For us, summer started behind and never caught up. All good things. But there hasn’t been enough watermelon on the porch time.
And I’m tired. Between camps and deadlines and driving 264 miles a day (an exaggeration but that’s how it feels), I’m wishing I had someone to manage my time.
Instead I just made some notes so I’d remember how to do better. Then I blogged them over at one of my other internet homes.
People crack me up when they ask how I “do it all.”
I’m pretty sure if these same people were a fly on my wall, they’d:
a) have full run of the house because I’m too busy to buy a fly swatter.
b) realize pretty quickly, I’m definitely not doing it all.
Read more at Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers.
My writing career launched in 2014 through the connections I made at the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference. So last week, when I was double nominated as a Selah Award finalist for First Novel and a fiction finalist for the Director’s Choice Award, I felt like I’d come full circle.
Four years ago I sat in that crowd and wondered if I’d ever cross that stage to accept a plaque with with mine and my book’s name on it.
Last week I accepted three.
My oldest daughter, Madelynne and my husband Joshua came with me. Joshua, to be a my support. Madelynne, to fangirl over fellow writer, Kristen Hogrefe, whose book The Revisionary was also a double winner for Speculative and YA.
Still Waters won the Selah Award for First Novel and to my everlasting surprise, I also won Selah Fiction Book of the Year.
Eva Marie Everson is the contest director, but she wears many hats, and one of those is as my editor. She’s a great secret keeper.
Then, conference directors, Edie Melson and DiAnn Mills, talented and accomplished women who trusted me enough to name me a member of their prestigious faculty in 2017, announced the Director’s Choice Award for Fiction.
And I received another decoration for a wall I didn’t know I needed.
I’m deeply honored and humbled to have my story recognized for its merit in the very place where I first believed I could write and sell a novel.
As Cora Anne learns, there’s nothing like coming home.
Photo credits: Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference and friends.
My first morning on Edisto I poured my coffee and wandered down to the beach that’s almost unrecognizable behind the tower of manmade sand piles standing in for washed away dunes.
And I walked right into the sunrise.
I sat in that damp sand in my yoga pants with the bleach stain, closed my eyes, and hoped this was a blessing and a confirmation and a warmth I could cling to on all the cold nights when I wake up slightly riddled with anxiety over Amazon sales rankings and bookstore dealings.
I think it was.
Standing in the sun, driving under the oaks, breathing deep the air that stirs my soul reminds me over and over that I am really nothing but a witness. My story is your story is our story–a retelling of a story that’s older and stronger and wiser than any words we could ever find.
In my small group right now, my leader friend talked about the four components of every story–not plot and character and setting and theme as writers believe.
Creation. Fall. Redemption. Restoration.
The parts that really matter. We all have them in our story. Repeating over and over in small moments and seasons and journeys. Manifesting bigger and bigger and ever-changing.
So I ask you today–what’s creating you? What’s shaping your story? What’s fallen or redeemed or restored within your own life?
And in the end, who’s writing your story?
With my fellow Word Weavers and conference writers, this week we mourn the loss of a great man who knew exactly who wrote his story. Who took time in his last days to tell me he was praying for mine. Who I called soon after my near fatal car accident in February to say, I know he said we should all live like we’re dying but that was a close one. I know beyond doubt Bruce’s health is full restored today and he’s standing in the sun.
I’ll be sharing all about my Lowcountry book tour–and my current favorite podcasts, reads, and recipes–in the Newsletter tomorrow. Sign up for free or follow my author page on Facebook, Lindsey P. Brackett.
I don’t know why I continue to put myself through this.
Truthfully, I think I wanted to hide from cell phone service for a couple of days. There’s a gap up in our mountains with a swimming lake and a jumping dock and a two mile radius before phones register any outside world. We went there even though two days is hardly worth the trouble and the forecast featured lightning bolts.
I went for the quiet. No texts. No emails. No notifications.
But the woods are not quiet. Birds trill their morning songs and streams rush and tree canopies plop raindrops even when the monsoon has passed. Drippy tent rainflies and wet towels and long legged spiders who crawl across the breakfast dishes uninvited do not make my escape peaceful.
But the woods are simple and I was seeking that. There are no choices beyond what’s in the cooler or the kitchen box or the pack of clean clothes. There are fewer decisions and fewer distractions.
Yet, the rain still came down hard and the shelter didn’t always hold.
There’s a lot of prep work that goes into camping or a vacation or publishing a book. There’s a lot of thinking through the “what ifs” and the “how tos” and the “maybe this.” There’s a lot of rigging that ties off a tarp that might keep the rain from drowning the picnic basket but sacrifices all the dry towels.
Fact is, sometimes the rain comes down and shakes the shelter and you get wet despite all the preparations. Sometimes, there’s not even enough time to seek the shelter before you’re soaked to the bone and forming a puddle of your own.
