Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
005| How "Stop Calling Me Beautiful" Was Born | Theology AMA
508 Plays5 years ago
Here's a little history behind how a blog-post-gone-viral turned into my book Stop Calling Me Beautiful.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast & Book Launch
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher. This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith, ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. You don't have to settle for watered-down Christian teaching. And if you're ready to go deeper, God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.
00:00:29
Speaker
Happy launch week, you guys. This is the week that Stop Calling Me Beautiful goes out into the world. And in honor of the book's birth, I wanted to give you a little history of how it came to be. Going all the way back to the very beginning, the blog post that inspired it, and how the book was built. I always think that it's really cool to hear the backstory behind a book's
00:00:55
Speaker
Writing and editing and idea process because when you have that I think it makes reading the book more enjoyable Maybe that's just me. Maybe it's boring to you But I hope not because that's what this week's episode is all about. So I'm here with my Aldi Parmesan crisps They're awesome. You guys should look them up and we are gonna jump right in
00:01:18
Speaker
You may not be aware that Stop Calling Me Beautiful's title is based on a blog post I wrote about I think three and a half years ago, maybe four years ago actually, that went viral. So this blog post is called Dear Women's Ministry Stop Telling Me I'm Beautiful.
00:01:39
Speaker
very short blog post in it, I just pointed out that we as women in the church were tired of having watered down messages that didn't have robust theology, that didn't tell us why we believed what we believe. It was as if theology was for men only because men were going in the ministry and becoming pastors and women didn't need it. That was how I felt.
00:02:03
Speaker
that if I hadn't gotten a religion degree, then where would the resources have been? What would have been suggested to me as a woman? So I wrote this blog post and sent it out into the world, not really thinking much of it. It was just a personal thought process and journey that I had been
Journey to Publishing & Career Shift
00:02:25
Speaker
on. I was shocked when it was shared and reshared, going around the world,
00:02:32
Speaker
and became one of a series of viral posts that I had had. My previous two were about sexuality. So this was a new concept, a new new content that was really taking off. And the way that people resonated with it truly made me think, oh, maybe this is the kind of content that women want in my ministry at this point actually started to take a bit of a turn
00:02:56
Speaker
up to that point I've been writing almost exclusively about sexuality and was ministering to a lot of women who were struggling with sexual sin. But now that this post was resonating so much, I began to focus more on
00:03:12
Speaker
theological concepts that women were craving to understand. And so if you go back to those blog posts and go back to that year on my website, you can see that the posts start to kind of change in content right around that time.
00:03:27
Speaker
So, after the post goes viral, I was still working as a higher education admissions counselor. So, I worked in higher ed for five years for my alma mater and I worked a year and a half as an independent counselor. And when I wrote this blog post, I was still working as an independent counselor and traveling and speaking at homeschool conventions.
00:03:51
Speaker
So the post goes out and not too long after that, I started getting emails from acquisition editors. And so these editors work at publishing houses and they look for potential authors. And so I was getting these emails, maybe three or four different publishing houses had contacted me asking me if I'd ever considered writing a book. Now, of course I had considered writing a book, but it wasn't something that I wanted to push towards or really pursue without a lot of knowledge about it.
00:04:21
Speaker
And my philosophy towards my ministry and my business as a whole has always been, I'm not going to strive. God will bring me the opportunities in due time. I'm going to be faithful where I am, educate myself where I am, but I'm not going to push for these opportunities. I know that I can
00:04:39
Speaker
push to be faithful where God has me but I'm not going to try to go out and grab something that's not in my season. So when people started to come to me talking about a book I said well yes I've always thought about writing a book but I don't have a solid topic yet so I haven't really pursued that hardcore. They suggested that I find an agent if I was going to continue conversations or rather I should correct that
00:05:05
Speaker
They didn't mention an agent and that was one of the questions that I had was, do I talk directly to an acquisition editor or do I need a literary agent? I didn't really know. So I went back to my business of speaking and counseling students that were going to college.
00:05:22
Speaker
And I realized as I was continuing my work in higher ed that I really didn't think I was supposed to continue
Finding Representation & Writing Insights
00:05:30
Speaker
doing this. I had one toddler daughter and I was pregnant with Eva and it just didn't seem like it was a great fit for our season. Plus it took a good deal of time and I wasn't making as much.
00:05:43
Speaker
money with that time as I could doing other things and so it saddened me greatly but I knew that I definitely needed to walk away from my career in higher education. So the very last conference of the year I decided to bring out a line with me
00:06:01
Speaker
and work the event. And typically when I worked these events, I was working too much to attend any of the sessions, but I decided to make some time to attend a session held by Tricia Goyer. You may know who she is. She's a Christian author, speaker. She's an adoptive mother, does a lot of post-abortive counseling and counseling women who've decided not to get abortions, but to put their children up for adoption or to keep them. She's a wonderful, amazing person.
