Creative Perseverance: An Interview with Becky Swanberg
Please tell us about your book.
The Upside-Down Kingdom is a faith-based picture book that describes the lives of people who are seeking to follow the words and ways of Jesus. Told in rhyme, the book points to the reality that the ways of Jesus can seem upside-down compared to the world around us.
What inspired you to write it?
Somewhere along the road of parenting and trying to explain faith, we started to use the phrase “the upside-down kingdom” to talk about the kingdom of heaven with our kids. What began as a helpful framework for reading the gospels became a part of our vocabulary and eventually our family culture. With so much emphasis on the kingdom in Jesus’ teaching, I thought this topic would really add something to the conversation parents can have with their kids about the kingdom of heaven.
What was your writing journey like?
It’s been a winding road to say the least! In 2011, I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and fell in love with writing fiction. I spent the next decade writing and querying novels, both middle grade and young adult, but never landed an agent. I always had manuscript requests and positive feedback about my writing, so I kept thinking it was just a matter of timing. But how long do you keep writing and querying? After several hundred rejections, I ran out of steam. It was creatively exhausting, and in 2021, with some shifting family dynamics, I made the choice to step away from writing novels for the time being.
In 2020, I participated in an SCBWI picture book class as more of a curiosity than a plan. Part of the class was writing multiple manuscripts and then working on the editing process. The Upside-Down Kingdom started as one of those drafts, and it just wouldn’t let me set it down. Unlike my earlier publishing attempts, I had a very specific sense of calling to put this story into the world.
Could you tell us about your publication process?
Once I was looking toward publication with this story, I sent the draft to my critique partners and did some rounds of revision with their input and feedback. Next I paid for a professional critique with you, Caroline. You gave helpful feedback on both content and rhyme scheme. I researched agents and was surprised to find there were very few agents who were open to queries for Christian picture books. I sent out queries to those agents, and I submitted to publishing presses that accept unagented submissions. It was my least successful querying ever, with few responses and no one even interested.
At first I thought that maybe that was it; maybe faithfulness was just seeing the process through and trusting the timing wasn’t right. But I couldn’t shake this feeling that my work wasn’t done. It was on a car trip in early 2022 that I told my husband, “I don’t really understand this urgency I feel, but I know that my next thing is to put this book into the world.” He asked what it would take to self-publish, and I gave him a long list of reasons why I didn’t want to self-publish (cost of hiring an illustrator, desire to work in a team, steep learning curve, and my tendency toward decision fatigue). I edited and sent out a fresh round of queries, but once those timed out, all the doors were closed.
I wouldn’t say I started to entertain the idea of self-publishing, but I did step out on the porch to chat with it a little bit! The whole process was so overwhelming. I was teaching part-time, homeschooling five kids, and keeping the family rhythms going. I didn’t see how self-publishing was compatible with the reality of my life. So I started to ask this hypothetical question: if I was going to self-publish, what would be my next step? I just kept asking that question, looking at the path right in front of me, and I found that to be more manageable. I signed a contract with an illustrator in November of 2023, and that’s when the book really started to take shape.
What is one thing all new authors should keep in mind?
I’m not sure how to describe this, but I found publishing to be both validating and disappointing. At some point your book is in the world and that feels amazing, but it doesn’t change that much about daily life or even your internal world. So if you can anticipate it without creating the expectation that it’s going to be this huge game-changer, I think that would be a helpful mindset.
Where can we find out more about your book?
The Upside-Down Kingdom is available on Amazon and other online retailers. For info about local Omaha events and bookstore availability, follow me on instagram at beckyswanbergwriter.
What’s next for you?
I’m not sure! I hope to publish more in the future, but I don’t have any projects lined up. For now, I want to focus on getting back into a good creative rhythm and see where that takes me.
Thank you, Becky, for sharing your experience. May your book find its readers!