“Square one and we are doing this thing and God doesn’t need you to have a certain follower count to use you.”
That was the text a friend of mine sent me moments after hanging up the phone with her. The phone call – it was me on one end of the phone pancaking, while she calmed me down. I had told her I was going to part ways with my book agent.
I didn’t even know it until now – but the day of that phone call was exactly a year ago to the date that I announced to the world that I had written a book. For four years in the secret place, I wrote my story. Nobody knew. I would slowly let some friends in on the project but in the beginning, I knew it needed to be me and the Lord. So much healing took place as those words flowed out of me. As painful as it was, it was like a press and release effect.
Telling people was something I was scared to do, really, I was scared to fail. I was scared that the moment I finally said something it would also raise the possibility for the words to crumble and burn in a word document because nothing would ever come of them. To my surprise, the response was unreal. Let’s be honest, not many of you were surprised. Some of you people knew I had it in me way before I even knew.
If you do not know how the book world works, it goes a little like this. To sign the big book deal, meaning, to have a publisher say they want to pick up your book, you have to first sign with an agent, who will then represent you and be a way into the door of the publishing houses. Without an agent, it is a shot in the dark. Publishers receive proposals in the masses of people who want them to pick them up. They don’t have the time to sift through the pages and find the good ones, so they rely on agents to present them to them.
For weeks, I emailed agents my proposal telling them about my book. Rejection after rejection or just no response at all. It wasn’t until someone connected me with an agent that anyone even gave me the time of day. In the end, I somehow managed to land an agent as a first-time author. This in itself was not expected. That leads us to now. After months of talking back and forth, the climax of the process was that I needed to build my platform. More people needed to be reading my blog, more people needed to be following me on Instagram, and I needed to be speaking way more than I was. The numbers that were thrown out of goals to hit were astronomical.
I knew I did not want to spend the next 5 years waiting for the chance to make this book come to life, all while trying to build a platform. So, I did what probably nobody in my shoes would have done, I went my separate ways with my agent. I called every person I knew in the book world and asked them if I had lost my mind because I knew this was a little crazy. The fact that I even had an agent to begin with was unheard of. Now I wanted to drop him. Let me be clear here, this decision was nothing against who I was working with. They know what it takes to get the deal. They are only directing their people in ways that will lead to success. Sadly, what is considered success is the downfall here. It all comes down to this – the way the industry works is that at the end of the day, publishers care more about how many people are following you than they do how good of a writer you are.
I am not going to sit and here and say that I don’t get it. I understand that they are running a business and ultimately they want to know that what they are investing in will sell. What I will say though is that we live in a society where we hear quality over quantity but the world is operating the opposite. Everywhere we look and everything hear comes with the message saying, “you need more.” We wonder why people are lonely, depressed, and anxious. Maybe it is because we are living in a time that to do something that we feel matters or to create something we think has meaning, has now come with an added layer of – you need to have a certain amount of people listening in order to do it.
I was crushed at the end of this weekend. The one thing I feared was a feeling that was penetrating my whole being – I had failed. I didn’t’ make the cut. I was back to square one and the possibilities of these words ever going anywhere felt further away than ever. This journey had been one where the red sea had felt like it parted but now the waters crashed back down. There was no path. How could I make this happen when everything that I was told I needed to have to do so didn’t exist? Yet, this was not true. Man is not the gatekeeper of God-given dreams.
God does not need my followers; He needs my faith.
For far too long people have listened, me included. We have let our voices grow faint and our creativity cower back into the shadows, where are dreams are suffocating, looking for the light of day. All for what? Because man has created a benchmark for influence and it looks like a “k” at the end of a number.
I won’t do it anymore. Not because I need to give myself the satisfaction of proving a point but because maybe just maybe going against the norm in more ways than one will speak into the dying dreams of someone else and reignite a fire. Fight for them. Regardless of how the industry/world operates.
It has never been about who was following me. It has always been about who I was following.
God has not asked me to build my platform, He has asked me to take Him at His word. You look at scripture and time after time the people that Jesus used, it was not on the basis of their status. In fact, He called those who had a status that was not stamped approved by society, where He saw faith, He saw an instrument.
Hebrews 11:1-12
Abel.
Enoch.
Noah.
Abraham.
Sarah.
Isaac.
Jacob.
Joseph.
Moses.
Rahab.
We do not read about how many people were following them. We do not read about the stages they stood on or the number of people that were in the crowds. We read about their faith.
I hope that when someone meets me that what is attracted to them is not the fact a lot of people know who I am. I hope that they walk away talking about my radical faith. Because at the end of the day my follower count will not give anyone hope but this faith I have in a Heavenly Father, that will.
All throughout Psalm 37 David writes about inheriting the land. Psalm 37:9, “…those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.” I am learning a little more every step of the way that what I thought was my promise land was temporary satisfaction of this world. I do not want the land of the world. I want the land the Lord intends for me to have. He knows every detail of this story. He is the builder of all things. However, we must till the ground of the land we are in now. The Lord brings the crops but we get the chance to partake in what He is doing and put our hand to the plow and go to work.
So, that is what I am doing – going to work.
I have decided to self-publish. In simpler terms for those of you not familiar with the book world – I am publishing the book on my own. Think of it as similar to an artist deciding to record song without having a record deal.
I want to make sure that all of this comes off in the right way. I am not saying that we have the responsibility to make desires of our own come to life. I am saying that when you believe in what the Lord has put in your heart, the talk of man does not dim your flame. You do it. You be obedient to the call, no matter the size of the audience. Ask yourself if you would be willing to step out in faith even if all of it was for the sake of one person. If yes, then you do not cower back. You rise up. You press onward.
This is where you come in. The self-publishing process costs money. I can do the whole project for around $3k. I believe in this book enough to put my own skin in the game and invest in this project of my own savings. I can’t do it all though. I am asking and believing the Lord would double my offering of what I can invest and get the whole thing funded. If you feel led, you can give on the link below. This money covers the cost of an editor, copy rights, ISBN, distribution, cover art, etc.
More than money, I am asking for prayers. Uncharted territory and starting lines – but I know with every fiber in my being that the Lord breathed these words into me and out of me. They need a place to land.
I hope you know that more than money, I want this post to be about all of us understanding that no dream is too big for God but also no dream is too small. Size does not matter to Him. It never has. It never will. What matters is a heart surrendered in faith to whatever it is He is asking of you.
He doesn’t want your followers. He wants you.
In the end, building a following will come naturally with the hopes of getting a book out there and selling it. However, my mindset is not “I have to build in order to create” it is “I will build as I create.” We start where we are, with what we have, because a word from the Lord is enough to activate our hands. Oh Jesus, protect my heart in this. May it never ever be about how much I get elevated but how much higher I can elevate you.
I wonder if when we get to heaven the hall of faith will be far greater than the list in Hebrews 11. Maybe it will be filled with the people of our day who aren’t even on social media. All I know is that I hope when my feet cross the border and I am home that my faith had been pleasing to the Lord.
This journey has been long and hard, yet, in a lot of ways, it is only starting. Here’s is the thing though – I would do it all again for the image in my head that I believe with everything in me…. one girl, a book in front of her face, my story on those pages, and the undeniable evidence that although an earthly father might be absent, her Heavenly Father never was.
Build it Jesus.
