See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. #4: If I write it, they will come. Some wannabe novelists have watched Field of Dreams a few too many times. They can hear that mystical voice whispering across the cornfields. If you write it, they will come. Readers won’t be able to get enough of you. They’ll gobble up whatever you write and beg for more. You’ll be famous. You’ll be rich. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration for most of us, but when I was a kid I had this silly notion that if I just published a novel, I’d be instantly famous, and the road ahead of me would be paved in gold. No, I didn’t hear voices (otherwise I’d probably be locked in a padded room by now), but I seriously thought authors were famous people who just kept publishing novels and had no financial anxieties. For proof all I had to do…
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He was going to kill me. He had me in a headlock with one arm and a knife held to my throat with the other, his hot breath tingling against my ear. If I didn’t get this story published, this guy called Novel Writing was going to slit my throat and leave me lying on the floor, bleeding out. But what was I supposed to do to leap from newbie writer (who wasn’t taken seriously) to published novelist? The answer is pretty simple, but I was deceived by many misconceptions years ago. I thought telling a good story and being a decent writer were enough. They weren’t. The publishing world has expectations, and if writers don’t bone up on what those expectations are, their masterpieces, their Great American Novels, will never leave their writers’ caves. Today I’m often approached by many who have written a novel or would like to…
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In previous installments, we discussed self-promotion and took a hard look at what the Bible says. In Part 2, we learned from Scripture that everything we do should be for the Lord and not for men (Eph. 6:7; Col. 3:23). Therefore, if we look at what we do—write and sell books—from a biblical perspective, we’ll see that it’s really God we are/should be promoting and not ourselves. We are merely microphones for a greater purpose. We glorify Him through the beauty of words, through the spiritual struggle of the characters in our stories, by depicting faith and goodness winning the war over evil, by offering a message of hope to a needy world. In essence, as John Piper pointed out, God has called us to have an influence for truth in this world—and that calling requires death to self. “He who would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” How can we promote ourselves if we’re…
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I recently had the rare (and surprising) opportunity to write a column for the Christian Fiction Online Magazine. Somebody didn’t turn his column in, so I had a couple of days to write a substitute column. I jumped at the chance. Here’s my article “Ketchup on the Keyboard.” It’s amazing how God opens doors. My article appears among several by a number of big-name authors. I truly consider myself blessed. http://christianfictiononlinemagazine.com/brilliant_night.html
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