The Pitfalls of Praise and Criticism

“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.
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Questions Academic Authors Should Ask (1)

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.
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Stott’s Influence (2): The Life of the Mind

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.
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How “The Singer” Was Born

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

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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.
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