As of today, He’s Making Diamonds: A Teen’s Thoughts on Faith Through Chronic Illness has officially been published for one month. Ah! How crazy is that?! I’ve been a published author for one entire month. My baby has been out in the world for one whole month. It’s growing up so fast! XD Lol!
And despite my deep-seated fears, God seems to be using it and people seem to be liking it! I’ve been awed and humbled by all the amazing feedback I’ve been getting back from readers. Just wow. 2 Corinthians 12:9 has been my verse throughout this illness and book process, but it really is true. God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. His grace is sufficient.
To celebrate my book’s one-month birthday I want to share 10 facts about He’s Making Diamonds that most people probably don’t know. 😉 😀 This should be fun.
Here we go!
- The title of chapter two, “Something Changed” came from something that has nothing to do with the content of that chapter. It came from a Brian Reagan joke. Yep. XD My alpha readers (one in particular, you know who you are) had lots of fun with that. I just didn’t have any other ideas and stuck that in as a working title, but it stayed. (If you haven’t already, you need to see the joke I’m talking about. You can find it here.)
- Chapter 2 was originally chapter 3 and the introduction was originally chapter 1. (In fact, most of the chapters were renumbered or named at one point or another.)
- I completely re-wrote the introduction 3-4 times, none of which looked like the end product (which is in letter form).
- My first attempt at signing a copy of my book completely flopped. I had to do it twice. My sister is the proud owner of my first signed book, though I must say it’s a mess. XD She’s the one who insisted that I send her chapter 1 before anyone else, though, so I suppose she doesn’t mind my mess. We share a room after all.
- It took me four months to write the rough draft and a year (almost to the day) from starting the rough draft to publishing it.
- Before starting, I outlined 12 chapters for the book. Those “12 chapters” only ended up stretching into 3 chapters. Of course, by the end, I had 13 chapters, an introduction, and a foreword soo…. it worked out.
- I unintentionally quoted VeggieTales in my book and didn’t really realize it until an alpha reader pointed it out. In case you didn’t notice when you read it, I purposely quoted or referenced a TON of fiction books and movies. LOTR. Marvel. The Hunger Games. The Incredibles. The Karate Kid. Tangled. Harry Potter. Apparently, that is a big part of my voice in writing. Honestly, fiction is something I use to process the world and make sense of it. A lot. It’s not just an easy analogy I use in writing. You’ll find it in my journal entries and in the way my brain works. Some people don’t think you can learn anything from fiction. I, a nonfiction author, beg to differ.
- I had no idea what I wanted to do for the cover. I know, I know *gasp*. Everyone keeps telling me what an AMAZING cover it is, and I agree! But I certainly can’t take ANY credit for it. I didn’t tell my cover designer almost anything, but he took my lack of decision or vision and made a masterpiece even better, more unique, and professional than I could have imagined. Even something as simple as the font is just so me. He did an amazing job.
- The cover, the editing, the book trailer, and the formatting were all gifts for my birthday. 😀 My mom even covered a book (upside down btw) in brown paper and made her own “cover”. They also wrapped a ruler (to represent formatting) and an eraser (to represent editing) and a DVD (to represent the book trailer) and refused to tell me what it was until I guessed. I guessed all of them (eventually) except the ruler, which had me stumped until they told me. 🙂
- Jon Steingard, the frontman for Hawk Nelson who wrote the foreword for He’s Making Diamonds had less than three weeks to read the book and write the foreword. But he did it faster than I ever imagined possible and did an amazing job. And as ridiculous as it sounds he wasn’t the first person I’d asked to do it. I just wasn’t sure he would want to do that type of thing. I had asked 3-4 people previously and kept hitting dead ends. But he replied immediately when I contacted him and I can’t think of anyone else who could have done a better job writing the perfect forword for my book. It was an answer to a LOT of prayer from a LOT of people.
Well, that was fun! 😀 If you want to buy the book you can find it here. If you want to add it on Goodreads, you can find it here. And if you want to make a new author really, really happy you can leave a review on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but reviews on Amazon are SO helpful. I can’t emphasize it enough.
Thanks for celebrating with me!
-S. G. Willoughby
P.S. If you want a sneak peek at my book before buying it, make sure you don’t miss the two exclusive excerpts available on EntrustedbyGod. Also, yesterday I was honored to guest post on Tessa Emily Hall’s blog with 3 Tips for the Chronically Ill Writer . . . let me know if you like them, I might write some more posts for the chronically ill writer in the future if you’re interested! I found it difficult to limit myself to only 3 tips. 😉 Lastly, I also guest posted on She Leads Daily talking about how God is magnified in our weakness, which you can find here.