Tag: © 2015-2021 by Tom English and Wilma Espaillat English

The Curious Case of the Neglected Novel (Encouragement for Creators)

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She loved apples, playing the piano, and a good game of golf. Mostly, however, she loved writing. She wrote in the bathtub, on the washstand, at the dining room table — and when she spent time in the Middle East, she wrote on a makeshift table of boards and packing crates. For decades she averaged two novels a year, writing them longhand at first, but eventually using a typewriter. She’s the greatest mystery writer of all time, producing 78 detective novels, over 100 short stories, and 19 plays, including Mousetrap — the world’s longest-running play, which opened in London’s West End in 1952 and is still running today after more than 25,000 performances. Most of her books and short stories have been adapted for television and feature films. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, she’s the best-selling novelist of all time. Her work has been translated into over a hundred languages, making her the single most-translated author; and her books have sold over two billion copies. Only the Bible and Shakespeare have outsold her.

— All these accomplishments because Agatha Christie persevered. She refused to take “no” for an answer.

Dame Agatha Christie was born in 1890, in the Devon coast town of Torquay. She grew up with a passion for detective novels. She devoured the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and such novels as Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White and The Moonstone. One day, Agatha’s sister challenged her to write a mystery novel of her own. Agatha produced her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

Over the next four years Agatha tried repeatedly to find a home for her book. Not one publisher took even the slightest interest in her manuscript. One account states the author received close to 500 rejections during this time. The mystery novelist was about to forever change the rules of detective fiction — it’s just that no one realized it at the time.

In 1920, the publishing company Bodley Head showed genuine interest in Agatha’s novel. The editor John Lane eventually offered the young writer a contract, after procrastinating for close to a year. He asked Agatha to change the ending — which she promptly did — and then paid her a mere £25. So, five years after Agatha finished The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the novel that launched the career of the brilliant Belgian detective Hercule Poirot finally saw print.

“My little grey cells do not stop at NO.”

Agatha Christie was on her way. A few years later she published And Then There Were None, also known as Ten Little Indians, and the basis for several movies and TV shows. To date, the book has sold over 100 million copies, making it the world’s best-selling mystery — ever!

Don’t stop at “No”! Keep trying. Rejection is one of life’s great mysteries. We may not always understand it, but we all have to endure it.

“Trust in the Lord and do good…. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this…. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him….” (Psalm 37:3-7 NIV)

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How to Avoid Brain Freeze (Diet for Dreamers)

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Brain freeze is the sensation you get — that feels like your head is about to explode — when you drink something really cold really fast! When it hits, all you can do is stop what you’re doing and wait for it to pass.

Please, no more brain freeze!

But there’s another kind of brain freeze, which makes you feel like your head is about to explode; and it can stop you dead in your tracks; frozen in the pursuit of your goals; with your hopes, dreams, and every creative thought struck by a glacier of loss, disappointment, and despair. Too much rejection too soon can do it. So can dead ends, closed doors, missed opportunities, setbacks, weaknesses and failures.

The solution to brain freeze is to change one’s perspective on life, problems, and failures; and to foster a CAN-DO attitude. We need to look at our adversities as the perfect environment for personal growth; at setbacks as opportunities for comebacks; at our limitations as possible strengths; our problems as invitations for innovation; and a closed door as a sign to simply try a different door. And we need to learn to think outside the box! Hey, after all, necessity is the mother of invention.

Here are two examples of creative dreamers who avoided brain freeze by following this advice; two savvy businessmen who were definitely thinking outside (above, beneath, and all around) some sad situations that might have boxed in less enthusiastic people.

At the 1904 World’s Fair, held in St. Louis, Missouri, an ice cream vendor suffered an acute attack of brain freeze after he realized he was unprepared to meet the demand for his frozen treats. Although there was a steady stream of customers who wanted his product, the hapless vendor was nevertheless about to pack up and go home — all because he had run out of the small paper containers he used to serve the ice cream.

Enter Doumar the Undaunted! Actually, our hero’s name was just Doumar; Abe Doumar, a sixteen-year-old immigrant from Damascus, Syria, who at the time was working as a traveling salesman. Doumar had been mingling with the crowd at the World’s Fair, in an attempt to sell novelty paperweights, and he needed to take a break. He decided some ice cream would really hit the spot, but the first vendor he approached was “Mr. Brain Freeze” (he who hath no serving containers).

Doumar took a quick look around, and noticed a pastry cart nearby, where a man was selling Belgian waffles topped with a dollop of whipped cream. So he walked over and purchased one served plain. As he returned to the ice cream vendor, Doumar gently rolled the soft, warm waffle into a cone. Then he asked Mr. Brain Freeze to fill the cone with a scoop of ice cream.

Voila! The ice cream cone is born!

Doumar also suggested the two vendors join forces, and soon these men found themselves swamped with requests for warm waffles with ice cream. Other vendors working the fair quickly copied the innovation — there were around 50 ice cream stands and over a dozen waffle carts in the park that day — and hence, several different vendors wanted to take the credit for inventing the waffle cone. Regardless, the treat caught on in a big way, so that by 1924 Americans were consuming an estimated 245 million ice cream cones per year.

Doumar never bothered to patent his idea, but he did design the first machine built especially to bake cones. It was a four-iron waffle machine Doumar used three years later in Virginia, where, during the Jamestown Exhibition of 1907, he and his brother sold 23,000 cones in a single day.

Afterwards, Doumar designed a semi-automated, 36-iron waffle machine capable of turning out 20 cones per minute, and in 1934 he opened Doumar’s Drive In in Norfolk, Virginia. The restaurant is still open today, and still serving fresh waffle cones baked on Abe’s original 1905 four-iron machine.

Abe’s son, the late Albert “Big Al” Doumar, circa 2010, operating the World’s First Cone Machine.

Now, don’t think for a minute that Doumar didn’t suffer through his own share of adversity. He had to weather the destructive forces of a hurricane, endure a few economic slumps, as well as the ever-changing dining habits of a more suburbanized world. Through it all, however, Doumar avoided brain freeze by thinking warm, friendly, “we shall overcome” thoughts.

The Apostle Paul similarly overcame tremendous adversity in the form of persecution, beatings, and a stoning so severe that his friends left him for dead. Paul also endured cold, hunger, and loneliness. He was shipwrecked and afterwards survived a venomous snakebite — at a time when there was no antidote. (You can read of his travails in 2 Corinthians 4:8-18; 11:16-33 and Acts 27 through 28.)

But the much put-upon apostle who took the Gospel to the gentiles never suffered from brain freeze. Even while chained in a cold, damp, and dark cell in a rat-infested Roman prison, Paul wrote this warm proclamation: “I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency].” (Philippians 4:13 AMPC)

In other words, “Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.” (Philippians 4:13 MSG)

This is a truth that can thaw the onslaught of brain freeze. Remember it. Confess it. Believe it. And refuse to be boxed in by your circumstances, limitations, or any adversity.

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