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Progressive Publishing Program, Part 1: Finish Your Book (for Free) with a Writing Coach

Some offers are just hard to believe, aren't they? 

The day I came up with the idea for a "progressive publishing program," I didn't believe it either.  

But here's a confession: I’ve always been something of a skeptic. As a small(er) babbler, I remember seeing the commercial for the Tootsie Roll pop and I determined to prove them wrong. I stuck with that thing until I licked the stick clean. I probably have some undiagnosed OCD, and coupled with a near-religious devotion to Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers during my newly-verbal years, my ability to persevere through difficult tasks that I enjoyed was virtually assured.

Of course, my mom would tell you, I was one headstrong little snot. I stomped my defiant foot into the deep shag carpet more than once. And as corporal punishment was something of a Christian duty in the 70s, I learned to withstand much pain. 

At school, I followed my own beat stubbornly, even learning to use my spankings to make my punishers cry. But something stuck. I learned self-discipline. And today I use it every day, to edit, write, and not coincidentally, to help authors edit and write.

Research shows that for those who want to write a book, finishing is the #1 barrier. Estimates put it that over 80% of American adults want to write a book, but it turns out life can get in the way. And I could use competition, the TV-addicted childhood, California slacker thing, or my Gen X label as excuses.

Or I could write myself a different story.

There are plenty of stories for all of us to choose from. But eventually we all need to recognize it's our choice to chose the one most worth fighting for.

Commitment isn’t all we need. But it's like, 9/10s. It may be true that obsessing gets you nothing but ulcers, but devotion is the main defense against the enemy of all great books, this enticing fruit of distraction. Greedy salesmen and barking self-publishers purport to want to help you, but do they care how good your book is? What's in it for them to help you not just publish, but sell well? The vision you initially had for your book when you imagined it finished, is that what you have? Or are you in danger of straying from your path? Opportunists have sprouted up everywhere, even in Christian corners, to prey on your flagging devotion. And they're very convincing.

"Congratulations! You finished writing! Now it's time to publish! Trust us, we're professionals."

Maybe you've noticed the decline in book quality. Or typos. Or simply what Stephen King calls "fast-food books" that bypass anything nourishing and go straight to the bowels. I think they're going straight to authors' heads, making their brains fat and slow, convincing them they can publish bestsellers as quickly and easily as, well, passing some fast food.

My theory, and it's just a theory, is that the major problem is undisciplined authors. They may not tell the lies, but they give them power by believing them. And they sell out their vision before a better book is given a chance to be born. Either too distracted, untrained, or afriad of never reaching the shelves, the majority miss their chance of connecting and selling well.

A glut of entitled sell-outs is dragging down the art and literature of publishing.

And why? Because they believe the hype. A brainless machine can publish your book. The real value is in the wisdom to know what's required to publish a best-seller. Are best-selling books always great books? No. And no one can predict success. But there are common characteristics in the authors who write well and sell well. The easiest way to make money in publishing is in selling false hope. And it costs far less to give people what they want than to commit to high quality work (what they really want, trust me).

If you've got a different kind of story, maybe it needs to be published as a great book. Maybe you are one who should choose a better way.

You can do that and make a stand. But you'll also need others around you who believe in that goal really, really stubbornly.

Look at how best-selling authors do it. My newsflash for you after having worked with many successful authors over the past decade is that the good ones committed to the idea that valuable work costs much. They sacrificed for it. They sought out professionals to ensure the highest quality and before they published, they decided they really, really wanted to learn to write and edit well. They learned to tell a story. Armed with this, they managed to wait, to learn to edit, to research the market and others' books, and put themselves through the paces to pull together a refined vision, instead of selling it for scrap.

Choosing a different story than the self-publishers' hype is a new first step to becoming a great author. And only those with the determination to finish well will ever sell a great book.

Stay tuned...part 2 tomorrow.

(Oh, and in case you're wondering how many licks it really takes, I'll tell you over in the forum at the new site...)

Why the New Books Want to Be Free

Convergence.

Moving toward union or uniformity; especially coordinated movement of the two eyes so that the image of a single point is formed.

