Jeannie St. John Taylor

Jeannie launched her writing career in 1998 with a co-authored children’s book from Multnomah Press that was a finalist for the Gold Medallion Award. Since its release, she has signed contracts with eight publishers, and her writing has appeared in several magazines and short story collections. You can find fourteen books by her – adult-level books on the subject of prayer, children’s picture books, and a youth novel – in bookstores around the world. Three more books are already completed and waiting at the publisher for a 2006 release and she is currently preparing to fulfill another six book contracts.

In 2003 Jeannie’s focus took an unexpected turn when two publishers asked her to illustrate for them. Her first written and illustrated children’s book Am I Praying?, Kregel, August 2003, was a finalist for the 2004 Gold Medallion Award. Kregel featured a miniature golf course based on the book’s characters at the 2004 Christian Booksellers Convention in Atlanta. Jeannie has illustrated eleven books and is currently working on her twelfth.

Early in 2004, a series of brief radio spots on prayer that Jeannie wrote and recorded began airing on an American Family Radio station in Dothan, Alabama.

Gifts she designs for Mt. Baker Trading Company can be found in Christian bookstores and on the Internet. Her Prayer Stones have been reordered several times and all royalties from them go to an orphanage in Mexico.

In February 2006 she wrote and illustrated No Ordinary Woman, a make-you-cry booklet intended to convince women of their incredible value. Because she self-published it to keep costs low, it is available only by contacting her directly.

A professional artist as well as a writer, illustrator, and teacher, Jeannie’s paintings have hung in several galleries in Oregon and even traveled to Texas for a special museum show. Jeannie travels around the states speaking to women’s groups and schools. She also teaches at writers’ conferences and works as a freelance editor -- most recently editing eight books for Kregel and a two fantasy novels for AMG Publishers. In her spare time, she works as a private investigator for Taylor Made Financial Investigations, a company owned by her husband Ray, a retired Federal Criminal Investigator.

Born and raised in the Midwest, Jeannie earned a degree in Elementary Education from Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois, then moved to Oregon to teach art and English in the small town of Yamhill. Jeannie’s education continued in Portland, Oregon with a Masters Degree from Lewis and Clark College as well as an extra year of art credits from Portland Community College and Portland State University. She lives with her husband of twenty-nine years, ten minutes from downtown Portland, Oregon on a five-acre cattle farm surrounded by subdivisions. She and Ray have three grown children.

My Story
by Jeannie St. John Taylor

I’d been illustrating and writing for at least five years, maybe more, when I called my prayer partner. “Barb, I’m going to quit,” I told her.

“Quit what?”

“Writing and illustrating.”

“Why?”

“You’re asking me why? You’re a writer. You know how long I’ve been doing this! All I get are rejections, rejections, rejections. It takes time; it takes money. I just don’t have the energy or desire to keep plugging away any more.”

“You know what they tell us at writers conferences.” She assumed her teaching tone. “You just have to keep on working at it. How many rejections did Madeline L’Engle get on Wrinkle in Time? But she refused to give up.”

“I’m tired of hearing people cite famous examples. We never hear about the people who write for twenty years and still never publish. I’m convinced they’re out there and I’m going to be one of them.”

The long pause told me she thought maybe I’d hit on a truth. I waited, my silence matching hers. Finally she spoke. “Go ahead and quit. If God isn’t telling you to write, I guess you are just wasting your time.”

Ouch! She knew I wrote and illustrated because I thought God had called me to it.

More silence.

“Have you prayed about it?” she asked.

I sighed. “No.”

“Why don’t we give it twenty-four hours? I’ll pray. You pray. Then if you don’t hear from God – if you don’t know for certain what he wants you to do, you’re free to quit.”

“Sounds fair.”

We hung up. I started praying for guidance from the Lord, feeling almost relieved as I anticipated the end of my writing career. I would no longer feel guilty over all the money I spent on postage. I would be freed from all the hard work of writing and illustrating. By three o’clock tomorrow afternoon, Sunday, I should be a non-writer. No more stress.

Sometime around ten that evening, I sank into bed and flipped the television to the Christian channel, something I rarely did. An evangelist paced the stage, speaking to a large crowd on the twelfth chapter of Romans. “If you have a gift, God gave it to you,” he said. “You are obligated to use it for the body of Christ.” For the next ten minutes he expounded on the text, emphasizing our duty to use whatever gifts God has given us. I stared open-mouthed at the set, feeling as though he was speaking directly to me.

The heaviness of responsibility pressed down on me again. I was sick of sending out articles to magazine editors only to pull rejections from the mail a few weeks later. I hated to spend six dollars every time I sent out a book dummy to editors who never wanted my illustrations. A family with three children couldn’t afford that, doing it made me feel selfish. I felt like a failure every time a manuscript returned. Grudgingly, I told the Lord I knew he expected me to continue the work I’d been doing, but I did not want to do it.

