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Why You Should Write a Book (with Eric Elder) · The Daily Writer

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's been said that over eighty percent of people want to write a book.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: However, there's a big difference between wanting to write a book and actually doing it.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever wanted to write a book but aren't sure how it can benefit your life or how to get started, my guest today will help give you the inspiration and the practical steps to make your writing dreams a reality.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: So stay tuned.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, welcome to the Born to Create podcast.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Kent Sanders, and I'm an author, professor, and creative coach.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is the show where we explore the mindset, habits, and principles to help you make a bigger impact in your life and creative work.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm really excited today to bring you my conversation with my great friend Eric Elder.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: He is an author, speaker, and contemporary pianist with a passion for sharing Christ with others.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Eric is a pioneer in online ministry.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's written for numerous publications, and he's spoken internationally at conferences and retreats.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: He has also produced a wealth of books and music for his own ministry, which is an online spiritual retreat center called The Ranch.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: On this episode, you'll learn the major steps in writing a book, how a book can impact your life, and why you should think in terms of multiple books, not just writing one.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Eric also shares how repurposing content can be a great way to use the same material for multiple audiences.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So this episode is going to inspire you to take action and to share your knowledge through writing.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So just a quick note before we get into the interview, this session was recorded live at a men's retreat back in October 2018.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been a few months ago from the time this is releasing in January 2019.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: However, the conversation will apply both to men and to women.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So even though we did this at a men's retreat, everything we say will apply to men and women equally.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Also, we feature a question and answer session at the end, so make sure and stick around for that.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to take a deeper dive after the episode is over, be sure to check out the show notes at Kent Sanders.net slash write a book.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's Kent Sanders.net slash write a book.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So in this session, we're going to explore the idea of why you should consider writing a book.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Eric and I are are both authors.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's written way more books than I have, but I do know the pain and the pleasure of uh having written a couple books and am currently working on my third one that has been way too long in the making.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm definitely glad to have Eric as a friend because he inspires me as a writer with his uh prolificness.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know if that's a word or not, but it is now.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Can you take us on your journey, Eric, as an author from your very first book up to now?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: How many books have you written?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: What about writing has has really been enjoyable to you?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you like writing?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: What has it done for your life?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Those kind of questions.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Those are great.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um because I I I have written a number of books, but I I didn't really have a number of books in mind when I started.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I uh but uh people had asked me a lot of questions.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because of my testimony, people were asking me um how to navigate their their own uh uh sexual desires, and because God had really taught me a lot um through uh me trying to navigate that uh before a Christian and then after becoming a Christian.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh through conversation after conversation, I started repeating myself over and over and over again, one-on-one, with people, and I thought, you know, I should probably just write this down and give them some of these answers so that they can read that, and after they've read that, then they can come talk to me uh just as a way to maximize my time, because I was answering a lot of the same questions over and over.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really the impetus of why I started my first book.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I had this book on my heart, and it was about seven years of just, you know, sort of writing and thinking about it and writing some of the questions down and some of my answers, you know, some of the common questions.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I talked to a guy one day, Ray Pritchard, he's a pastor, he's written a lot of books too, and I was at a retreat and he was speaking, and I talked to him at a break about his book, uh his books and and about my book, and I was telling him about this book that I was writing, and and he said, Eric, write up front, let me say this.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Don't think book, think books.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you think about this one book that you want to write in your entire lifetime, it will take you your entire lifetime to write it.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: You will keep thinking about it, you'll keep tweaking it, you'll keep analyzing it, because you're trying to make this one masterpiece.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, But if you'll if you'll think books, what's the next book you would want to write after you finish this one?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: And what's the book you want to write after that?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I had never thought about a next book or a next book.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so as I started thinking about it, I thought, oh, you know, there is another book I'd like to write after this one.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as I started thinking about the next one, I hurried up and finished that one and got it out and got it published.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was called What God Says About Sex, and it was a great book for a lot of people uh because it, you know, was sort of an introductory primary to what does God say in the Bible about sex?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh just some simple answers that I had learned might be churchy answers, but a lot of people uh I had people come up to me and said, I mean, does the Bible even say anything about sex?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, well, actually, every book of the 66 books says something about sex or uh a reference to sexual intimacy, and uh yeah, the Bible has a lot to say about sex.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I realized there was a market for it, there were people who wanted to read it, and uh that was 20 years ago that I wrote that book, and I've since written twenty books.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: I've written about a book every year because uh Ray just helped me unleash that in me and said, think books, not book.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that we have talked about a lot, and in fact, here at this retreat, I think we've talked about it with a couple of guys, is the idea of repurposing content.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So all of your books, well, I'm not gonna say all of them all of them, but many of them, would you say that is repurposed content from sermons that you've written for your weekly weekly audience and and other kinds of things?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I do this uh online ministry, and every week I was writing a message, I was doing a video message, uh just picking sort of random topics, topics that were on my heart, and I would do a message and then I'd file it, you know, and I'd put it away.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um after a year or two of doing that, I thought, you know, I've actually written a lot of content.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've recorded a lot of material.