When we read the work of writers, we read the successes. We usually do not know the whole story. The reality is that many writers have written far more than what they publish. Like learning to practice a musical instrument, there will be years of practice involved. My non-fiction writing journey started well before the publication of 1-2-1 Discipleship. Looking back now I can see I was honing my writing with the discipline of weekly letter writing (age 5 until…
www.storyingthescriptures.com started as an English website designed to accompany the book “Telling the Gospel Through Story*.” The nature of Bible storytelling meant that some way to HEAR Bible stories was needed. It is not at all the same thing to write down the stories in black and white. A website also allowed us to keep adding new things and sharing new resources in a way that a static book never can. I was soon dreaming of having the website function…
This is a post with ten practical hints of how you can help your friend who is an author. We don’t like to ask these things but many of these would be helpful. http://keithwebb.com/support-author-friend/ How To Support Your Author Friend #4 – reviews can be cut and pasted to multiple sites. I think Good Reads and Book Depository are also extremely important. The actual publishers site and your local Christian book stores are also important.
Possible motivations:- You’ve always wanted to be a famous author You want to make money writing You want to prove someone wrong who said, “You can’t do it!” You can’t help writing You want to promote a point of view or share something you’ve learned You don’t care about any of the above, you’d write whether anyone read it or not There might be many reasons for writing but should there be different motivations for Christians? In other words, does…
Many years ago I remember hearing the advice that there is no substitute for simply writing. The advice suggested that aspiring writers write a daily diary. I didn’t intend to be a writer but I did end up doing a lot of writing. From the age of five I was in boarding school and we had to write a weekly letter. These started in Grade 1 with simply copying a sentence or two from the board. By Grade 4 we…
Bible storytelling is one of my passions. I am convinced that it is a special method of sharing truth that allows people to ‘swallow’ it much more easily. By ‘swallow,’ I don’t necessarily mean accept but that it is a form that they can hear the message. Many other forms cause people to choke, even though the message is good. Day by day we are learning more about this art of communication. The website that accompanies the book is a…
Every book, even non-fiction, has a ‘story behind’ the book. ‘Telling the Gospel Through Story’ is no exception. 1. Learning about Bible storytelling In 2004, I was introduced to Bible storytelling. I was a reluctant convert but once the Holy Spirit pressured me to learn my first story (Creation) it was the listener response that inspired me to continue. I spent the next years adapting and learning and increasing my story repertoire. In 2008, I was invited to share at…
In 2003, myself and a colleague started developing a course that included two lots of five days separated by two to six months to allow participants to practice what they’d learned in part one. The first section was on evangelism (sharing about Jesus) and the second on discipleship (helping people to grow/mature in their following of Jesus). However, despite having what we believed was a worthwhile course there was little interest from our colleagues. This was largely because neither of…
The 2009 version of this article was sent to me by a publisher before they subsequently accepted my manuscript for publication. It was designed to show me the realities of the publishing world. I think it is a good thing to share up front. I will paste the whole thing here and then make my own comments in ‘italics’ below each of their ten points. 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing Steven Piersanti, President, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Updated April 15, 2014…