We might hold such truth to be self-evident, but convergence, the merging of distinct ideas, people, industries, and technologies into a unified whole balanced in equality, is the basis of our government, healthy relationships, of spiritual lives, and many things in between. It’s in the ying and yang of the ancients, predating our understanding of the perfect balance of love and justice found in God.

And this concept is just as operational in our world today. The synthesis of ideas, is happening at a faster rate today than it ever has before. So the ability to “hold to one without letting go of the other” is becoming increasingly difficult as well.

Maybe you feel this in your own life, this pull toward the “comfort” of extremes. Too often we’re attracted like magnets to the poles, wowed by the height the pendulum swings. These are the extremes. The world is full of them and they’re unbalancing factors and should be ignored. The unbalanced wants to be heard. But it also wants to be ignored as it argues for its own irrelevance (to pick on political talk show hosts: if they got what they “wanted” they’d go extinct).

This involves paradox and paradox is everywhere. If you’ve seen it and dealt with it honestly, you know that convergence is the answer.

Does God still speak today? And would he speak through prophets who are paid no heed? What if we’re missing his words because we don’t have ears to hear? Would God choose to have a prophet speak through publishing a book? My question to the traditional publishers, most now owned by conglomerates: Can you hear above the other master’s voice? And if you can, what special measures are you taking to ensure your readers reckon with it?

What needs to happen now? Chris Anderson reminds us in Free, “information wants to be free, it also wants to be expensive because it’s so valuable.” (Stewart Brand)

Paradox. Convergence.

I believe we’re entering a new age where the ideas of freedom that were relegated to the control of gatekeepers can no longer tolerate the restriction. Publishing is a game of “rights management,” a euphemism for ownership and control, but the information wants to be free. And despite their “purchase” price and devoted resources, the publishers do not own it. Not even the authors own the ideas, any more than they created their own brains and the life that sustains them. We can’t even control the influences that go into shaping the new ideas. And as for who “owns” wisdom and understanding, let alone the capacities for such things, we can all agree, it isn’t us.

Why shouldn’t everyone benefit from the current convergence of an idea surplus and the unlimited access to publishing it?

It’s time to hack in. To circumnavigate. To rethink and rebuild the new system.

Democratization of publishing is underway. I don’t believe my job is to help someone control the information. I’d rather make it easier to distribute. And that means convincing people to share their ideas for free. If enough innovative authors agree, publishers will be forced to change.

I think it’s relatively inevitable, but that doesn’t change the hard truth. Some will ask why this should happen. And it’s simple: the idea of controlling someone’s message, idea, or intellectual property, is profoundly connected to the control of those people themselves, and ultimately leads to a no-win for everyone involved. Author becomes indentured servant, publisher becomes greedier, and end consumer is charged increasingly more for a decreasing quality product.

It may not always bear out in every instance, but tending toward entropy is the natural cycle. New opportunities overthrow existing paradigms. Revolutions and tyrannies are cyclical. This is simply a current one. Or maybe, as Anderson says, it’s simply the most recent part of the continuing revolution that bits (computers) have made possible.

And something in me is encouraged to think it’s all outside my control.

 

The Death of Better Writing

Inspired by Steven Levy’s recent article for Wired on “The Burden of Twitter,” I’m encouraged to agree with him. I often feel guilty too. I have a blog I haven't contributed to regularly for several months. I feel more than guilty—approaching inadequate--that all my pals on Facebook have so much time to post cool pictures and updates, while I’m still struggling to update from my Christmas pictures. And not only haven't I ever Dugg anything since, well, ever, I don’t really even know what Digging does.

I really do find social networking pretty cool—in some ways, I mean. Facebook has been incredible in linking me up with old people from my more embarrassing days. And posting short updates on there feels much more immediate and relevant than this old blog, not to mention the old novel sitting on my hard drive for nigh on 6 years now. And I love feeling like we’re at the start of something that could be really great for our writing community.

But there’s still that nagging sense that because I have limited time and/or desire to divulge every bit of info about myself to the world, I'm only skimming the surface of the formerly deep (or at least deeper) waters of our withering social construct. And even at that, I'm not making any really significant contribution. I feel like I’m more connected, and yet less really connecting, all the time.