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: If I if I sort of did a series, um at the end of it, I could have a book.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so uh one of my first ones was called Exodus Lessons in Freedom, and it was about fifty lessons I went through for a year, the book of Exodus, just uh passage by passage, about how God had helped me uh find freedom and help others find freedom as well, leading others into freedom.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And these were really lessons that God was teaching me, and then I was just sort of sharing them as God was teaching them to me and as I was putting them into practice.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so every week I would just send them out, and then at the end of the year I put them together in a book.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: I uploaded a PDF file to Amazon to create space, and uh it's a you know, I I had a book, and I can't tell you the feeling I had of holding a book in my hands that maybe I've only sold a hundred of these in in my career, but to actually have a product and something that I could use and you know repurpose.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So then I put this on my website.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: People want to make a donation, they can get a copy of the book, they can give it to their friends, people still like books, but it was repurposing my regular weekly message.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and even this weekend at the retreat, I used the first three chapters of this book uh for the my whole talk on Friday night on facing your fears and talking about Moses and Exodus chapter one.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, by having it written down, I could repurpose it again, and I could go like, now what was that lesson?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and I I reread what I had written back then, and I'm like, oh, yeah.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I could repurpose it even again here.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not that you're getting leftover content, but it was really good the first time, so I'm glad to share it again.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that to me goes back to the idea of creating something once and using it multiple times.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say, for example, if you have a blog, okay, if you write let's say uh a series of blog posts on your website, you can then take those and re do some reformatting, probably some editing, turn those into a book, and here you have another product that you can create from that.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can create that book and you can make an audiobook out of it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can make a workbook if you wanted to, or you can make a series of talks, or you could make a podcast series, or you could do any number of things with that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: But so it's this idea, as we were talking about earlier, with entrepreneurship of you know, you're creating something once and you're selling it multiple times, you're making it available to different audiences because your book readers may not be the same thing as your newsletter readers, which may not be the same thing as an audience where you're talking at a retreat, which may be different than a YouTube audience or a podcast audience.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you have this all these kind of multiple ways of reaching people with the same basic content.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think by having it written down, that just allows you to be able to use it uh in multiple ways for multiple reasons, and you just remember things better when you write them down.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Exactly.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is why I like to manuscript talks.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's how you work as well.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think you do, correct?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I do like it because then I have it written down.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I I like having it written down because then I can I can shoot it out to all my email subscribers if I if I need to.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And otherwise it's a lot of extra work and it slows me down and I don't I don't bother doing it sometimes.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'll make a manuscript, meaning typing everything out word for word so as if someone was going to read it themselves, uh sometimes that's a nice way to do a talk because then you can repurpose it a lot easier once it's in in that format.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Although I will say on YouTube, it transcribes it automatically for you.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: When this podcast is over, it will do an automatic transl transcription of everything we say.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't get it all right, but it's nice because it'll, you know, then I can just take that, download that transcription, edit it a little bit, and we've got a whole nother book.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So Exactly.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can't edit something that you haven't written in the first place.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And with tools today, I I use this a lot, um, transcription kinds of things on my phone.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you use those kinds of things as well, but man, you can go out for a walk for 20 minutes.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can write a blog post in that amount of time very easily if you have kind of a rough outline in your mind and just dictate it into your phone.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: So And just going even using Mitchin as an example, he wrote a great Facebook post uh a few days ago about bacon apple pies.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: He had an abundance of apples on his tree.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted to bake them for the food pantry and for some people that uh that uh needed some food.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so he baked uh how many pies did you eventually bake?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Fifty or something.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Upwards of fifty fifty apple pies.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: He made this Facebook post, just a blog post on Facebook that was encouraging and he gave some great uh spiritual insight to it too.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you know, I just know as Mitch keeps writing those, uh he'll be ha he'll have the makings of a book.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I I can I can sort of tell he's got that in his mind a little bit now as he's posting.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not just for Facebook, but it it blessed a lot of people on Facebook and they're commenting, they're clicking, and uh but uh if you sort of have this dual purpose in mind, uh it's it's a beautiful way to uh to reach people.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been said that eighty-some percent of people want to write a book.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe just take a little poll here.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you here in this room have thought about the idea of writing a book before?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's something you might you would like to do.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: You would like to have the book published.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so So most of the people in this room, so this kind of goes with the typical, you know, seven or eight out of ten people.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to somebody who says, I'm not I'm not an author, I don't know how to do this, I don't know how to get started, uh, I'm not a writer, but I want to write a book.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to the beginning person who maybe they're at the very beginning of this journey but they don't know the next steps to take?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, this was sort of an audacious title of the podcast, whether you're going to keep this title or not, but you know why everyone should consider writing a book.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of like, well, I don't know if everyone really should write a book, or you know, but it's sort of like everyone does have a dream.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone does have a story to tell.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard that uh uh someone has said everyone has a million-dollar book inside them.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: They just have to tell their own story, but they have to be brutally honest in the telling.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you would just tell your own story, it is so unique, so different.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard several stories at this retreat this weekend that I'm like, that is such a unique story.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Dean was, you know, telling us it last year at the retreat.