Today I had the honor of interviewing Michelle Van Loon of The Parable Life. Tired of hearing people ask, "What the heck was Jesus talking about anyway?" she set out to share the parable in a language modern Americans-and Christians around the world-could understand. But how she got to this point in her writing career is the amazing part. Discover how Michelle turned rejections into learning opportunities and learned to focus her writing...

How did writing become your career? Did it find you or did you find it?

When I was in my early twenties, my husband and I attended church with a woman who worked at local National Public Radio affiliate. The station was producing a children's show, and my friend mentioned that they were always looking for scripts.

"Hey - I bet you could write some really funny stuff," she said.

I'd never written anything but term papers, but her unexpected words sent me to the library to check out every book they had on the topic of scriptwriting.

Long story short, the station produced several of the skits I wrote, and I was on my way. To this day, I am not sure why this woman approached me that day. I can't remember ever mentioning that I liked to write to another human being other than my husband, and I never considered that anyone might actually be interested in my words.

So - writing found me. No, I take that back. God found me.

What has been your biggest obstacle when it comes to finding the confidence in yourself to reach for those higher paying writing assignments and what did you do to conquer that obstacle?

My confidence has come very, very slowly. I had some pretty cool success early on, and then a long, hard walk down rejection road. I didn't learn much from the success except what an adrenaline rush an editor's YES could be. But I did learn from the rejections. They forced me to face who I really was and who I wanted to be.

I realized that I was going to have to learn the craft, and find contentment in each small step I took. That meant writing for church newsletters and little teensy non-paying publications. It meant writing skits for church. Then it meant writing lots of children's stories for Sunday School publishers. And it meant reviewing tons of curriculums for a Home school magazine. It also meant reading about writing, and trying to learn about the publishing business, grammar, language, and developing my voice as a writer.

Surmounting the confidence obstacle for me meant climbing it in small, incremental steps, rather than aiming for the top at the beginning of my writing career and not being willing to pay my dues.

I am still paying my dues; learning and I hope I never stop.

What has been your biggest struggle locating writing assignments and how did you overcome that struggle? In other words, what steps did you take to not only locate potential markets for your writing, but obtain enough assignments that your business is now a thriving, profitable business?

Thriving might be a stretch!

I've heard other writers say that the key is to diversify, and I believe that this is true. For a long time, I was coaching writing skills with groups of home school kids in my living room, writing curriculum reviews, firing off query letters to various magazines, and writing skits for use at my church-all at the same time.

I used to bemoan the fact that I was kind of "all over the place" in my writing, thinking that if I was a real professional, I would be focused but that "all over the place" generated income and helped me grow in all sorts of areas.

I am now writing books. I don't have the luxury of being "all over the place" these days. Writing a book requires a different kind of concentration than I've ever had to muster as a writer, and I don't have the mental space to fire off a bunch of query letters right now. But you know what? I will be back at the "all over the place" writing life again because it's what we writers do...!

Visit Michelle at http://theparablelife.com/

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