And I have a feeling that not only have I felt that before--I'll feel it again and again.

So, as a result, I fight back. I work harder to provide something more meaningful than the rest of the emailers, bloggers, Facebookians, and tweeters, which in itself is a perpetual burden. How do you provide something more meaningful in a 140-character update?

This very question reveals more about me than I'm sure I'm comfortable revealing.

Which delivers us to the ultimate insult: as I strive to make more substantial deposits into the stretching info abyss, the more difficult and unnecessary it seems to preserve something good for the more substantial repositories—books, for instance. That’s right. Remember those? I wonder if one day we’ll look up and realize what fools we were to think we could keep heading so quickly into the future and still hold onto our quaint notion of continuing to invest in the antiquated analog of print publication. We get immediate response this way. And the words don't get nearly as polished. There's much less frustration. Why would anyone work at words the old, harder way anymore?

But I suppose just as the Internet is rewriting all our futures, it's revising this particular piece of common wisdom as well: best not to ask questions you don't want Google to answer.

Until then, I’ll keep working to calm myself by unplugging periodically and reassuring myself that there’s far more value in time spent writing for a book over a blog post.

And yes, I will now go mention this new post on Twitter and Facebook.

Where Does Your Loyalty Lie?

Michael Cader of Publisher's Marketplace reports in the Publishers' Lunch daily newsletter (he has a great little “free advice” page on getting published, applicable to larger Christian houses as well), "On Blogging Policies and Blogging Casualties"--

Editor Jason Pinter's recent abrupt dismissal from Crown (imprint of Random) was attributed to a post on his blog (now removed) comparing opening week sales for Chris Bohjalian's THE DOUBLE BIND (Crown), and Ishmael Beah's A LONG WAY GONE (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux). Pinter speculated on the post whether Starbucks was demonstrating more power in the marketplace than Barnes & Noble (which made Bohjalian their second chainwide recommendation).

Crown is not commenting, and Pinter simply says, "I enjoyed my brief tenure at Crown and was fortunate enough to work with some wonderfully talented authors and publishing professionals. I have nothing but respect for the group and the books they publish."

I’ve been asked about WaterBrook’s and Random House’s policies for this blog many times. While it may seem I flaunt my freedom of expression, it’s a concern I share. Random House’s stated policy on employee blogs is the expectation that “every employee apply the same standards of personal and professional responsibility and decorum to your dealings on blogs as you would to any other aspect of your business activities…and to the extent they mention Random House or workplace issues or matters relevant to publishing, you should make it clear that opinions stated are not necessarily those expressed or endorsed by Random House. Please think about the potential consequences of the content of your blog and blog postings. Blogs exist on the Internet – a public space – so we hope you will be as respectful to the company, your colleagues, our customers, our partners and affiliates, and others (including our competitors) as the company itself endeavors to be."

Nelson's blog policy is a bit more helpful: "Be nice. Avoid attacking other individuals or companies. This includes fellow employees, authors, customers, vendors, competitors, or shareholders. You are welcome to disagree with the company's leaders, provided your tone is respectful. If in doubt, we suggest that you 'sleep on it' and then submit your entry to the Blogging Oversight Committee before posting it on your blog."

I’ve aways wondered what else the members of the Blogging Oversight Committee do to occupy themselves during daylight hours. Sounds like a fun job. Though, knowing they take pains to downplay images of tight corporate control, you’d think they could come up with a better choice of acronym than “BLOC.”

Anyway, in striking that balance between full disclosure and professional restraint, most of you know I prefer the former. I don’t often talk in specifics. Generalizing and alluding to trends is it. It’s tough, of course, and while I don’t mind focusing on bigger overarching issues, I feel responsible to state the truth about the challenges of ministering through the business of Christian publishing. In as much as I can, I share my opinions in hopes of conveying that Christian publishing is not so different from any other business, the same spiritual dangers lurking, same demands of loyalty and same real pitfalls. No matter what the publishing gods will face on judgment day, at the end of the work day, it’s about growing the business.

Such dedication may improve the innovation, quality, and value of the business, but not always the innovation, quality, and value of the product. That’s natural and endemic across any industry. Like public blogs, mass production does carry certain limitations.

