Category: Authors and writing

I recently asked my editing, writer, and reader friends, “What do you most wish editors would tell writers (and that writers would take to heart) about writing?” I thought the answers were worthwhile and illuminating. Here are some of the responses I received:
Continue reading “What Writers Most Need to Know”

“Give someone a book, they’ll read for a day. Teach someone how to write a book, they’ll experience a lifetime of paralyzing self doubt,” Lauren DeStefano tells us.

The psychological, spiritual, emotional pitfalls of writing a book are so numerous and varied it is amazing a word is ever written. And if you do finish and publish, you face a whole new set of issues instigated in equal measure by success and failure, by praise and criticism.
Continue reading “The Pitfalls of Praise and Criticism”

Here are two final questions in my series (see here and here and here) of questions that scholars should be asking about publishing.

What about self-publishing?

Continue reading “Questions Academic Authors Should Ask (4)”

I’ve been writing (here and here) about questions scholars should be asking about publishing, but often aren’t. Here are a few more.

What about academics writing for a general readership?
Continue reading “Questions Academic Authors Should Ask (3)”

In my last post I offered a few questions academic authors should be asking before they start thinking about a manuscript. Here are some more.

Aren’t simultaneous submissions taboo?
Continue reading “Questions Academic Authors Should Ask (2)”

Sometimes academic authors come to me as an editor with questions about book publishing. Too often they do not. They simply have their proposed manuscript to present. As a result, they sometimes make missteps on the road to publication. As we approach the season of academic conferences where I will be meeting dozens of prospective authors, here are some questions they should be asking.
Continue reading “Questions Academic Authors Should Ask (1)”

William Zinsser, author of the classic book On Writing Well, died this week. I have recommended his book more often and sold more copies of it than any other of many excellent options. The first hundred pages are a must for anyone writing non-fiction of any kind.
Continue reading “Ode to On Writing Well“

With so much bad academic writing, we cry, “Paragraphs, paragraphs everywhere, and not a word to read.” Yet much academic writing is refreshing and worth savoring. Take Kevin Vanhoozer in Jesus, Paul and the People of God:
Continue reading “Stylish Academic Writing 4: A Cup of Cold Water”

On November 15, 2012, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled “John Stott’s Influence Through Publishing.” I offer it here in five installments. The first installment can be found here.

Second, in addition to promoting constructive engagement with culture, he also (in contrast to much American evangelicalism) promoted an evangelicalism that was decidedly not anti-intellectual. He thoroughly endorsed the life of the mind, most explicitly in Your Mind Matters.
Continue reading “Stott’s Influence (2): The Life of the Mind”

Our good friend and beloved IVP author, Calvin Miller, died on August 19. The Singer, published in 1975, became his best-known work. Here, in its entirety, is the preface he wrote to the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, in which he tells the story of the genesis of what Philip Yancey called “a groundbreaking book.”

In the 1960s the rock culture

savior made his appearance in New York. Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell opened on Broadway. Before long these musicals had entered common culture all across America. The tunes were memorable, and here and there the lyrics touched the New Testament account of Christ. Still, to me the Broadway Jesus seemed a pale imitation of the New Testament Christ. Someone, I thought, ought to write a creative account of the Christ of St. Matthew that St. Matthew would recognize. It was then that the chilling notion occurred to me: perhaps I was the one to do it.
Continue reading “How “The Singer” Was Born”