| www.wendysaxton.com/blog | | Posted by Wendy on Saturday, August 22, 2009 at 9:55am | Welcome!
You can now select categories on my blog. I haven't adjusted to having two blogs just yet, so if you come here first and don't see much, go to wendysaxton.com/blog. I intend to use this one mostly for book updates and book related information.
The subpage for: book news is being designed and will be up in September. There will be a look inside feature with the table of contents and an excerpt from the book. And of course, order information as well.
May God bless you and keep you.
Wendy | | | | | Release date | | Posted by Wendy on Monday, July 20, 2009 at 3:31pm | After hoping to be in print by the summer of 2009, I now know it will most likely be this September. I'm so ready! The Jonah Chronicles has been a work in progress for five years.
Meanwhile, in addition to marketing projects, I am also working on a book proposal for a second manuscript I wrote a few years ago. The working title is a secret.
Watch for updates on the book news page of my website www.wendysaxton.com
Book order information will be provided along with an opportunity to look inside the book before purchasing.
 Book news
| | | | | The story behind writing the story...part 2 | | Posted by Wendy on Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 12:55am | When we left off, I was writing without an outline. And it's how I write to this day. I call them heart drafts; no outlines, no mental editing...pray, sit, write. Then I don't look at it for several weeks, maybe months. I do this because when I do go back and re-read that first draft, I can see the areas of my life that need more healing before I share what I'm writing about. I guess you could call it spiritual editing. And as far as regular editing goes, I do the best I can. As a writer, I have a responsibility to learn and develope the craft of writing, but in a perfect world I could write a manuscript, place a single period at the end, and then hand it to a very gifted editor who lives for correct punctuation marks.
Moving on...I didn't have a home office at the time; I didn't have a desk, so my good friend and neighbor, Isabell, lent me her card board table, and that became my desk. I was all set. I had a computer and a "desk." I wrote everyday, plus I still had the day job. There were days I thought my hands and arms would fall off. Massage therapy and writing require many of the same muscle groups. I learned the hard way not to write for hours before starting a late afternoon shift of clinical massage.
I lost count of the times my husband kissed me goodbye at 8:00 am on my days off and returned at 7:00 pm only to find me in my pajamas and discover that the pizza was on the way.
I have heard of writers who must have total quiet to write. They go away to cabins or lake houses to write their books. Not me--I wrote from home and my home happened to be the place where my oldest son practiced with his heavy metal band. Did I mention the type of music they played? It's funny to me now. And it's also proof that when God equipts you to do something, He can work through the most distracting of circumstances. He didn't seem to mind the drums, electric guitars, or the fact that the lead singer sounded like he was losing his last meal in the microphone.
The truth is I couldn't have quit even if I had wantd to. I was compelled. I was also embracing a deeper measure of healing and therefore experiencing a deeper walk with God. Some days were emotionally painful. I thought I was "healed." And it's not that I wasn't healed enough to live a regular life, I can see now that God had something spectacular in mind for my life and it was going to require a deeper measure of healing. The kind where you get to make a difference in the lives of others who are suffering. And while we're on the subject, I believe He wants that for everyone. He had to heal me to a measure that the hearing of someone else's tragedy wouldn't drag me back into the memories of my own. Does that make sense? Most of us are familiar with the phrase, "hurt people, hurt people." The same is true for those of us in ministry. And this is the last place where any of us would want our unhealed wounds to create more wounds, but often times they do. And because of that, I humbly ask God almost everyday to cleanse my heart of unhealed wounds and unknown sin. He happily answers my prayer and I just know He has one of those "no pain, no gain" T-shirts in His closet.
We're all human. We all make mistakes. But the gravest danger for those in leadership is when we paint ourselves into the kind of spiritually mature corners that leave us isolated. Allowing others to put you on a pedastool is another quick route to distruction.
And that is why God requires me to write so transparently.
To be continued...
Why I wrote the book | | | | | The story behind the writing of a story (part 1) | | Posted by Wendy on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 at 9:19am | According to Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, there are ten reasons for writing a book that you should never give an agent or a publisher. So I want to acknowledge from the get go that my reason for writing The Jonah Chronicles is not only labled as a bozo no no, it happens to be number one on the list. "God told me to write a book."
There, I said it. I can only hope that I'm never asked publically. The truth is I never aspired to write anything, aside from a handful of poems I wrote when I was convinced that the healing process I was going through would surely kill me. And to top it all off my brother is an independent film maker and writer. It is his paid profession.
I, on the other hand, have been a licensed massage therapist since 1996. I give clinical massages via doctor referrals to people who battle chronic pain. And that's how I make my living. I frequently pray silently over my clients and that is exactly what I was doing on the evening of August 11, 2004, when God told me to write a book and title it The Jonah Chronicles.
I wasn't sure what He meant. When I thought of chronicles, honestly, I thought of comic book stories. Plus, I didn't own a computer or desire one. Yep, you read it right. As a matter of fact, I got my first cell phone in 2009.
I went home and told my husband. I looked up the word chronicles in the dictionary and then a few days later, I asked my church life group to please not think I'm crazy, but that I believed God told me to write a book. I got up the next morning, read the book of Jonah in the Bible, and began writing on a yellow notepad.
I wrote the first chapter and gave it to my brother, the professional, to read over. He very politely told me that I had just pointed a gun at a piece of paper and fired. I was heartbroken and frustrated with God. My husband began insisting that we get a computer. I did not want a computer. I barely made it through typing class in highschool. Learning to type on a keyboard was not my idea of a good time, nor was writing when I clearly lacked writing skills.
And then the phone rang. It was my husband's grandmother calling to ask me if she could stop by the next day. She came over as agreed and presented me with the brand new lap top computer and printer that "God told her to buy me." By then I was frustrated and freaked out.
Michael, my husband, insisted that I learn to type. After several days of arguing with him, I decided to try it, hoping he would leave me alone. And I discovered that I could type. Not peck. Type; with speed and without looking at the keys. To which he said, "I thought you couldn't type." As God as my witness, I couldn't before that day.
Each day I sat and typed, never knowing where it was all going. I had an amazing testimony of how God delivered me from child abuse and betrayal, but I still didn't understand what He wanted from me. Eventually, I realized that the story of the prophet Jonah would play a huge role in the telling of my story, but I never had an outline or even an idea of how it would translate in writing...
(to be continued) July 8th. Okay, it's now the 10th.
I posted a new blog on www.themedicineplace.org/blog
but my ten-year-old is practicing his electric guitar and I can't hear myself think! My new goal for updating this page is this weekend.
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