Spurred by the Sedona Sun to end my silence, I strike up a conversation with a woman who’s clearly pregnant.
She tells me this is her fourth and her first after having her tubes tied. She doesn’t tell many people, but her first time she was pregnant with twins and she had a dream that her (soon to be) daughter told her that her brother would come later. She lost one of the twins and five years later had a boy. Her third pregnancy she was also to have twins before one died and then had her tubes tied. And now she has her fourth on the way. Her family jokes that she’s made to have twins – just not at the same time.
So what does this have to do with “ask and wait”?
As she asks me what I’m doing and I mumble something about a book or something (it’s not quite clear) she jumps up in excitement. “Oh really? I’m writing a book!” The most amazing part? She woke up one night, from an lucid dream, and began writing. She writes in a legal pad and her mom types it into the computer and they edit it together. She’s already had one publisher interested though she’s not going to accept their offer. Opera’s HR department has yet to respond, but several other agents have gotten in touch with her. She shares the story with me and I can understand why they’re hot to get her.
“One thing I’ve learned is that you ask and wait … and that’s what a lot of people get wrong. They’ll think and speak and take action when it’s not the right time, or they’ll ask and then nothing will happen and they’ll try something else.”
I’m a little confused, and trying to remember what she’s saying. “They don’t know what to ask for?”
“You can know what you want and ask for it but then you have to wait. It’ll come – like my book. I guess I always had the vision of myself writing novels, on the beach with my kids running around me – so I’ve asked for this my whole life and now it’s happening. I don’t know what I’m going to write next. I don’t know how long it’ll be. All these publishers want to have a deadline and I can’t give them a date. I can’t even tell you what’s going to happen next.” And she continues to give examples of her own process of formulating the story in process. I recommend Orbiting the Giant Hairball and she’s interested to check it out.
On top of her being raised Wiccan yet attending a Catholic school, she speaks with a Valley Girl accent yet carries on this conversation with a firm connection to the ground. Since she doesn’t use computers, I ask her to shoot me a copy of the book (signed) when she’s done as I’d love to read it. I offer to do the same, once I wait to see what’s coming.
