As most of you know, I attended my first American Christian Writer’s Conference this past June. When I returned, life as I knew it changed completely. I came away from that experience knowing I had to do two things:
1) Announce to the world that I was a writer.
2) Put every idea of a story I ever had in writing, and submit it to someone.
This would take me past the point of no return. There is no going back. My stories could no longer be ignored; at least not by me.
So, that very next week, I began a process of submitting poems to a greeting card company. For as long as I can remember, I had difficulty finding a card to say exactly what I wanted to say, so I just wrote my own stuff.
I quickly received “contracts” on seven of them, and would jump up and down with excitement, joking about how tired my hand was getting of signing my name.
But like I said before, writing is the easy part. The business of publishing is much more difficult to understand. The contracts state that my poems are moving on to the “marketing review” process, and they have two years to decide whether or not they will purchase them. I pictured a group of people sitting around a table reading over greeting cards, wondering why it would take two years to decide.
So, I quickly moved on to other things.
But then, a couple of weeks ago, 8 months after my first contract was signed, I received an interesting e mail from a lady saying she had purchased a greeting card with one of my poems and wished to buy a poster of it.
I have a greeting card?
I was confused at first. The title didn’t match the one I had submitted, and the poem was a condensed version. It was also under a different brand name of greeting cards, a smaller imprint division, I suppose.
She said she purchased it in a dollar store in West Virginia. The title, “My Child, You are Destined for Great Things.” And the back said “Character Imprints.”
I reread the contract and realized that they do have the right to sell this while it is under consideration. At first, I wondered if I was being taken advantage of, and wanted to be paid if they are making money off of one of my poems. But it makes sense for a marketing review process to include testing the waters to see if there is interest. So, I’m okay with all of it. Actually, I’m thrilled with all of it, even if it turns out that I am being taken advantage of.
Because I am a beginning writer, and I have a greeting card with my name on it. And the best part is that it touched someone enough for them to track me down and ask for more.
And whether this company decides to purchase my poems at the end of this process or not, I am still one step closer to my goals.
But just to make sure, I am making a quick trip to West Virginia to search through all the dollar stores for more cards. Since they are testing the waters, I would hate for them to think there is no interest, right?
Thank you all for being a part of this confusing little journey.
Keeping the Faith,
Janet Morris Grimes
