Finally!

When Noah was two, I took a Children's writing class at BYU. I absolutely loved it! One of our assignments was to write an article for a church magazine. Our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) publishes two magazines for youth and children, one is the New Era for youth, and the other is the Friend, for children. We had editors from the magazines come and talk to us and tell us what they were looking for. I submitted a story to the New Era and to my surprise, they bought it! My professor announced in class that all the students who submitted to the Friend magazine were accepted.
After hearing that, I started a story for the Friend. I submitted it in August 2005 and to my utter delight, they also bought it! They pay you on submission instead of publication (like many magazines) and they store them away, so the story may not be printed for up to eight years or so and sometimes not at all. They also have their magazines done a year in advance, so because my story was a Christmas story, I knew it would be at least a year and a half before it got published. Well, every year around Christmas, I quickly flip through the Friend to see if my story has been published, and finally, (four years later) it has!

If you have the December Friend, turn to page 9 to see my story. As I re-read it, I felt so self conscious and all my mistakes were glaring at me, but it was so good to see it! I feel SO motivated to get more stories out there! If you have a good story, try submitting it- the guidelines for submission are on the lds.org website under Gospel Library-Magazines.