The next morning, I entered the Sunday morning church service feeling depressed. But everything changed when my pastor, Ron Mehl, said these words, “You don’t have to worry about the breadth of your ministry, only your depth. God will take care of your outreach.”

I wanted to jump up and start cheering right in the middle of service! I no longer needed to waste time and money trying to contact editors! I could stop worrying about whether or not anyone wanted my ideas. I could create for God alone. If he wanted to keep all my work just for himself, it was fine with me. If he wanted to publish something I wrote or illustrated, he could and he would. It was his responsibility, not mine.

I left that service with a strong sense of relief.

With extra time on my hands, I signed up to teach Sunday school. And that’s where I met the husband and wife illustrator / author team.

They had published one book nine years earlier and just signed a contract for another book, but things weren’t going well. I loved them and began praying for them and their work daily. I offered to critique the woman’s writing.

Meanwhile, I worked on my depth. I spent time daily in Bible reading and prayer. I attended two writers’ critique groups, went to writers’ conferences, read books on writing and art, took art classes, and wrote and painted for hours on end. I considered every project a drink offering poured out to the Lord. I needed to please no one but him. A desire for excellence replaced my sense of failure.

I saw a purpose in all my rejections the day my youngest son came home crying because he had been overlooked for a part in his grade school play. I pulled him onto my lap, and he pressed his wet face into my jogging suit. “Honey, remember all those rejections mommy used to get in the mail?” I asked.

“Uh huh.”

With my face in his brown curls and my arms enveloping him, I reminded him how hard mommy worked at writing and how many times she’d been rejected. He remembered. We murmured about how no one wanted her writing and how no one ever chose her. After a while, comforted, he ran out to play. Smiling.“He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When others are troubled, we will be able to give to hem the same comfort God has given us” (2 Cor. 1:4 NLT) If God had given me immediate success, I would never have been able to comfort my precious son.

I couldn’t stop praising the Lord. “Thank you! Every bit of pain, every hour of work was worth it, Lord! Thank you for gifting me with the opportunity to comfort my son.”

But God had other purposes for my work. The husband-and-wife-team’s career took off. Over a four year period, I critiqued and prayed them through nearly thirty award-winning books, and each time one of their picture books rolled off the presses a sense of pride in them and joy for them surged through me. Eventually, in 1998, they pulled in so many book contracts the woman couldn’t complete the writing alone. She asked me to write eighty stories for a year-long youth devotional.

Five months after that, without once sending my work to a single publisher since the day I first trusted God with my plans five years earlier, I was a published author! A year later, I crafted more than140 stories and activities for her companion children’s devotional -- my second publication!

Things started happening quickly: I helped my author friend teach a class at a writer’s conference. She suggested I start writing greeting cards and told me about a short story collection that might want a couple of my stories. I published again, and again, and again. A small press accepted one of my picture books.

Then God told me to stop writing with her.

I cried.

I resumed my old pattern of writing and stuffing my files with stories and picture books, working on the depth of my relationship with the Lord, offering my work as a drink offering poured out to God. I expected never to publish anything again.

Seven months later, the director of Oregon Christian Writers asked me to teach a one hour class, mentor other writers, and speak at the final meeting of the June conference. I eagerly accepted the invitation, but then found out I would still need to pay nearly full tuition as an attendee if I signed up for classes. I couldn’t afford it. Without praying for guidance, I decided not to sign up.

I felt a check in my spirit. God was definitely telling me to attend and pay the fees. So I did.

The first night of the conference, in a small get-acquainted group I met my editor and friend, Dan Penwell, for the first time. I recognized him as a man of integrity; we connected immediately. We ate at the same table that week and he asked me repeatedly what I wrote, but many people at the conference were pressing him to read their work, his time was limited, and I didn’t want to bother him with articles and picture books he couldn’t use. So I shrugged off the question. “I don’t write anything you’d be interested in.”

Not until the last day of the conference did I remember one of the ideas stuffing my filing cabinet. Thinking it might fit his company, I sent him my proposal for How to be a Praying Mom the next week. It was published the following May. I have now published four books with Dan as my editor and am contracted to do a fifth book with him that will be released in July 2005.

About two years ago, God surprised me again when two different publishers asked, out of the blue and within three weeks of each other, if I would be interest in illustrating. I’m still not sure how one of those publishers even found out I was an artist. Since then I have illustrated five books and am contracted to illustrate another five.

Will God continue to bless me with writing and illustrating assignments? I have no idea and I am not concerned about it. God will do whatever is best for me.

“Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed” (Prov. 16:3)