Just 17 Days! Whoopee!

The countdown has begun. Just 17—seventeen—XVII more days until Amazon publishes the paper and the e-book version of Prayer Wasn’t Enough. My stomach flutters with excitement. The pinball machine of my brain races round and round, bumping into ideas from when A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story was published then skittering to today and its social media.

“So what’s the big deal?” you ask. “When was prayer not enough?”

Fifty-two years ago that’s when!

That’s when I left the convent. I left mute, unable to engage in conversation. I left gaunt, having gone from 118 to 103 pounds. I left with my deep desire to be a nun and to pray shrouded in ice.  

I felt nothing fifty-two years ago.

Yet sixty years ago, I was excited, eager, enthusiastic about entering the convent, sure that I was going to become a saint. All I had to do was become perfect. Easy-peasy!

And that of course is the arc of Prayer Wasn’t Enough—the story of an emotionally and spiritually immature young woman who thought that if she became perfect everyone would love her; no one would desert her. She entered feeling all was possible; she left feeling she was a failure.

Today and next Sunday, I’d like to share with you how this convent memoir came to be.

Following the publication in 1992 of A Cat’s Life, I wrote daily, completing several manuscripts. Despite repeatedly sending out query letters to New York agents, none of these manuscripts attracted any attention.

Someone, not sure who, once said, “Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.” So I continued to write. Then in 2014, a long-time friend offered a suggestion: “Dee, if you want to get published, write a memoir.”

 “Why? . . . My life’s so ordinary.”

 “My life’s ordinary,” she countered. “Yours is interesting.” Stunning moment.

We talked then about memoirs and the thread that could hold one together. My friend suggested that I write about the convent years. “Readers of your blog have found convent postings interesting,” she said. “Why not tell the whole story?”

Within days, I began to write of my eight-and-a-half years in a Benedictine convent. That was July of 2014. Then in August, health issues arose. They claimed most of my attention for a year.

However, by November 2015, I had a draft that was ready for first readers. Several bloggers and friends from Minnesota read it and encouraged me to continue. But once again ill health intervened. All of 2016 and several months of 2017 passed without my being able to write.

But by the summer of 2017, I was able to resume writing. I polished the earlier draft, added scenes, sewed the story together by embroidering the main theme. Two friends read the final manuscript and considered it ready for publication.

I had tried the agent route and experienced no success. I found no one who believed in the memoir enough to want to represent it. Another friend entered the picture. “Go with the self-publishing route,” she said. “That way, at least, you’ll get the story out there.”

“But how will I market it? How will people learn it’s available?”

“There are books on that! Research! You’ll find a way.”

Next week’s posting will be about the process of self-publishing. The following Sunday, I hope to share with you my marketing plans.

And then . . . then . . . on March 21 . . . Prayer Wasn’t Enough will be available through Amazon. Seventeen days! Whoopee!

Peace.

Photograph from Wikipedia