Tammy Lash's Publication Story + Q&A

“My eyes! My eyes!”

A rather uncomfortable publication story

The Mummy is one of my favorite movies. I’ve watched it a bazillion and twenty times and because of that, my kids have hid it in the furthest reaches of our DVD cabinet. It’s hidden in the deepest dark, three rows deep, and my children claim they cannot survive a bazillion and twenty-first viewing. I forgot all about my favorite movie, until recently, when I began shuffling around the house with my fingers pressed into my lids like one of its characters— Mr. Burns, the glasses-wearing, treasure-hunting gunslinger with the “eye problem”. My eye rubs and throaty groans of “My eyes! My eyes!” bring out chuckles rather than hoped-for sympathy. My family recognizes the line, but they also find my complaint to be a tad exaggerated. I have my eyes, they remind me. Poor Mr. Burns lost his to the mummy.

My “dry-yet-watery” and “swollen-yet-not” feeling in my eyes started last summer when the work on my first book went into high gear. I allowed myself a leisurely three years to write my story but forced rewrites, editing and proofreading into a cramped five months. I don’t have a count as to how many times I read through my nearly 500 page manuscript; I just know that each time that I read it, I would find a mistake. I couldn’t stop reading it. What if I publish it and discover that I missed one? Two? Or the horror…three? So, I kept reading…and here I am, still suffering the consequences from those manic months and scuffing through the house moaning over my eyes.

Matthew 6:22-23 says “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

The laptop wasn’t the only thing to wreak havoc on my eyes. The critical spirit I developed over my book blurred my vision even further. Against my family’s prodding, I proofread my freshly published book from the box of them delivered in November. I felt the hot flush of faint with a discovered mistake. My shame grew with the discovery of another and I nearly ripped my book off the Amazon shelves when, months later, a reader rattled off chapters and pages where more mistakes were discovered. I no longer saw “our story”. I was blind to the victory over a painful past that the Lord helped me sculpt into story. Pieces of me and pieces of Him that I had always wanted to share as a hurt, scared little girl to help other hurt, scared little girls, were gone and hidden from view. My hollow sockets saw only glaring mistakes; a missing period, an absent comma and an extra letter. I was ashamed of the work we accomplished together. I let Satan blind me to the treasure that my book was intended to be.

 My struggle with an imperfect work isn’t new. It’s a stitch that we authors hate to see in our tapestry, but it’s the common thread that binds us together. How do we deal with the neon flashes of mistakes? And how do we get the light to come back once our “eyes” go dark? We need to do what Mr. Burns didn’t. We need to take our eyes back from the monster who stole them. Psalms 139:14 tells us how to get them back from the Prince of Lies. “I praise you, for I (and…insert your book title here) am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works (and your help with…insert your book title here); my soul knows it very well.”

Praise is the prescription that will fix the ache in our spiritual eyes. When our soul is pulled to mourn over our mistakes, turn it to praise instead. You wrote and published a book, or perhaps you’re still wading in the process and making your way there— either way you have or are working on an actual book! What an amazing goal and accomplishment! Satan, however, doesn’t want us to see that. He wants us to focus on our shortcomings instead. I’m a full-fledged perfectionist and to defend my writer self, it’s not entirely wrong to be this way. We should want to put our best work out there and I used everything in my mistake-busting arsenal to try to be successful with that. I used beta readers, proofreaders, an editor—but somehow things still squeaked by. The problem isn’t desiring a professional piece for your reading public; the problem comes when the mistakes that slip by become the only thing that you see.

 I took a week off from work on the laptop and I’m feeling less like Mr. Burns. My second book is in the works and this time around, I’m going to take better care of my eyes. I’m planning on taking care of my physical eyes with shorter screen times and rest days when it feels like Mr. Burns is coming back. I’m guarding my spiritual eyes this time, too. I’ve added another soldier in my proofreading army to help combat mistakes, BUT I’m also accepting the fact that perfection cannot and does not humanly exist. All I can do is my best. I’ll thank Him and praise Him for the outcome, whatever that may be.

My turn for family movie night is coming. The kids moaned when I said I’m picking The Mummy. I need to ask them if they’ve wondered the same thing I always have. Did Imhotep notice that the eyes he stole from Mr. Burns were nearsighted? If he did, he didn’t complain any. Maybe he discovered that limited vision isn’t so bad. It does force you to focus harder on what you really want to see. I know what these nearsighted eyes are anxious to see in my next book. The treasure that it’s meant to be. Mistakes and all.

                                                                                                   Written by Tammy Lash

                                                                                     Author of White Wolf and the Ash Princess

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I would like to open the floor now for questions. Feel Free to ask Tammy any questions you might have about writing, her writing, her writing process, or anything else you can think about. She'll be around sometime today to answer them!