IVP - Behind the Books - July 2008 Archives

I Hate Revising

I asked Father Albert Haase, author of Coming Home to Your True Self, if he'd like to blog about writing. Apparently, I asked on a bad day.

I told my editor last night, "You know, I don´t think I will ever want to write another book. This one is going to be my swan song even though I am still pretty much a fledgling."

Knowing how I am prone to exaggerate and also knowing I have a lunch meeting scheduled with another author at the end of the week about possibly collaborating on something, my editor didn´t flinch. It irritated me that she didn´t get on her knees, shed a couple of alligator tears, pull her hair, feign despair and beg me not to say such silly things.

I am so frustrated. Once it was a transition in chapter two. Then there was that goofy paragraph in chapter four. Now I´m told it´s all of chapter 5 that needs to be reconsidered, rethought and rewritten. Well, I have reconsidered it. I have rethought it. I have rewritten it. And they tell me it still ain´t right. And I´m just sick of it. I say: let´s just null and void the contract and call the project off.

I hate writing. I really do. I don´t know why I keep doing it. Well, maybe I do know why: there´s nothing like holding a published book and seeing your own name on the cover. It´s very gratifying even though no one at the local Christian bookstore or at Borders realizes that behind Cindy Kiple´s handsome cover and nicely chosen font and all those polite promotional blurbs (usually written by your friends!), lies hours and hours of sweat, frustration and research into Dante´s Inferno to find out where he placed book editors who are actually paid for doing something unchristian--telling you what you have done is not quite "up to snuff."

Of course, having a few books under my belt and knowing that some editor is going to scrutinize this to see if it´s "appropriate" for a blog, I also know the value of a demanding editor. I really do. My very first editor, who literally used up an entire red felt-tip pen to note required changes, taught me how to write like a writer instead of preach like a preacher. I would never, ever have been able to teach myself that technique without the dreadful task of revising a manuscript. I will be always indebted to Karen Hurley for that. And then there was Lisa who taught me the value and "classy look" of a well-placed semi-colon. "Punctuation can make a sentence sing," she told me - and it´s true! And then there was the "pit bull" (that was my nick-name for her!) who simply refused to let me get away with one throw-away sentence - much less throw-away word. She taught me that it really and truly pays off to agonize over just one word. So I am really grateful for tough editors, as much as their requests make me queasy.

It´s just that being hounded to reconsider, rethink and rewrite chapter five - and knowing it has to be completed in one week - will keep me pondering and fussing . . . when I just wish the manuscript would be completed.

I´ll keep that lunch appointment. And I will in all likelihood, attempt another book. But I won´t like the revising! And I will pray that the good Lord has mercy on my editor´s soul.

Addendum from the editor: This blog was written on Thursday. On Monday I received the revision of chapter five with the following note: "I got an idea for another book . . . I am getting to Mayslake Ministries REAL early tomorrow morning (Monday . . . around 7:30am at the latest) and I hope to steal 30 minutes to start an outline. I feel lots and lots of "energy" around the idea."

Now you know why I "didn't flinch" when the author suggested that he would never write another book. Sometimes if you just stay quiet things work themselves out.

Report from the International Christian Retail Show

I just got back from the International Christian Retail Show (formerly known as the Christian Bookselling Association convention), which was held in Orlando this year. A few IVP-related highlights:

IVP hosted a breakfast with Leighton Ford, author of The Attentive Life. He talked about how as life has changed, his writing has changed. When he was a public evangelist with his brother-in-law Billy Graham, he wrote on evangelism. When he started developing new leaders, he wrote Transforming Leadership. In recent years he's been moving into spiritual formation and spiritual mentoring. Hence this new book on the attentive life and paying attention to what God is doing.

IVP received a Logos book award from the Logos Bookstore Association in the Spirituality category for Gerald Sittser's Water from a Deep Well.

Andy Crouch's much-anticipated book Culture Making is now in print, and it's being received well. There seemed to be a good bit of buzz about the book, as people kept coming to our booth and saying that someone told them that they had to pick up this book.

Andy also had a good word for us at our author dinner. He talked about how at a trade show like this, it's very easy to feel inadequate, to see the big signs featuring the hot new books and faces of the bestselling authors, to always be comparing ourselves to the next bigger author or publisher. And it was a nice reminder that all of us are already in a very privileged location to be in this work and industry, and that we can rejoice and delight in the work we have and the books we get to write and publish. (He said much more, and much more eloquently, but this is just my inadequate summary and distillation.)

As Andy's editor, I presented him with a framed book cover, and I commented that when I first met Andy ten years ago, he was handing out copies of re:generation quarterly, which I had written for. And I contributed a few articles to RQ during his tenure as editor. So he was my editor, and now I'm his editor.

By the way, the first hundred pages of his book are available online for free! Go here for links to download the intro through chapter two, chapters three through five and some quotable quotes from the book.

Our author Ruth Haley Barton of The Transforming Center also was in, signing copies of her new book Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, which uses the life of Moses as a springboard for exploring the spiritual challenges of being in Christian leadership. (She spoke on this at the National Pastors Convention in 2007, and you can hear the podcast here.)

