When You Get Something Wrong

A funny thing happens when you write novels. As release day approaches, so too, does the anxiety. I’m not alone. In fact, most of my writer friends are familiar with this particular correlation.

Penning words that people in this broken world will read? It’s powerful stuff. Words hold the ability to shape and challenge and reinforce thought. And if I may borrow from Peter Parker’s uncle, with that power comes responsibility.

It’s a responsibility I feel profoundly.

So here’s where I get vulnerable.

Life After releases next week. I exhaled a giant sigh of relief when it received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Another Thank You Jesus when it showed up as one of RT Magazine’s Top Picks. Some early readers are saying its my best, most complex novel yet. All of which encourages me something fierce. Because I believe in this story. I believe in God’s ability to use it for His glory. I’m excited to get it into the hands of readers.

But recently, I was struck with an acute bout of anxiety.

All surrounding two lines of dialogue that occur in the book.

Two lines of dialogue most people will read right over and not think twice about. And that, right there, is what compels me most to write this post.

Over the past year or so, the Lord has been slowly and methodically removing the scales from my eyes. Scales that have made it easy to overlook the injustices so many people of color face in this country. God’s teaching me more and more each day, but I still have a long way to go. And sometimes, my ignorance smacks me across the face.

A la, these two lines.

They belong to Ina May Huett, an elderly black character living in Chicago. She speaks them as she’s flipping through one of her photo albums with the main character, Autumn Manning.

The first line comes after a photograph of her late husband and his family, standing in front of a clapboard house:

“Those were his brothers and sister. Smack-dab in the middle of the Great Depression. Black folk in America think it’s tough today, and I’m not discounting that. Lord know, there’s still plenty of injustice in this world, but, hoo-boy, it’s nothing like it was for a black family back then.”

I’m not discrediting the viewpoint. It’s one I’ve heard expressed before. Life was harder back then. When a black child could be tortured and killed for whistling at a white woman, and black men were hung from trees, and Jim Crow said black bodies could fight in our wars but they couldn’t have our same rights. It was most certainly harder.

But I cringe at the wording.

Black folk in America think it’s tough today …

That single word minimizes black pain now.

The racial injustice of today is not a figment of black imagination. It is real. It is pervasive. And we, the Church–a body that is called to stand against all forms of injustice–should be the first to address it.

The second line comes after a photograph of Ina May and her husband standing beside Martin Luther King Jr. before they marched in Washington. Ina May tells Autumn about some encouragement she recently offered a white mother who was having a holy terror of a time managing her three small children (two white, one black) in the middle of a grocery store.

“And all I could think was, you should see us now, Dr. King. You should see us now.”

Of the two lines, this one jars me the most.

All of us want to feel comfortable. We don’t like to squirm. I think it’s a big reason why so many of us steer clear of hard, honest conversations about race. We want MLK’s I Have a Dream speech without his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, where he calls out the white moderate. Because indifference, beloved, is the greatest enemy of love. And oh, how the blood of indifference has stained our hands.

White history in America is ugly, y’all. Ugly with a capital U. And when it comes to history, we have two choices. Just two. We can either learn from it. Or we can repeat it.

If Martin Luther King saw us now, I’m not so sure he’d be very pleased.

We might not have lynchings anymore, but we still live in a society that de-values and de-humanizes black and brown bodies.

Jim Crow laws might be a thing of the past, but we still live in a segregated America. We are a product of the past and until very recently, red-lining was a thing. I hear so many people talking about how “those people” just want government handouts, ignorant of the fact that our white ancestors took government hand-outs that our black ancestors were denied, essentially creating the urban ghettos and in effect, the grossly unfair distribution of opportunity we see today.

And this is just the tippity-top of the racial iceberg.

When we choose to look away? When we choose comfort and warm fuzzies over the very real cries of our marginalized brothers and sisters, we are the problem. We become the white moderate MLK called out in that letter. We become Jeremiah 8:11 …

They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
    saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
    when there is no peace.

When I wrote that small snippet, my intention wasn’t to perpetuate white comfort. My intention wasn’t to add to this rose-colored mentality so many of us want to cling to. My intention came from a personal experience, wherein I was that struggling white mama, and a black woman became my Ina May.

But at the end of the day, the intention behind our words does not matter more than the impact our words have.

Hence, this post.

About how sometimes, we don’t recognize our own biases until later, when they are staring up at us from the pages of a novel. One that you happened to write.

One I hope you will read.

Perhaps when you get to that particular scene, it will serve as a reminder. A challenge. To pause and pray for the scales to fall. For eyes to see. This is how I’m combatting the anxiety. Through prayer. That God would bring good out of my mistake.

