Timothy's Thoughts

T here’s an innocence that exists before you publish a book. I’ll tell you right now that the first and second books I published were written with the intention of self-publishing them. To be quite honest, self-publishing intrigued me (still does) and I needed some material to feed through the process. But one of the things I’ve noticed is that people working on their first book have no clue when it comes to publishing. Almost universally, they have this idea that all they have to do is to write their book, send it off to the publisher and it’ll be in the stores before long. And though their hopes are dashed quickly after they finish their book, I keep encountering people who say, “I’m almost finished with my book and I’m going to look into a publisher soon.” I don’t think we have much opportunity to educate these people. I suppose some of us novelists could write stories about authors seeking publication, but I’m not sure that even that would reach all of these people. But there’s so...

A theists have purchased advertising in Fort Worth that will run during the month of December to say that they are “Good Without God.” It’s ironic that more will be said about God during the month of December by atheists than will be said by Christians as we run around trying to be Santa Claus. But that notwithstanding, I question what the DFW Coalition of Reason hopes to gain from this expense. No one is helped if they persuade people to reject God. I’ll agree that there are many people who do good things who are not believers but much more good is done for the cause of Christ. When Christi ans tell people about Jesus, they do so with the belief that if people will trust him they will be saved in the life to come. But atheists make no claim that they believe their followers will have hope in the afterlife. Christians collect money and give to those in need. They provide programs for young people. They visit the nursing homes and hospitals. Christians lift our spirits through singin...

I frequently read Mike Hyatt's blog and I sometimes post comments there, but his comment form leaves much to be desired. Sometimes it just won't work for me. Today, is one of those days. Today's post was about a video that Jason Fried did on where we're the most productive. After taking the time to write a response to Mike's post, I hate to see it go to waste, so I'm posting it below: Jason Fried is well spoken and gets plenty of laughs by saying things that plenty of people are thinking, but I think it is a mistake to assume that "work" is what we do when we are off by ourselves. I suppose it says something about our society in which the individual is valued more than the group. One of the things that I have found is that my most productive time is when someone interrupts me and asks me how they should be doing something. Yeah, I may have to put aside something that I was doing, but when I get back to my desk, the person I helped is off being prod...

W hen I write, I always have reader in mind. Even though hundreds or even thousands of different people may read what I’ve written, I always image that I’m writing to one person. That person usually doesn’t have name, but he’s that guy that isn’t doing something right. If he were, I wouldn’t be writing to him. Today, my reader is an author who probably doesn’t have a traditional publishing contract and needs to change in order to achieve success. That reader could be you. The reader always needs to change. If he didn’t, what would be the point writing to him? So when we write, the first thing we do is to help the reader determine that he needs to change. We want him to see the problem as his problem If we’re writing fiction, we want him to see that the problem the character faces is similar to something our reader might face. Once we helped the reader identify with the problem, we give him a solution to the problem. That sounds simple enough, but we have to assume that the reader has ...

I just finished a first draft of a revision of a previously completed manuscript. The manuscript has been around for a long time and had a title, but after the revisions and the clarity of time, I’ve decided that the title needs to change. To give you some background on the book, the story is about a woman from St. Louis who shows up on the doorstep of a moderately wealthy business owner in Fort Worth, claiming that she has raised his son’s daughter. Having lost all the other children in a terrible accident the year before, the businessman is elated at the possibility of another grandchild, but the timing couldn’t be worse. The woman and girl have shown up just as they are preparing to announce the merger of the family business with that of another family and there is talk that the businessman’s son will marry the daughter of the other family. The woman has a reputation as a con-artist but some of what she says convinces them that they must check out the story. The businessman hopes t...

A n author mentioned her book in the comments of another blog the other day, so I went to see what the book was about. The author appears to have written the book to impart the wisdom she has gained during her life—all twenty-two years of it—through “poems and journalistic thoughts.” In other words, she published her diary. The folks over at PublishAmerica printed it for her, so don’t think this went through some editorial review process. But the fact is that she isn’t the first author who has published something so ill-advised. If she had sent her work to an agent, we know how it would’ve turned out. “Not for me.” But if we know that, then why didn’t she realize that? More importantly, how can we recognize our own ill-advised projects? I suppose that he problem could be that we’re all so blinded by our own conceit that we can’t see how bad our own projects really are. That’s a unsatisfactory answer because that would mean that we have no means of judging the value of our own work. It...

N ick Harrison recently called Jeff Gerke “the de facto gatekeeper of Christian speculative fiction.” I don’t have a clue what that means, so I decided to write about it. To be the de factor anything you either have to be the choice that pretty much everyone makes (as in Microsoft Word is the de facto standard for word processers) or you’ve got to be the only one doing it. So which is it with Jeff Gerke. Is he the person everyone chooses as the gatekeeper for Christian speculative fiction? The thing about gatekeepers (agent, editors, etc.) is that people choose the ones that let them through the gate. If you’re letting more junk through the gate than other people, that may not be a good thing. The other possibility is that he’s the only one publishing Christian speculative fiction. That isn’t true either. None of the Christian speculative fiction I’ve read recently has come from him. Seems like most of what I’ve read recently came from Thomas Nelson. I’d have to go back and check the...