My wife Ellen, IVP's rights manager, was booked solid meeting with international publishers interested in translating our books for their languages and markets. Even though challenges in the world of bricks-and-mortar Christian bookstores meant that fewer retailers were in attendance this year, worldwide interest in our books continues to grow.

So it was a good week. Lots of interesting things going on, and for an ENFP like myself, the best parts are usually reconnecting with friends and colleagues in the industry, whether authors, editors, publicists, marketers or other folks involved in the publication and distribution of good Christian books.

I'm Not the Only Idiot Around Here

Bill Kerschbaum, a longtime friend of InterVarsity Press, directed my attention to the clip below. Its primary emphasis is on video editing, but it makes cynical claims about print editing as well. Worth a laugh.

Check All That Apply

I has some exciting news this morning. Sundee Frazier, author of Check All That Apply, is going to be on the Today Show on Friday, July 11, at 9:45 am (in all time zones). A new book she has written for Delacorte, Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It, will be featured.

Sundee also recently forwarded to me the following email from a reader, Mark Crumbliss, about how her book Check All That Apply helped him in his ethnic identity formation. Mark has given permission for me to share it here.

I was a new student at UT San Antonio in the fall of 2002. I had looked online for different Christian organizations on campus before moving to San Antonio. I saw InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, although I knew very little about it. I had become a Christian about two years prior to that time. One of the staff workers, Eric Teague, gave me a book called Check All That Apply. I am a mixed person: my grandmother was from Mexico, her husband was half Italian and half French Canadian. On my dad's side, I think everything can be traced to Ireland or Scotland. Although I had spent most of my life more or less really ripped up inside about this. I never really talked about it or thought that I should really. The reasons for that were deep, but the book Check All That Apply really confronted some inner, self-directed hatred I had and exposed a wonderful image of people from all nations, tribes, and tongues working together (Rev 7:9-10).

That book was really difficult to read because of the straightforwardness of some of the content. I did finish it, though, because I knew I needed to do that. Usually now if people ask me what books have really been an influence in sorting through ethnic identity or social justice things, I will say, the Bible, Check All That Apply and The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. I believe that Check All That Apply is a part of God's plan for me to be free.

In case you are wondering, I am preparing for missionary service with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Cameroon at this time.

God bless you,

Mark Crumbliss

Sundee has a passion for encouraging multiracial people in find their journey toward wholeness. Both of her books deal with this too-seldom-explored topic. I commend them to you.

Never Not an Editor

Last week I took a road trip to central Illinois. I had e-mailed myself some essays to edit when I arrived, and I had thrown two manuscripts (totaling in excess of six hundred pages, thank you very much) into the back seat for a cursory review. How ambitious of me. I didn't touch the essays till Sunday, and I still haven't tackled the enormous manuscripts.

Before you write me off as a slacker, let me make the argument that I was still, in a manner of speaking, acting as an editor. I had gone to central Illinois with no formal responsibilities to represent my publishing house--I was actually going to speak at a music festival on themes related to my new book--but while I was there I met one of our authors and reconnected with another. I had breakfast with a presenter and discussed how his lecture series might translate into a book. I chatted with another presenter and opened the door for him to send us proposals. I traded phone calls with an author about the status and schedule of his manuscript. I directed a new friend toward some of our books that might address some of the ideas he's been thinking about. I connected with a person on some innovative ways of gaining our authors a broader audience. I did damage control with a woman who had received a faulty book (it was the manufacturing, not the editing). And I was outed as an acquisitions editor at a workshop. And me without my business cards.

I got home and was chided by my wife for missing a spelling error on an important document. I proofread a congregation-wide letter for my pastor, and discussed with a woman in my congregation how to structure an article she's writing. I brainstormed some ideas for Christian education at our church, which included using some of our books as curriculum or supplemental reading.

It seems an editor's work is never done. At least this editor's work is never done; just ask my boss.

The Inside Scoop on Authors and Writers

The June 23 issue of Publishers Weekly has these interesting factoids from a National Endowment for the Arts study called "Artists in the Workforce: 1990-2005." (For the purposes of this study, "writers and authors" refer to those whose primary occupations involve the creation of scripts, stories, novels, poems, plays, biographies, advertisements, speeches and other material. It does not include technical writers, editors or journalists.)

185,276: total number of authors and writers, 2005

39%: increase in authors between 1990 and 2005

51.9%: percentage of authors who work full-time writing

$50,800: median income for full-time authors, 2005

$38,700: median income for entire civilian labor force, 2005

$38,800: median income for all authors, 2005

$47,300: median income for male authors, 2005

$33,300: median income for female authors, 2005

54.9%: percentage of authors who are female

10.8%: percentage of authors who are minorities

26.8%: percentage of authors who are under age thirty-five

83.1%: percentage of authors who have at least a bachelor's degree

45.9%: percentage of authors who are self-employed

50,000: estimated number of writers living in California and New York

Santa Fe, New Mexico: city ranked #1 for authors per capita