This week I finished all the edits on my upcoming book, Holy Rewired: Science, the Gospel, and the Journey Towards Wholeness. As I was sending the last thoughts to the publisher, I began to think about the lessons I could learn from writing this book. I generally process experiences after they happen, and this was one experience where I did not want to have the lessons leave me. I have written them down for myself, and I want to share with you over the next several days some lessons about life that I have learned from writing a book.
Life Lesson #1: Despite your own thoughts, if you have haven’t done something well many times, you are not going to be good at it.
I went into this process with the mindset that writing would be easy. The hard part would be putting aside the time to write. I was wrong. This book was birthed in 2006-2007, early in my doctoral work. In fact, my intention was to also produce a publishable manuscript in addition to the dissertation. So when I set out to write my dissertation, I enlisted an editor who had edited some well-known books. It was then that I learned how bad of a writer I was.
I would get back from her a document that looked like she had bled all over it. And the criticism was difficult. I didn’t explain things. I didn’t define things. Some things just didn’t make any sense. I had mis-matched metaphors. And that didn’t include all the grammar issues! She was tough, yet I was immensely greatful.
When I turned the dissertation into a book, I had to write differently. I had to transition my writing from an academic work to a work for the masses. I had to clean up language, dumb down language, and make it understandable to those who might not think critically or want to get deeply involved in a intellectual exercise. That took a great deal of work, which I hope I have now accomplished.
Now truthfully, I thought I was a pretty good writer. I thought I was a good writer because I always got good grades in English and when I did papers in graduate school no one ever really criticized my writing. Working with a professional, however, showed me I was wrong.
After getting this book done, I’m actually trying to work on my writing by taking some free creative writing classes through several universities as part of the open courseware consortium. I am trying to be more careful with my language and my metaphors. I am trying to be more cautious with how I express my thoughts. I am trying to pay more attention to details (more on that later).
There is an old saying that practice makes perfect. That is not true. Practice makes permanent. Many of us have practiced something over and over again and now it is permanently part of our behavior. That doesn’t mean its perfect, unless you believe that you can do something perfectly wrong. Unfortunately, that is what I did. I developed a style of writing and that style became permanent. But it wasn’t good writing.
Anything that is worth doing is worth doing right. It is also worth doing well. To do that, however, will require the help of an editor. More on that in the next post.
Life lesson #2: We all need a group of editors.
