Mike O'Quin

The first time my grandmother saw the Grand Canyon, she cried.

I can totally understand why now. I’ve heard about this gargantuan geological treasure my whole life, of course, but it wasn’t until recently that I saw it with own bewildered eyes.

We were on a long, epic road trip through New Mexico and Arizona with my family of six during the Christmas holiday. After a fun yet confining car drive, we parked at one of the many parking lots near the visitor center, bundled up for the cold weather, and headed through some snowy side trails toward the main South Rim Trail where the vista beckoned us.

It beckoned a lot of other people that day, too. Dozens of people like us were piling out of their cars and making their way to that unforgettable view.

Our family was giddy seeing all that magical white snow along the trails, but something even more breathtaking was just ahead. Every now and then we would catch a glimpse of vast openness through the trees.

The final bend, a quick scramble across the sidewalk, and there it was.

Whoa.

Wow.

Breathtaking.

How can anything be this big?

Look at this!

Every picture or painting you have ever seen of it, any verbal description anyone could give you, is just a poor rendering of its overwhelming majesty. You just have to see it for yourself and let it take the breath out of you to be captured in the full experience. All those photographic, artistic or verbal representations are just peeps through a narrow straw, a small capture of its beauty and glory.

It didn’t disappoint. The Grand Canyon is one of the few things in life that simply can’t be overrated. From the moment I saw it, I just stood there, gawking.

We gawked all day, in fact. Dozens of pictures and family poses in front of several different scenic views were taken throughout an unforgettable day, until a gently colorful dusk when we had to get back on the road.

I thought afterwards, how long has it been since something took my breath away like that?

A long time.

My soul desperately needed that touch with transcendence, something infinitely bigger than me. Something to make me and my problems seem very, very small.

I think that’s what those other people on that trail were trying to get to as well that day—transcendence.

There are two things in life that are never satisfied, according to wise king Solomon (see Proverbs 27:20). The eyes of man make that very short list. On the car trip home, I didn’t say to my kids, okay guys, we are done with vacations and road trips from here on out…we’ve seen enough. Instead, all that Arizonian beauty awakened in me a desire to see more beauty. I want see the Niagara Waterfall for myself and feel its misty spray in my face. I want to touch transcendence again in the nearer future.

Deep calls to deep in us, and it always will.

Is your soul feeling downcast right now? Let me give you some advice from Solomon’s God-seeking father, King David:

My soul is downcast within me;

Therefore I will remember you From the land of the Jordan,

the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;

All your waves and breakers have swept over me.

By day the Lord directs his love,

at night his song is with me

— a prayer to the God of my life.

– Psalm 42:6-8

You and I live in the parking lot. We’re usually surrounded by man-made stuff. Garages. Traffic. Computer screens. Cubicles. Stores.

Internally, we are slogging through our to-do list, troubleshooting problems, dealing with relational problems and working through our own emotional struggles…head down, just grinding through, every day.

Our souls are downcast because they are pointed downward most of the time.

Therefore I will remember you.

Time to take a trip from your tight and cluttered parking lot and move along those side trials until you find transcendence. Turn your soul heavenward and let His glory take your breath away. How long has that been?

Deep is calling to deep…can you hear those distant waves and breakers and will you let them sweep over you?

By day He is directing His love toward you.

Breathe that in until His song is with you in the night.

P.S. Here’s a fun video my creative daughter Ana made of our epic vacation:

— Mike O’Quin, author of Java Wake and Growing Desperate

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Okay, this is embarrassing to admit.

I’ll just come out and say it.

Nine years.

That’s right, nine years. That’s how long it took me to write my novel Java Wake and get it published. I started it during a jet lag-induced, early morning writing session in April of 2006. Our family had just moved back to Indonesia after a long medical leave and I guess I had a lot of pent up creative energy. It just started pouring out of me that early, restless morning.

I kept on here and there, inspired by John Grisham’s daily goal of writing 1,000 words a day, and plowed through chapter after chapter.

And then I got stuck. Because I didn’t outline the chapters ahead of time, I didn’t really know where the story was going and I picked up too many characters along the way toward the book’s complicated climax. I wrote myself into a corner, not being able to figure out how to solve all the plot tensions I had baked into the many characters. The 100,000-word novel felt to me like a humongous knot impossible to untie.

I tried to tighten it up without untying the whole knot. But when I gave out early versions to friends, my suspicions were confirmed. Although they enjoyed the story and the backdrop, they couldn’t keep track of all those characters. I couldn’t blame them…I couldn’t either and I was the author!

And that’s where it stayed, for years. A big, tangled ball of knotted up string in the corner of my life. I felt embarrassed that I had started something so time consuming that I wasn’t able to finish.

Before I resolve that plot tension, let me say that’s how a lot of aspiring writers I know feel…stuck. They had this creative idea and they finally started writing it out in a semi-disciplined way. For a season they made it to the coffee shop and drank tall lattes of inspiration while getting more and more words down on that growing document. They gathered the courage to tell their friends and family that they had started writing a book. Wow, good for you! They started dreaming of actually finishing this toiled-over manuscript and getting it published one day. And then the stuckage creeped in. Now they hope those same friends and family don’t ask them about it anymore.

I finally summoned the will power to get unstuck. I hung a white board right above my desk and outlined the chapters. I wrote down all the characters and plotted them all out on a big timeline. There were so many names and squiggly lines on that white board that one friend assumed it was an emergency evacuation plan for our community. That’s what if felt like to me…an evacuation plan out of my stuckage! The realization finally stared me in the face that I was going to have to take out of a bunch of those characters, who had become like my imaginary friends, and delete about the last third of the book. So long imaginary friends and all traces of you. That was tough. That was a lot of rewriting. A resolve rose in me though, that come writer’s block or high water, I was going to cross the finish line and get this book in print.

I think if I had a little help, someone to walk with me through the process, and show me a glimmer of light at the end of the long publishing tunnel, I could have done it a lot faster. I could have shaved a few years off that excruciatingly long process.

And that’s why I started this little business, to help aspiring writers cross that published author finish line.

I gotta say, it’s so worth it to get to that finish line. Having that first batch of books delivered to your doorstep is a bright burst of ecstatic joy. If you could somehow taste a little of that thrill ahead of time, I think it would motivate you to keep plodding through the stuckage.

Keep on plodding people! Get unstuck!

— Mike O’Quin, author of Java Wake and Growing Desperate and director of Mantap Publishing

P.S. Some people have asked me what “mantap” means. It’s an Indonesian word, pronounced mäntäp (like the “a” in father), which literally means steady, solid or sound. The connotation for that word in Indonesia is much stronger, though, used after things like drinking a delicious cup of coffee and wanting to express satisfaction in the fullness of its flavor. It’s said as an exclamation of delight: mantap! That is the essence I am wanting to deliver in this business, giving clients that same satisfying fullness of flavor when they finish and those books hit their doorstep. Ahhhh.

Mike O'Quin

Gawk Reflex

Getting Unstuck (or why I started this business)