A Season to Dance: The Book That Wrote Me

When I wrote the first line of my first novel in January of 2011, I wanted to get published because I was desperate to feel important.

I finished writing A Season to Dance that fall and hired coach Gloria Kempton via Writer’s Digest to look at the whole thing and tell me if it was any good.

She saw potential in the story of a small-town professional ballerina with big dreams, but explained I needed a clearer quest, more telling details, better scene structure, and better balance between sequels and dramatic scenes. I joined Gloria’s critique group and spent a year rewriting.

During that year, my husband got orders to move the family from Fort Benning, Georgia, to Germany, and he deployed for the sixth time soon after we settled on a lovely mountaintop in Idar-Oberstein.

When I finished rewriting, Gloria said the novel looked good and had everything a novel was supposed to have. But… “Something’s still missing. I don’t know what it is. We’ve covered it all.”

So of course I did what any writer desperate for validation would do. I told my coach that surely nothing was missing and that it was time to query. I hired a service to blast queries everywhere for me. I know… Shame on me… But God used that.

God’s Plan—Phase One

One query ended up with Mrs. Joyce Hart, of Hartline Literary. The novel wasn’t Christian—I wasn’t a Christian. She shouldn’t have received my query. But she did. She sent me a note saying she liked the storyline but that in Christian novels the protagonist couldn’t live with her love interest without being married. She was very kind and said that if she was missing the point and if the novel was indeed Christian that I should resubmit explaining the living together piece.

When I read it I laughed and rolled my eyes. I started typing a condescending reply. Something about Christian fairy tale brains and me living in the real world, but I decided not to send it.

Days passed. A week passed. A month passed. And all I did was collect rejections. I became bitter. Bitterly sad at first. Then bitterly discouraged. And then bitterly ugly. I’d never been ugly before. Not like that.

See, up to that point, I’d believed that there was some kind of “god” and that somewhere, somehow, being good was right and that it paid off. But with the disappointments of the publishing journey those beliefs became a joke to me. I stood in the middle of my empty German kitchen—husband deployed, kids at school, my first dog had just died. And I looked at that inbox full of rejections and stated to whomever or whatever was out there: “God is dead.”

Mercy. Surely I said that to the “god” of my imagination, and not to the real God—God as He reveals Himself in the Bible. But I know that He was in that kitchen with me. And phase two of His plan was about to start.

Luke 22:31-32: “And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”

God’s Plan—Phase Two

As I lost all restraint and became the worst version of myself, God removed me from my green German mountaintop. 

After less than eighteen months in Germany, we were sent back to America, to the Chihuahuan Desert in West Texas. To a place called Fort Bliss—a place from which you can see a Mexican mountain with the words: “Cd. Juárez. La Biblia es la verdad. Leela.” That translates to “City of Juárez. The Bible is the truth. Read it.” Gotta love it. God is good.

During the first six months back in America, I went to two secular writers’ conferences and met more rejection. My lack of restraint and my selfishness didn’t really make me happy. I wanted to go to therapy. I wanted a job. I still dreamed of that book deal that had to be just around the corner. I wanted, I wanted…

But nothing happened, and it didn’t matter how hard I tried to get help, get happy, and find any kind of relief for the pain I felt. Nothing. Happened. I’d never seen so many closed doors—slammed-shut doors—ever in my life. Even the shrink kept double booking, closing early, and somehow cancelling on me. It was ridiculous.

The One Open Door

When God planted our family in the desert, He planted us two blocks from a friend from the Fort Benning years. A friend whose claim to fame was church shopping whenever the Army moved her family. I asked her to take me to church on the first Wednesday of January of 2013. 

I fell in His arms. Surrendered, defeated, and dependent. Or what God likes to call—ready. I was born again two weeks later and was baptized on Super Bowl Sunday that February.

Gloria’s “Something Missing”

I had tickets to go to New York for the Writer’s Digest conference that spring, but sometime in March, it dawned on me: “You silly goose of a girl. You wrote a salvation story without the salvation piece.” My first coach, Gloria Kempton, had been right all along. There was something missing!

A Season to Dance isn’t just the story of a small-town professional ballerina who dreams of dancing at the Met in New York and the two men who love her. It’s also the story of a girl desperately trying to fill the God-shaped hole in her heart with often misguided career and romantic pursuits.

I deleted Mrs. Hart’s email that week. Yes, it was still in my inbox. Job well done, Mrs. Hart.

Now, I had work to do. I spent 2013 and the first half of 2014 rewriting the novel. Five ladies from my Sunday school read chapter after chapter as I produced them and cheered me on through that gruesome process. I couldn’t have done it without their support. God is good.

Jeff Gerke edited my novel in the summer of 2014 and had me read Robert McGee’s The Search for Significance: Seeing Your True Worth Through God's Eyes. God is good.