00:06:29
Speaker
And she has written 70 books. Yes, you heard right, 70 books, including having one of her fiction books turned into a Hallmark movie. So she was doing a writing seminar and it was talking about writing from home. So I thought it would be really neat to listen in because I was writing from home, even though it was more of a hobby than anything else.
00:06:52
Speaker
And I decided to sit in. So, sat in the session, took tons of notes with Adeline in the baby carrier, and afterwards I walked up to her and said, I have a question for you. I have these acquisition editors talking to me about writing a book, but I don't know where to start.
00:07:11
Speaker
I don't know what to do. Do you have any advice for me?" And she asked me if I had a literary agent and I said, I don't and I don't know how to get one. Well, now I know as an author looking back to get a literary agent, you typically have to pitch the agent yourself and your projects.
00:07:31
Speaker
they decide if they will take you once you're contracted with an agent they then negotiate I see here my daughter's in the background I apologize so once you're contracted with an agent they will negotiate your projects to the publishers and get you the best contract with a publisher so that's why an agent is important because you need to be able to
00:07:52
Speaker
understand the contract, negotiate the details of it. There's a lot of moving parts that you wouldn't understand without somebody who's an expert in the field. And so I didn't know where to find an agent or how to do that because it wasn't on my radar at all. But Tricia hooked me up with her agent. And so through her, I met Janet, who I worked with to get Stop Calling Me Beautiful into proposal form. And then from there, get it into the hands of publishers who would be interested.
00:08:21
Speaker
So a lot went into that process. I started talking with my agent that year, but didn't actually sign the contract until, goodness, it had to be a full year and a half later.
00:08:39
Speaker
And then after that, I had to write the rest of the book. So when you do a proposal for a book, you write usually like the first couple of chapters. So I wrote three chapters that were in the proposal that went to the publishers. They looked it over, decided whether they would pitch to contract the book. And then I chose which publisher I wanted to work with.
00:08:59
Speaker
after that comes the hard part you have to start writing the actual manuscript and so the season of writing the book i had Eva who was a baby and i would often get up early to feed her and then work from 5 am to whenever Adeline got up or whenever i needed to start working on breakfast so my most of the book was written in the early morning hours
00:09:25
Speaker
In sections, I like to outline my chapters and then write in chunks. So usually in about 500 word chunks, what I do every morning, 500 words, and then the next day the same thing so that I could write about a chapter every week and a half to two weeks.
00:09:42
Speaker
So that's how the book was first constructed, first came to being, and there are a lot of amazing people who really made it possible for the book to become what it is today. One of the people who I'm most grateful for is Kathleen, my editor at Harvest House. She is amazing. And a big reason that I went with Harvest House over the other publisher
00:10:07
Speaker
that was interested in the book was because of their passion for the message. The publisher that was talking to me about the book was much bigger than Harvest House. But when I talked with Harvest House, they just grasped so fully the heart of what I was trying to say and stopped calling me beautiful.
00:10:31
Speaker
And they had such a belief in the need for a complete gospel and for women to get a robust theological teaching.
Editing & Structuring the Book
00:10:39
Speaker
And Kathleen really brought that to the editing process because she not only edits for, you know, we're not talking just about like copy editing, like this is where a comma goes and use this word because I'm sure that was a nightmare. I am not a good grammatical writer.
00:10:57
Speaker
but she edits the content to make sure that what I'm saying is clear and that what I'm saying is biblical and that was so wonderful to have as I was working in the book because she would question my arguments or say you know where did you get this where what verse does this come from or we need some more support here and that really helped me make sure that what I'm offering you is for sure rooted in scripture
00:11:22
Speaker
and not just pure interpretation or opinion. And so you can know when you're reading the book that Kathleen's editing was a really great accountability as we were working the book into the form that it is. I think all of us have been at a women's conference where we were told, you are a beautiful daughter of the Most High King.
00:11:44
Speaker
And it's true, but it's not the whole truth. The beauty of being God's daughter has some backstory and it's left out in a lot of messages preached to women.
00:11:55
Speaker
So if you're tired of hearing the watered down Christian teaching and you're hungry for a deeper spiritual life, I have something for you. Coming so soon with a launch date of February 18th is my brand new book, Stop Calling Me Beautiful, Finding Soul Deep Strength in a Skin Deep World. Stop Calling Me Beautiful is a book about going deeper with God.
00:12:16
Speaker
I'm going to talk about pursuing the truths of who God is and who we are in relationship to Him, how to study scripture, how legalism, shallow theology, and false teaching keep us from living boldly as a woman of the Word. I'm so excited to put this book in your hands. If you're ready to pre-order, you can grab your copy on Amazon, or for more information, head to my website, FeliciaMasonheimer.com, and click the Book tab.