So what are you willing to compromise? And what’s nonnegotiable at any price? There may not be a direct correlation between moral compromise and business success, but even in Christian publishing, you’ve got to know where your true loyalties lie. One sort of compromise may make you lose a relationship with a publisher. The other might cost you much more dearly.

Without Love...

Welcome back to the discussion.

We’ve been dissecting this idea of “books for God.” As publishing professionals and hopefuls, we need to know what makes our books Christian. What makes them “godly?” Is it worth discussing how “books for God” might be different from “Christian books” or books for Christians?

Your Writers Group has an intentionally broad focus to encourage ideas for discussion, discovery, and community built around God’s role in our books. And since I’m the moderator here, my idea is to unite us in this cause and keep focused on this most important goal. Often, I have my own troubles doing that, so the rules are obviously fairly lax.

And we all have biases. We try to subvert those for the greater purpose, but sometimes, we forget to remember that. I forget to remember that. In my brain. Where the thinking doesn’t always happen. The problem is that this seemingly-relaxed group seems like a crowded, sweaty dressing room at times. You try on ideas and take opinions on how they fit. Some of the threads don’t always groove...

“Hey, that blouse is crap on you, Nancy-boy!”

Dissent is to be expected, I think. Really, the whirled-wide web is more like a busy bus station. And so much is out of context, it's often more like crashing some high school reunion to sing some Van Morrison favorites with the band. I’m trying to use the technology accordingly, to be smart. There’s a reason we don’t take our shirts off in front of the class, right Brenda?

But Christians, we represent God. And we don’t do the repping very well. Luckily, there are a lot of us, but we need to all be following our own unique calling, being true to how we hear it. Diverse. There are many representations. Many we need to see. May never see otherwise.

Yesterday, I was leaving for work and my 3-year-old daughter runs to the garage door to tell me goodbye. I’d already given her a kiss and hug, but you know 3-year-old girls. I gave her the kiss-the-hand-and-blow-it thing as I was pulling out. She did it back and then raises her arms in a mock hug, tilting her head, really playing it up. And it hits me funny how sincere she is about it. I never showed her that; she just added it herself. Thought she’d like a distance hug to go with the kisses. And it looks like a really good hug and I suddenly don’t want to go to work even more than before.

I get things wrong sometimes. I’ve argued here that God’s not amused by our amusing ourselves and ignoring our world. Maybe I argue too forcefully, too sweepingly, at times. I don’t think we can escape reality—either in real life or in books—because it mocks grace, ignoring the truth of what Jesus came to save us from. But that doesn’t mean we need all novels to be philosophical, metaphorical, literary. What I’d like to see is more people striving to make more God-focused reading and writing choices. That’s how we’ll balance the limitations of our industry. God’s way.

To better represent God, we need more invention and less convention. We need more honesty, and maybe an understanding that some feelings will get hurt. And we need to work at delivering honesty in love, so they won’t stay hurt.

We also need to be aware of how our discussion sounds, much like derision, to the experienced authors, the working professionals who are out there exposed. We need to seek the big open middle ground. I’m a firm believer that the first step in effecting change is realizing who you’re talking to. We need to be constantly growing in our understanding of the nuances of this subject of books for God. We were all called in different ways. And not all of us will represent God the same way. We need all kinds of writers who can reach all kinds of readers.

I send you a 3-year-old’s hug tonight. We need more hugs. Straight from her heart to yours. If we’re talking about the value of words, we need to value open dialogue and listening more than speaking. The smaller voices over the louder. The simpler, purer, less complicated values of the little people. We need their guidance from God. Without it, there’s nothing any of us can do.

Christian v. Artist

"Christian artist"? "Artist Christian"? It's become a pretty crowded bandwagon with lots of dueling banjos, but there are still a few slapping away at the old twangy topic.

What are we: artists or Christians?

Today, I invite you to go check out a post about the controversial new Christian movie "Facing the Giants" (not yet released) by Dick Staub who's sounding a lot like me again...

"Why should we be excited that an aesthetically inferior product will be released on over 400 movie screens? The film includes the line 'We need to give God our best in every area.' Do they believe this film is our best?"

Not that my site don't kill his...