I went to my first Christian writers conference, the ACFW 2014 in St. Louis. Two weeks later, Les Stobbe offered to represent me. God is good.

ACFW 2015 was fantastic and many houses are looking at that first manuscript. God is good.

My family got saved, too. My husband in July of 2013. Our son in December of 2013. My mom in the fall of 2014. And our little girl just this past summer, the summer of 2015. God is amazingly good.

How about you? How has God used your writing to grow you?

Patricia is from Brazil and immigrated to America in 1992. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Cincinnati in 1998 with a B.A. in English Literature. She's been stationed in Germany twice, first as a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army and later as an Army wife. She and her husband live in El Paso, Texas, with their two children.

Facebook - www.facebook.com/patricia.beal.author
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Once Upon a Time

by Marion Ueckermann

Everyone loves a fairytale. Say the four magic words, “Once upon a time”, and images of princes and princesses, witches and ogres, white horses and glass carriages conjure up in the mind. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Snow White . . . even Fiona and Shrek.

I have a fairytale to tell. It’s not set in the usual kingdom, forest or castle however, but it does start way, way up in a timber tree house.

In sticking to the common theme, I’ll begin my story in true fairytale fashion . . .

Once upon a time there was a little girl who dreamed of playing in the timber tree house with her brother and his three friends. But she knew it was an impossible dream . . . boys didn’t play with girls, and they definitely did not invite them into their tree houses.

One day, the middle brother of the three friends felt bad that the little girl was left all alone down on the ground. When the others weren’t around, he invited her up to his leafy penthouse pad. Like a monkey, she eagerly clambered up the tree to join her hero.

Not long after, Hero moved away to boarding school in a distant city. They didn’t see each other much anymore.

The little girl grew into a young woman . . . okay, a beautiful young woman. She too had moved away from their village to follow her dreams in a big city, far, far away. Sadly, she kissed a few frogs as she searched for her prince, her one true love.

Years later, on a visit to her childhood village, she saw Hero sitting on a wooden pew in the village church. He was home visiting his kin. She couldn’t help noticing her tree house hero had grown into a handsome young man. Although shy, Hero wasn’t blind either to the fact that the little girl had blossomed into a beautiful woman.

A few months later they were betrothed and she often reminded Hero how they had played together in his tree house as young children, never knowing that one day they’d be making a home of their own together.

Soon after their betrothal they were saying their own four magic words:

“I do.”

“I do.”

And they lived happily ever after (well, at least for the next 25 years and counting . . .)

                                                                                                                   THE END

In my true-life fairytale, I’m not quite sure who wooed who. As a ten-year-old, Noel had invited me to share his tree house; as a 23-year-old, I invited him to share a picnic (it was the twentieth century). From that day on we were inseparable.

Noel and I celebrated our silver wedding anniversary this past Tuesday. 25 years of marital bliss. Quite an accomplishment I’d like to think in today’s divorce-happy culture. But 25 years of marriage is not just handed to anyone on a silver platter (sorry Shirl, this was one cliché that was just too appropriate to ditch). It comes from years of perseverance (working through the times when many would think it far easier to give up), communication, and having eyes only for each other.

Successful writing and successful marriages have these same three things in common.

In his book, Plot and Structure, James Scott Bell states: “The main difference between successful writers and unsuccessful writers is persistence.” The same could be said about marriage, ie. the main difference between successful marriages and unsuccessful marriages is perseverance (or persistence).

Jeff Gerke in The Art & Craft of Writing Christian Fiction counsels in his chapter titled ‘An (Accepting) Audience of One’: “Be sure you understand Who you’re writing for and why you’re writing it for Him.” Ephesians 5 exhorts married couples too about that audience of one: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord (v22); Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it (v25); For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh (v31); Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband (v33).”

In Fiction 101, Randy Ingermanson teaches that dialogue must advance the plot. Lack of communication is cited as the #1 reason for divorce. Better communication can, however, save a marriage. Just as dialogue moves a story forward, when husbands and wives communicate, they move their marriages forward from one year to two years . . . to ten, twenty, fifty . . . and finally, a lifetime.

Do you have a fairytale tucked away in your life story? I’d love to hear it if you care to share it.

MARION UECKERMANN’s writing passion was sparked in 2001 when she moved to Ireland with her husband and two sons. Since then Marion has been honing her skills and has published some devotional articles in Winners at Work as well as inspirational poetry online and in a poetry journal. She has written her first Christian Women’s novel (unpublished) and is currently completing the sequel. Marion now lives in Pretoria East, South Africa with her husband, sons and a crazy black ‘Scottie’. A member and moderator of the South African Christian Writers Group, Marion can be contacted via email on marionu(at)telkomsa(dot)net or through her website www.inkslinger.co.cc