Essentially, this is my prayer for every book I write. That He would take my paltry offering of words, and draw hearts closer to Him.

May He do the same now.

If you’d like to learn more about the issues facing black Americans today, here are just a few of many, many invaluable resources:

Pass the Mic, the official podcast of RAAN (Reformed African American Network)

Truth’s Table, three black Christian women who love truth and seek it out wherever it leads

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Beverly Daniel Tatum

13th – a documentary on Netflix

The Evolution of a Story

Four and a half years ago, I finished writing a book called A Broken Kind of Beautiful and wasn’t sure what to write next.

I’m not one of those writers who has a constant overflow of story ideas. A disconcerting thing, especially when I’m around those writers who have a constant overflow of story ideas and like to say things like:

I just started this story, but five other ideas are calling my name!

All the while, I twiddle my thumbs and whistle off in the corner, trying not to panic that I’ve used mine all up.

Anyway, I finished the story about Ivy, a fashion model at the end of a career that has always defined her, and came across this random news article.

It was about this boy who survived a plane crash.

A total miraculous survival, as the plane was completely decimated, along with every other passenger with it.

Enter The Spark!

What a relief this brings, when an idea does strike. I start petting it, cooing to it, like Gollum and the ring.

After I read that article, the wheels in my mind started spinning. I began asking the question every novelist asks, “What if …?”

What if instead of a plane, it’s a train?

What if it’s a big national tragedy?

What if the entire country becomes obsessed with this woman because of her miraculous survival?

What if, in turn, this woman becomes obsessed with the people who didn’t survive? What if this woman becomes obsessed with the dead?

At the time, I considered myself a contemporary romance author, which meant that I needed a hero to go with my heroine.

What if the hero was a man who lost his wife in that same tragedy? A man who wants to forget. Paired with a woman desperate to remember. Ooo. Every novelist loves a bit of irony.

Dredging up the Courage

I have a secret:

I’m a dreadful writer.

My first drafts are never good. Combine that with the fact that I find the blank page terribly intimidating, and well … getting the story down is never easy.

And so, I have to work up the courage to write ugly. To trust the process.

I repeat things to myself like:

You can’t edit what’s not there!

And, don’t get it right, just get it written!

Like Dory, I keep swimming. I write through all the insecurity. There are moments – encouraging bursts of, “There is something here!” – but for the most part, it’s not pretty.

I wrote the rough draft of this particular story all the way back in 2012. A good chunk of it I wrote in Galena, Illinois with my pal Erica Vetsch. We spent the weekend holed up in a hotel, drinking copious amounts of Diet Coke, our fingers flying across the keyboards.

And then I finished and I went through the many, many, MANY stages of editing. The story became functional, something I would actually show another person. Like my agent and my editor.

At the time, it was a romance. Tentatively titled Falling for Autumn, even though I always referred to it as the train story.

Waiting Its Turn

Remember, this was 2012.

Fun fact: When I signed my second 2-book contract with Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing House, they wanted the train story. They planned to publish that one first, The Art of Losing Yourself (which was only a spark of an idea at the time) second.

A Broken Kind of Beautiful was not on the docket at all, even though it was complete and one of my personal favorites.

I sent the synopsis of the train story off to my editor.

She read it, and … we needed to talk.

There were problems. BIG problems. It would require a massive rewrite.

My heart, my friends, just wasn’t in it. My heart was beating for Ivy the model and her journey down in Greenbrier, South Carolina.

So I suggested that we look at A Broken Kind of Beautiful instead. I believed in this book. Believed, believed, believed. I was still wishy-washy about the train story.

And so, we moved forward with Ivy. She was published first. In 2014, she met the world. I got busy bringing Carmen and Gracie to life, the two leads in The Art of Losing Yourself.

All the while, the train story languished in a file on my computer’s hard drive.

Dusting It Off

This brings us into 2015.

I signed my third 2-book contract with Waterbrook, this time, for two books not yet written. These were just little sparks.

I started writing the first. And boy, was it a painful, painful process. This story was not cooperating. The whole thing filled me with angst. No magical moments at all. But I persisted (stubbornly, and foolishly). I pushed through. I finished the worst rough draft ever to exist in the world, and I sent the summary off to my editor.

There were two components of the story she wasn’t a fan of. Slight problem. Those two things WERE the story. I mean, that was it. Take those two things out, and I had nothing. Not to get dramatic or anything, but the thought of going back to the drawing board for this particular book made me want to shrivel into a ball and die.

So I said, in a squeaky, discouraged sort of voice, “Hey, what about the train story?”

While this, too, needed a massive re-write, my heart was drawn to what it once wasn’t. The premise of the story grabbed me, even all these years later.