00:12:44
Speaker
So as I was thinking about how to compile the chapters, you may notice that the first half of the book is part one, the second half is part two. And part one is about four chapters, the kind of laying the foundation and talking about the importance of Bible study and being in the word. The second half goes into specific areas of our lives, which if you've been following my Instagram and Facebook series, you will see that we talk about legalism and anxiety and grief and sexuality.
00:13:12
Speaker
all of these areas where we tend to feel overwhelmed or like we don't have Christian victory. And so each chapter focuses on that area and what the gospel says about it, how we can live out our Christian faith
00:13:28
Speaker
and overcome legalism, how we can walk through anxiety with faith in God, how we can trust God with our grief. And so I wanted to make it very relevant and applicable, but also emphasize the necessity of understanding the full gospel and how if you don't understand that, you will live captive to these things. You will not have victory because only the gospel brings victory.
00:13:55
Speaker
that's a little bit of how we compiled it and brought the book into the chapter structure that it has. So once the manuscript was done it went in for editing it had I think two or three rounds of edits. Now it took longer to write the manuscript than I wanted because I think I might have my dates wrong but I believe some point during I think it was during the proposal
00:14:20
Speaker
process that Josh lost his job and so some things got tabled for that period of time and then during the manuscript writing process I believe we had some other very earth shattering life event so
00:14:38
Speaker
I was working in the corners of my day and some things went slower than planned, but I do know that the manuscript eventually, I did turn it in early. It was due last March and I turned it in in January.
00:14:54
Speaker
but i didn't know i didn't know was how fast the turnaround for editing would be i thought i was thinking in terms of college i guess like oh i turned in my paper early so now i have more time to like work on edits you know work on my next paper but that is not how it went i ended up
00:15:10
Speaker
Um, getting the manuscript back, I think in May or June, and I had two weeks to turn it around and make the edits. And then we did another round of edits and then it was done. So that was one thing that I didn't know is how fast I would have to work on the edits. And so my second round of edits I did while my leg was broken. So last summer when I broke my leg and went into surgery and was incapacitated for two months was a perfect time to be editing my manuscript. So that worked out.
00:15:40
Speaker
So, since then the book cover, I want to talk about that, the book cover was completely designed by Harvest House and I love it. I will say when I first saw it, I was surprised that it was black.
00:15:55
Speaker
I think now when I look at it how shocking it kind of is like you don't see a lot of books for women that are black. I think of Jackie Hill Perry's Gay Girl Good God is a similar cover concept but I love it and what they did was they sent me some samples of different covers and ironically one of the covers that we used as a concept and that I really liked
00:16:21
Speaker
was Girl Wash Your Face, which we all know I don't support the message of that book, but I did like the cover except without my face on it. I was like, please don't put my face on the book, but they did take a lot of those color concepts in the bold font and make a really neat looking cover and I love it.
Design, Endorsements & Release Celebration
00:16:41
Speaker
Super neat design. Once the cover and everything was established,
00:16:45
Speaker
And we worked on getting endorsements and I'm so thankful for everybody who helped endorse the book and read it ahead of time and gave their stamp of approval on the message. And from there, we've just been working on really marketing it.
00:16:58
Speaker
And by marketing it, it's more along the lines of sharing what the message is and just showing you kind of the content and what the chapters are about and helping you know if this is something that would really be encouraging to you. So it's been amazing to watch how God has opened doors and how what felt like a closed door for me, the ending of my higher education career was actually the teensiest little crack in the door
00:17:25
Speaker
opening to a new opportunity that would take many years to come to fruition and I'm also just so thankful and want to shout out Trisha and Kathleen and Janet and my mentor Lisa Jacobson for their advice and their wisdom and their guidance through this whole process. I've often told Lisa that I
00:17:48
Speaker
feel like I'm flying blind because there is so much information in the publishing world. It's all very new for a first-time author. And even though I've self-published books before, it's completely different to be publishing traditionally. And so I'm just very grateful for Harvest House and what they've done to help make this book possible and to get it into your hands.
00:18:09
Speaker
I really hope that this was interesting, that you found it interesting to see how a book is born, how it's compiled, and how some of these chapters really have this history, not only in my own life, but in the lives of the women around me who've made their way into the pages of the book. So this week, the book is now out into the world. No longer pre-ordering, now you can just order it. If you did pre-order, you will be receiving it in the mail this week, probably within a couple days of the 18th.
00:18:39
Speaker
So thank you. Thank you to all of you who pre-ordered the book, who are reading the book and sharing it with other people. I wrote this for you and to have you reading it, it truly feels like we're all part of a giant Bible study and we're all pressing into the heart of God. It blesses me so, so much. So thank you for being part of this community, for being part of the book's journey and its entrance into the world. To God be the glory.
00:19:08
Speaker
Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Verity. You can connect with fellow listeners by following me on Instagram at Felicia Masonheimer or on our Facebook page by the same name. Also visit FeliciaMasonheimer.com for links to each episode and the show notes.