Seth Godin's got some marketing skills that demand your attention if you blog at all. His post on how to get traffic to your blog is off-the-hook, mad, sick, sweet, shizzle, and other trendy, street-lingo euphemisms that don't deserve utterance.

Stop by if you can stand the aroma of desperate groupies.

A few words of thanks

The good people of the Christian Fiction Blog (Dee and Marina) were kind enough to bestow an award on Your Writers Group (read about it here)

SO...some thanks of my own. God, my pastor, my family, mom and dad, my good friend and ski buddy, the blog-savviest dude I know, Phil "Donahue" Ripperger, my tireless, underappreciated knockout wife, Sheri who gives the most to keep me from being committed, and the good people of TypePad and Six Apart who get up every morning and dream up new ways to make us thankful for their turnkey blogging system.

But at least seventh of all, to you, long-suffering writers, hoping simply to make the world a better place with your wise words, I couldn't be more grateful for all the thoughtful beauty you will bring to the world. There's simply not enough of you.

Okay, so get writing.

Short Stories vs. Blogs

Here’s an interesting phenomenon. I haven’t heard it spoken of yet. What used to be called a short story is now being called a “short short story.” Any shorter than 1500 words and it’s now "flash fiction." Those rare things we call short stories seem to be pushing the old novella length, and novellas are a bit longer too. And this is to say nothing of the Harry Potter trend. That new book is how long?

And I guess I just find this a little strange, given the almost unassailable common wisdom that attention spans are shortening, and national literacy is declining. Maybe it’s the “super-size-me” American thing. We just don’t want it unless it hangs out of the parking space an extra few feet.

Anyway, I’ve noticed that even though I write fiction, sometimes I want to share a message. that won't interfere with my characters and their situations. When that impulse strikes, I have a blog. And I think that's a good thing.

But there's a tendency in the blogosphere for people to spout opinions. It seems like the Internet can create arguments out of a simple difference in definition of terms. “What do you mean by that, really?”

I know most blogs aren't the best use of time. Many are intentionally divisive rather than unifying, and have more in common with the hedonistic, pleasure-seeking wish-fulfillment as this super-sized American dream gospel. Everyone gets to have a blog and an opinion. But deep down we know enjoying life requires striving after that deeper pleasure, the kind that doesn’t just come from being recognized, the kind born of difficult research. Great pain creates space for great joy. It’s an emotional journey to enjoyment. And more amazing than causing division and seeking our fortunes is finding new and different people from all over the world, and the similarities we all hold.

A reason I like short stories better than most the blogs out there is that stories are still the best at diffusing our differences of perspective and showing how universal our experiences really are. There’s a thought of Eugene Peterson's that applies here. Jesus often answered direct questions from the Pharisees with a short story—“flash fiction,” if you will. When they’d ask Him for a definition of a particular word, intending to pin him into a semantic corner, He’d answer with, “There once was a man with two sons….” He knew that stories, while maybe still divisive, speak to our similarities and ultimately, subversively, unite us. And the short ones are often just enough to set that ticking time bomb in you before you're on to the next thing.

So, my fellow writers, consider the power you wield today as you’re striving to rightly divide the word of truth on the page. And remember the bigger picture of unifying readers.

My Writers Group, Take II

And we're back.

Alright, you wonderful, creative minds. Did you miss the group? I've missed you. Sorry for my extended absence there, but it was really time for me to take a step back and reevaluate my motivation as a character in this crazy movie. It's been a good time for me, very needed, and probably overdue, but God used some incredible people, including many of you, to bring me back to reality and show me the impact of some of my statements and faulty assumptions.

Honestly, for a while there, I wasn't sure I would even get to come back. It started with a letter from a friend and grew from there, snowballing into revelation after disturbing revelation, until I saw the uncomfortable truth with the new sight I'd been handed.

Blogging is strange. It can feel so private. This little entry box pops up and you type some words into as though they're just these little things, little crumbs left over from your day to tape into your notebook. Totally insignificant and definitely not something you'd actually get people to read. I mean, the words are just 1s and 0s, little bytes on a computer screen. Surely they don't mean anything of true influence.

X <-- Bang head here.