I’m puddling a lot lately. Soaked to the bone.
I keep waiting to be told what to do next. Which agent to submit to. Which marketing trend to follow. Which interview to give.
I’m tying up my shelter, expecting the high and dry when truth is, the rain comes no matter how secure the knots. And the question is–when I get wet, do I rush for the place that’s dry and safe?
Or do I look for the lesson in the rain?
As long as you’re reading, I’ll keep looking. Maybe we’ll find the answer together.
Life here isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but it isn’t all thunderstorms and clouds either. It’s a healthy mix of hard and easy, simple and complex, praise and criticism. I hope. My little space here is evolving with my career, and I’d love you to join me in the journey by subscribing to my monthly-ish newsletter, following my author Facebook page, or please consider purchasing my debut novel, Still Waters. The book just received a 4-star review from the Romantic Times. For that moment, I came out and danced in the rain.
An Edisto sunrise. But we’re not there right now. Just dreaming. Photo credit Jocelyn A. Conrad.
I’m on my back porch and the air is hovering between heavy humidity and storm-blowing breezes. Either way, rain’s been skirting all around our southern summer all week long.
The book has a cover now and if you’re in the know you’ve seen it. If you’re not, what are you waiting for? Sign up for my newsletter or let me know you want to join the launch team. Or just wait because we’ll be revealing it officially soon. It’s swirly and lovely and very southern romance–Gone With the Wind keeps popping up as a comparable, which makes me laugh because (don’t hate me), I don’t love GWTW.
I think I might have read it too young and need to re-read it now as an adult who can appreciate the history and the sweeping grandeur while hoping none of my daughters turn out like Scarlett.
You don’t get much more southern than Gone With the Wind, but I was recently asked if I’d write about what I saw as five symbols of the South. I settled on these and left off the hot-button topics, because at the end of the day, we’d all rather sit on the porch with a glass of sweet tea and the cicada chorus than sit at a table and talk anymore about that late unpleasantness.
Five Symbols of the South (that don’t hang off pickup trucks)
Food. The rule of true southern cooks raised in my mother’s generation is this: if it stands still fry it. I adhere to this each summer with okra and sometimes squash and on Father’s Day, I fried chicken for the first time in years. (Although my own mother has admitted it’s just easier to go by the Bojangles.) But I think southern cuisine is changing a bit with the times. I love seeing the shift toward locally grown and farm to table restaurants that make greens so good, you’ll slap your mama. But if you do, she probably won’t make you anymore fried okra and you’ll have to take your own self to Bojangles.
Fashion. I know very little about this myself, but I do know this: pearls go with everything. Sunday dress? Check. Funeral dress? Tasteful. Wedding sundress? No doubt. T-shirt and jeans? Why not. My sisters are far more fashion savvy than I, which is how we all wound up dressed alike for my sister’s wedding, right down to our cowboy boots. I got mine at Rack Room but now my almost-thirteen year old is wearing them out. If my novel makes loads of money, maybe I’ll spring for a sweet pair like these, handmade at King Ranch in Texas, by people who know boots.
This is my family. All my sisters and our one brother. And Jasper, the golden retriever. Because when parents of 7 kids become empty nesters, they need a dog who’s treated like a child.
Football. I still can’t tell you the rules of football. I just know if our guy has the ball, you have to holler until he crosses the end zone. This helps him run faster. But I do know that Friday nights and Saturdays are sacred down here. That wedding with the boots was strategically planned on a day UGA was off because certain family members said they’d wear earbuds. Which didn’t match the boots, obviously. I believe in the football tradition enough that it’s the background for my next novel and I might have a slight obsession with Friday Night Lights. Or just Kyle Chandler. Or both.
Faith. I tell people I write southern fiction because that’s true (even though Terry Kay told me I’m too young for that title), but I don’t tell people I write Christian fiction because here’s the thing–I am a Christian, so of course anything I write carries that viewpoint. I believe in happy endings and redeeming love and saved by grace. It permeates who I am. Down south, our culture is permeated by the Bible Belt and Southern Baptist and Methodism and Vacation Bible School. Sending my characters to church on Sunday is as natural as having them say “y’all” and “ma’am”. Where I make a story, however, is when that faith gets shaken by its culture and has to learn to stand on its own.
Family. Every good southern book has one iconic scene at the family dinner table, and the more dysfunctional and offbeat the family, the better the tension and the narrative. I love my family, but our little idiosyncrasies are finding their way into everything I write. Makes for good storytelling but awkward family dinners. I close ranks, though, when somebody from outside wants to comment. This family is mine. We’re allowed to poke at one another, but nobody else is getting through. Find your own family to write about. Trust me, everybody’s tree has some crooked branches and those make the best stories.
What defines your home place? Your culture? Ever thought about it?
We camped. It rained. 
Lindsey P. Brackett 