me the strength to be surrounded by so many people that I didn't know All. Week. Long.  (At our host family's home, I roomed in the basement with one of my CCF friends, and we loved coming home to our "introvert cave" every night!)

I also had to trust God to love B even more than I have come to.

B's story doesn't shock God like it did me, because God has always known B's story, and God is powerful enough to do infinitely more in B's life than I can.  I did the very best I could in a day: I loved on B, and I think I made it clear that I loved her because God loves me.  It doesn't feel like enough, but for me it has to be, because anything else B needs in her life is in God's hands now.

One of my Fifty: My Response to ReWrite

As most of you are aware, I just went on a super epic (and long anticipated) road trip to attend a writer's conference in Austin, Texas!  Early last Wednesday morning, I drove from Iowa City to Omaha to crash breakfast with my sister-in-law and my nephews, and then I grabbed my mom to join me down to Oklahoma City.  We spent the night there with my grandparents before heading down to Austin (through Dallas, at which point I was infinitely grateful Mom was able to tag along and willing to be my wheel-man!).  I was then plunged into two of possibly the most overwhelming days of my writing career to date.

There were a lot of people there.  And they were all strangers.  The only person in the room I "knew" was Ted Dekker, but obviously, he didn't know me.  I was there with business cards.  I was wearing slacks and makeup.  My hair wasn't in a daycare braid.  It was an exhilarating, terrifying, alternate universe.  And social anxieties aside, even the practical steps I learned about while I was there were a lot to think about with a full time job and school still on my tail (which is the reason for the delay in this blog post).

There may or may not have been a moment where I fled up to my hotel room and literally hid under the covers.

But while they were all strangers, they all understood me.  They didn't know it of course, but they did.  They all knew what it's like to have a story hijack your mind and demand to be told.  They all knew what it's like to write something that brings God and Writer together in impossibly intimate ways.  They all knew how to bring our own brokenness to the page and watch God mend our hearts in the words falling out of our pens.  They all knew what a calling to write feels like, what it is to write simply because "we have to."

Ted Dekker's daughter Rachelle described what it's like to come out of a writing session with two of the most intense pages ever written in the English language to find the real-life people in the living room whose response is: "Oh, cool."

"No no no no no, you don't understand!" all of us scream with her.

The people at ReWrite in Austin last weekend did understand.

And then I also got a lot of awesome, practical advice about self-marketing and author platforming and all that fun, author-yet-to-be-published stuff that made a whole lot more sense coming from actual people than it does when it comes from a Google search.

Then the reality of this dream of mine was summed up in one impossible number: You need ten thousand fans to make writing a viable career.

Ten thousand people.  I need ten thousand people to be interested in what I have to say.  I need ten thousand people who would choose my book as one of the statistical five the average person reads a year over the hundreds of thousands that come out.  I need ten thousand people to follow me, anticipate my publication dates, and be excited to read my stories.

How in God's universe do I get ten thousand people to like me?  How do I get ten thousand people to like me when I start loosing my mind in a room of two hundred strangers?

So after leaving Mom with her parents in Oklahoma City and taking on the last ten hours of the drive solo, God and I had a bit of a chat about this.  This is what I know I have to do, because we writers simply have to write.  And as was pointed out more than once during the conference, if you've been called to write and you aren't writing, then you're technically being disobedient.  Even if I wanted to walk away from this dream of writing books, I couldn't do it.  "So, God," I said, "I have to do this.  This is what You've called me to do, so I'm going to do this...

"But God, I can't do this!  Ten thousand fans?!?!"

Well, but reaching people is the whole point, right?

God knew I was overwhelmed.  He'd known we'd be having this conversation before I even thought signing up for this conference was possible.  So God gave me a new number.

What about fifty?

A big theme at ReWrite for me was that I'm not alone.  Even in that room full of strangers, they understood me and what writing is to me, and I did meet a few people who could be friends some day.  Moments when I feel understood as a writer are like gold for me.  But whether I have writers in my life who get this part of how my soul functions or not, I'm still not alone.  Even if I'm putting myself through school, I'm still not alone.  I feel alone a lot, in both aspects, but it just isn't true.

I'm not alone.

So here's to my family and friends.  Here's to my acquaintances both in Nebraska and Iowa.  Here's to the people of Cornerstone Baptist Church, Veritas, and Iowa City Church of Christ.  Here's to the new friends I made at ReWrite.  Here's to anybody who has ever offered me an encouraging smile and said: "I'd buy your books!"

Here's your chance.

I'm asking you to join me now in my journey as I start this brand new chapter of my reality as a writer.  I'm finally a senior now at the University of Iowa (woohoo!!!  I'm not an eternal junior, guys!!!), and book one in my series of five is a few typed-in edits away from completion.  It's time to start creating an author website, to start blogging regularly (and a little more formally... maybe... or, y'know, maybe not :P ), to finish this degree and have time to focus more directly on what God's been preparing me to do.  But y'all, I can't do this alone.  I need you to pray for me, cheer me on, and hold me accountable.

And then maybe someday, I'll need you to read my book!

I need you to be one of my fifty.

If you're willing to join me on this crazy little adventure (that just got significantly bigger, actually), please please please send me an email to kaycee_pancake@yahoo.com.  There will be a "quarterly newsletter" involved--but that sounds a lot stuffier than what it will really be.  It'll be more just an update on what I'm up to, what I'm working on, my progress on the publishing front, that kind of thing.  And "quarterly" translates to "when school lets me have five minutes to myself."

If that sounds boring, there will also be some short stories involved :)  (If you've ever read and enjoyed one of my Christmas stories, that addition is supposed to tempt you.)  If you prefer hard copies, then include your address in the email and I am 110% willing to snail-mail newsletters and stories to you!

*****I promise not to spam you or sell your info or anything like that of course, and if you decide you hate me later you can just let me know and I'll leave you alone.*****

Send me an email.  Become one of my fifty.

And then get ready, because God has something great in mind!  He always does.

~  *  ~

Email kaycee_pancake@yahoo.com to become one of my fifty!

Feel free to forward/share this link with anybody else who might be interested in a front-row seat to the writing career of a Young Adult Fantasy writer whose last name is Pancake!