It isn’t always easy to be transparent. Even for an extreme extravert like me.
Yesterday afternoon, I got an email from the senior acquisitions editor at my publisher’s. She had been looking over the back matter for my next release (A Promise Kept) and expressed a desire for me to change the brief note to readers that I’d turned in with the manuscript earlier this year. She wanted me to tell my “story behind the story.” I told her I would give it a try.
This is harder than it may sound. My story involves another. Telling my story behind this story includes telling someone else’s story too.
When a writer dips heavily into her personal experiences for the fiction she writes, people want to know more. So I imagine this will be only the first time in the coming months that I will be writing or sharing this story in a public fashion. I am willing to do it because I’m so grateful for all that God has done in my life. If I can provide hope or comfort or encouragement to another by telling my story behind the story, then I want to do so.
Some years ago, when I was leading a women’s retreat in Colorado, a woman came up to me and thanked me for being so transparent. I remember thinking, what good would a retreat speaker be if she wasn’t transparent? I still feel that way.
A Promise Kept, as the blurb says, is my thanksgiving to a God who answers prayers—in His own time and His own ways. May His name be ever praised.
~robin