It was better for my health to work on something that grabbed me, instead of working on something that made me want to curl into a ball and die.

So the rough draft that I had just finished went into hiding. Maybe someday, it, too, will get pulled out and dusted off.

Right then, though, it was the train story’s turn.

Becoming Something New

My editor and I talked about all the various problems. We came up with solutions.

And you guys?

I rewrote this thing from the ground up.

The premise remained. The name of my main character remained. The hero remained. Almost everything else changed.

Along with the title.

Life After by Katie Ganshert

While I was furiously re-writing, my publishing house was creating the perfect face. My editor sent it to me via a private message on Facebook and I loved it so much I told her to, “Shut up!”

It spurred me onward.

Finally, I finished. Y’all, I was in love. The whole process of rewriting, especially in light of how awful the previous failed project had been, felt magical. I was in my element. And so, I emailed it off to my editor with confidence.

And then I waited.

Next Level, Please

The first round of edits with a publishing house has many different names:

Content edits, macro edits, substantive edits.

They all mean the same thing.

Basically, BIG edits. I don’t know a single author whose stomach doesn’t shrink into the size of a raisin at the thought of them.

My big edits have always been extra, extra big. And I was extra, extra afraid this time around. Because I loved this story and I didn’t want to change it.

Enter: the phone call.

My editor had read the manuscript and was ready to talk.

She liked it. Of course, there were some issues. She saw ways to bring it to the next level that would require a substantial overhaul, but if I really liked it the way it was, that overhaul wasn’t necessary.

Whew! This was looking to be my lightest big edit yet.

It had been a good chunk of time since I submitted the manuscript. I needed to re-acclimate myself with the characters. I printed it out at Staples and started reading.

A funny thing happened. I was thoroughly NOT impressed. Which is thoroughly NOT a good feeling.

Afterward, I had a two hour Skype session with my editor, I rolled up my sleeves, and I got to work. Revising and rewriting once again, this poor story that had already taken on so many different shapes and versions.

An Accomplishment

My friends, I can tell you that last night, I emailed this newly revised version off to my editor, once again.

Big edits. Check!

The hardest work behind me. Check!

Sure, there are still line edits, and copy edits. Probably still some biggish issues to iron out. But the hard, hard work is through.

And while I’d love to say that it’s awesome and I can’t wait for you to read it, my eyes are too crossed and my heart too close to have any objectivity at all.

I’ll have to rely on my editors for that.

For now, it is time to start a new adventure, with a new setting and new characters. An entirely different, “What if …”

Let the brainstorming begin!

A Warm Reminder Giveaway

*WINNERS HAVE BEEN CHOSEN. THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED*

I need a happy place.

Does anybody else need a happy place?

I mean, I have my new cover with which I’m a wee bit obsessed. When the world looks dark and gray, this has become a sort of happy place.

Life After

But even that can’t shoo away all the divisiveness that seems to be lurking around every social media corner these days.

We’re all so busy feeling offended or slighted or defensive or indignant that we’re forgetting about Romans 12:10.

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.

Man, what would our life, our churches, our world look like if we could tattoo that verse on our hearts?

It’s a hard one to live, though, right? (Please tell me I’m not alone.)

There’s this song I love by Hillsong United. It’s called From the Inside Out. In fact, this is the song that inspired the title of my novel, The Art of Losing Yourself.
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Your will above all else
My purpose remains
The art of losing myself in bringing you praise
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Here’s what I’ve experienced:
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True joy, true peace, true contentment and courage comes when we lose ourselves in Him.
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That’s my ultimate happy place.
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And when I do that–when I lose myself in Him–I’m no longer so darned concerned about my rights or my opinions or my feelings or my fears. It’s about Him and His Kingdom, which is made up of real-life hurting people living real-life complex stories. And when He and His Kingdom become our heart’s cry, Romans 12:10 becomes as natural as breathing.

So in that vein, I’m giving away some gifts.

I hope that for anybody reading, and especially for the five people who win, this will be a warm reminder that our happy place is never more than a prayer away. I hope it will be a warm reminder that we will never regret kindness or grace, and sometimes, the very best way to honor anyone is by listening. While I probably shouldn’t attempt to tattoo anything on anybody’s heart, I can give you something that will allow you to wear it close by.

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To enter to win this necklace and an autographed copy of The Art of Losing Yourself, fill out the form below. I will use random.org to select five winners!
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Please note, you do not have to subscribe to my email list to enter. It is, however, the best way to stay up to date on my latest book news, such as new releases, bargains, giveaways, etc. I detest spam, so you never have to worry about that with me!

Much love, reader friends!