Embracing Beauty Backstory, Part Second

It’s still a surprise to me that I wrote a book on fashion. It was totally not my idea.

(Here’s the first part of this little behind-the-scenes tale of self publishing my 3rd book)

Last fall, after hanging out at my favorite blogging conference, I was very much in the mood to write another book. But I’ve always got so many ideas swirling around in my head, I wasn’t sure which to run with. So, I asked my Facebook friends. I was totally expecting they’d ask for another cookbook with further hints for streamlining real food prep, and all my latest favorite recipes.

But my friends surprised me. They wanted a book on fashion. They wanted me to write about how to rock your personal style, especially during the season of motherhood and pregnancy.

Frankly, I was flattered. For so long I considered myself one of the ‘have nots’ in the area of personal style, and it’s still taking me a while to get used to the idea that I’ve grown in this area to where people look up to me.

I had lots of reasons why I didn’t feel up to the task, but the next morning I woke up with my mind full of inspiration. I wrote in my journal,

“..this idea excites me–it feels like the spark that Darren Rowse told us to fan [during his awesome keynote at Allume]. I woke at 6am and couldn’t stop writing. I’ve got brainstorms popping up like summer thunderstorms.”

The notes I jotted down that morning became 4 of my favorite chapters in the book. 

We had begun, but there were still doubts. Daily. I felt inadequate to the task of giving a vision for why beauty was important enough to put time into it in the busy season of motherhood. I doubted my ability to write anything coherent when all my writing is done in fits and starts with what brain cells I have left after menu planning, managing our migrant lifestyle, and answering the questions of my 6 year old boy.

But every time I doubted, God met me. When I resented the call to do something I felt inadequate to, He gently informed me that the call to write was actually a call to be with Him. Daily he met me with encouragement from friends, inspiration for chapters, provision of additional quality content from other gifted writers, and words straight from His Word to my heart.

A book began to emerge, and its scope and depth surprised me. My original vision for the book was small–‘people-sized’, you might say. The actual book is twice the word count I had imagined it would be–certainly a God-sized dream come to life!

I still don’t feel I’ve arrived in the area of fashion. (Gosh, you should have seen what I ran to the post office in today! LOL) But this book contains the best of what I’ve learned so far on the journey. I really hope the best books are the ones the author writes to herself because that’s what my books end up being–a reminder to myself of the best lessons I’ve learned, and how to incorporate the wisdom I’ve gleaned through experience into my daily routine.

Jeremy proof reading the book–we finished final edits last night! Just a week from today the book will be here! Did you know it will be available in PDF, for Kindle, for Nook, and as a paperback?