I didn't set out to rant. It was just supposed to be a rec room to kick back in and not worry about what furniture I was destroying with my shoes or my condensating soda can, rude cigarette smoke, or whatever. It was a place to accept my unsubstantialness and blow off steam. Maybe there were some artful rants in the course of things, but they were still rants and still offensive because it isn't only my rec room to shed my stress and complain about my job and scratch myself when I felt like it (Okay, I don't even have a rec room, and even if I did, I wouldn't be scratching myself in front of you. But you get the point.).

But originally, My Writers Group was this kind of place for us all to gather around to rant and rave about what can feel like an unstoppable machine of rigidity and ... I don't know, comfort? Safety? Whatever. Whatever is the opposite of risk and adventure we call "freedom in Christ" that seems so ellusive when you go looking for it in my job as a book editor at a big Christian ministry. It's uncomfortable and it's nice to find others who feel the same, other artists, editors, thinkers, readers. Writers of books like this. And this. On this blog, I've intended to make a concerted effort to apply this thinking to the production of fiction. The freedom-in-Christ kind of fiction that's a product of these kinds of books, that is less concerned with abiding by the rules than it is expanding lives and maturing souls. And in my lack of restraint and vigor, I've erred on the side not of decorum, not of concern for others. I wasn't thinking in the context of compassion for the writers who already had this as their mission and were daily implementing it in the real world of Christian fiction production, something I can currently only imagine. I've erred on the side of strength and force, of strong-arming, revolution-inciting, and war-crying. I've tried to turn tides, not believing I could actually evoke an effect, shouted like threats from the basement by a cranky, unrecognized pencil-pusher.

I knew there were a few hundred visitors, about half that many regularly returning, but it only bolstered my convictions that the underdogs were finally being heard, insubstantial as it might be. I felt my soap box turning into a lectern, my opinion being raised to a level of moral rightness that's abhorrent to me in retrospect. I became the heavy hand I was biting.

But last Saturday, a dear friend approached me and held up a mirror and it scared me enough to pull the blog down and do some soul-searching. I don't want to hurt people. I don't want to derail creativity. I'm happy to say that this friend had the patience and compassion to show me how my words were coming off to some of my readers, readers I was hoping to encourage. I was told that I've scared off many with my strong opinions, stated more as facts than beliefs.

It started to look like my movie here. I'm sorry to say it, but after a long week of fasting, praying, arguing, and waiting, I've realized that I came close to shooting myself in the foot, turning the very people I wanted to influence into the enemy. That was never my intent. But the idea I kept coming back to was that even if I wasn't intending to harm, it was the message received, and it grew from my own faulty assumptions, namely, that I can sit here and say Christian fiction is substandard and not expect a backlash. I see now it was only a matter of time before I was taken to task.

Now, mind you, I still think a lot of Christian fiction is substandard. But there is much more to say on this than the negativity I've been expressing, and I want us to keep going. But for tonight, I hope you'll take some time to revisit some of those posts in the right column I've taken efforts to edit and make them more succinct, less inflamatory. I think it's important if we're going to have a positive impact. Some of you might see that as unnecessary compromise, censorship, or worse. But there were faulty assumptions I needed to correct and I think you'll find that my accuracy is much improved now. Growth, maturity and understanding of these contentious issues is the goal, but more than that, it's supporting and encouraging writers and readers. And I want to make it clear that I'm not standing up here in an ivory tower. I hope the image of the rec room will be helpful in visualizing that. I need to hear from all of you, what exactly you're feeling as a result of my suggestions, whether you agree or disagree, and if you catch me slipping on any questionable opinions. The entire goal of this site is to create a forum for discussing the state of Christian fiction and none of us are infallible experts on the subject, least of all me, who reads little commercial, CBA fiction. I'm starting to come back, little by little, as a result of some very interesting authors and editors who believe in expanding the market. I hope to feature more and more of these experts here in the coming months. I'm not changing in my core convictions. This site is hard-hitting. If you don't like it, don't read it.

So please take a gander at Your Writers Group's mission statement. Edits are requested; this is a draft. Please leave comments as you feel led and we'll hammer something out we can all feel good about. Or, at the very least, discuss some more.