Published

 

    Last week something happened that I thought would never happen. Something I wrote was published on a platform other than BlogSpot. 

    A few months ago I wrote a short essay and sent it to the church website. I knew that members could contribute essays on various spiritual experiences. These essays are published in the Blog section of the website. I worked on it for a few weeks making small edits to it every few days. When I thought it was the way I wanted it, I attached it to an email and sent it. Then I promptly forgot about it. 

  A month ago I got an email from one of the editors of the church website. They wanted to publish my essay. She sent a sent my essay back with a few changes. This was my first experience with having my work edited by someone other than me. I liked it. Her few edits greatly improved my writing. She asked me to choose a verse of Scripture to include with the essay. I grabbed my Scriptures and turned to the topical guide. The first topic I chose didn't have any verses that seemed quite right. I looked at several other other topics and found a few verses that were sort of all right, but not quite. Then I thought of a verse that was quoted in a book I had. I found the book, located the verse and then found it in my Scriptures. It didn't quite fit the subject either, but I really felt that it was the right verse. My experience has been that a strong first impression is the best one. The editor emailed back giving me a publication date.

   As excited as I was by this, I told only one friend. That way if it didn't happen, I would not be embarrassed. There was a part of me that didn't believe that this would happen. Someone else's work would get published instead and mine would go into a digital trash heap. I pushed it to the back of my mind again.

   The publication day came. I checked the website first thing in the morning. The essay was not there. I wasn't worried. It was early and there was still plenty of time for it to show up or not. In a few hours, I checked again. It was there! It had been published! I read it. At the bottom was a short biography that I had written. There was one mistake. I had written that C and I live in St. Paul with our cat. Somehow it had been changed to dog. I wrote to my editor pointing out the error. She responded that it would be fixed and it was.

   The next thing I did was to send a link to my friend, Janiece. The essay begins with a conversation I had with her. I hadn't told her anything about the essay. She was touched that I remembered our conversation. I sent a link to a few other church member friends. I didn't want to look like I was boasting.

   C had other plans. He posted the essay link on his Facebook page and also to the ward Facebook page. He sent the link to several other people that he knew from church. I was a little nervous. My big fear was that I would come out looking prideful. C assured me the person doing the bragging was him, not me.

   I got several positive comments over the next few days, including a few I did not expect. A couple parents told me that they planned to share it with their children. Another sent it to all the women in the ward. It made me happy to think that others were finding value in my experience.

   This experience has encourage me to write another essay. This time I plan to submit it to the church magazine. We'll see what happens.