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: His story of growing up in Chicago in the rough neighborhoods and no Christianity in his home.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, now I've only known him as Dean who does retreats and speaks at things and leads Bible studies.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, how did you get from there to here?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I want to hear that story.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we all have a story like that.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: So really uh you might think, you know, I don't want to write a book, but do I think you might have a story to tell that other people need to hear.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is why I've invited Kent to speak about depression and Jeff to speak about addiction.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I heard their stories one-on-one, and I I knew that that blessed me so much, encouraged me, gave me so much hope in things in my life, and I'm like, I would love for you to tell people about that one day.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and Jeff said today was one day after ten years, he's finally doing it.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: But he's also writing a book about it because you know he's realized over time that this is actually going to help people.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so so even those who didn't raise their hand, I believe you have a story to tell.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, by writing it down, you can pass it on to to future generations.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can share it with just a few family and friends.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be a major publisher or author.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: My first book that I was writing on what God says about sex, I I wanted to reach people all over the world because I was talking to people all the time about this issue in their life.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And when I sat down to write it, to actually write the words, uh, I said, God, who do you want to read this?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And God said, Your children.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, My kids?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: You want my kids to read all this stuff about my own sex life and how I learned?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Yeah, I want your children to know and to understand how to follow me in their sexual life.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: It changed the whole nature of the book.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: It changed my focus from wanting to reach the world and being a published author and all this stuff to how would I explain this to help my kids grow in this?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I believe that could be your biggest audience for your books, you know, for for your family and friends, people close to you, that they want to know your story.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Jeff's wife, he she came to me a couple years ago.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I want to tell this story about when Jeff, if you don't mind me sharing, you had a heart transplant ten eleven years ago.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Literally has someone else's heart in his body that has become his own.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And how God walked them through that whole process.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I want to write a book.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to get started.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I gave her some tips, and we'll talk about those, but uh, how to get started.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, she's finished that entire manuscript.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: She hasn't published it yet, but she wrote that whole story, and as I read it, she was a new friend at the time.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: There they were this couple, I hadn't really known anything about them.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'd met Jeff, but I didn't know anything about his health history.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I just said, this is fascinating.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is amazing.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know they do that.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: I remember Barney Clark having the first heart transplant back when I was in high school, you know, and it's like, wow, they do this sort of as a routine thing now.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, just what does that mean?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean to the other family who, you know, the son had to, you know, not had to give up his life, get, you know, he died.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And what does that mean to you?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: How what does that mean to your faith and your life and your marriage?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it's fascinating to me.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: It may not be fascinating to you because you just lived it.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Dean's story isn't fascinating.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Who would want to read about me growing up in Chicago in the in the you know the the rough part of town?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: New Jersey, I'm sorry.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: He was in New Jersey when he grew up, sorry.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh moved later.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I'm just your story is amazing.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a farm kid from central Illinois.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Who wants to read about a kid who grew up on the farm and had chickens and dogs and sheep and but Laura Ingalls Wilder, she her stories are popular.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what those stories are.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Growing up on the plains of Illinois.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the Hallmark Channel.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is the Hallmark Channel except?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't really watch Hallmark movies, but but my wife does.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Little House on their prayers.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: What are those stories except things that take place in a small town?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: So everybody has a million-dollar book inside them.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: They just have to tell their story, but you have to be brutally honest.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's the piece that do you really want to be honest about all the stuff that goes on?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you mentioned writing for your kids.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know I know not every book that you write, you write with your children as the intended audience.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: But something I've thought about a lot is, you know, we're all gonna be gone someday.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not to be morbid or anything, but that is the fact.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: We are all going to die someday.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what are we gonna leave behind?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Your great-grandchildren, your great-great-grandchildren, how are they gonna know what you thought and what you felt if you if you had things that you really wanted to say?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: How how are they gonna know what what you thought about those things?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd I'd drive by the graves of my grands and great grands and I see their stone and I see a dash, and that's all I know about.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: I see the dash.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: How fascinating to read about what their life was like in the eighteen hundreds and coming to Illinois from across from Wales and all the things they had to go through.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: I I would love to read that.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: It could be every it could be the price of eggs is a penny.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I that would be fascinating now.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And let alone your whole walk with God, you know.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that's to find that you have this spiritual heritage and people have believed this for years, and if you have some message that you really want to pass on to generations.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the value of print books, especially.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I know I love audiobooks, I love podcasts and and blogs and all the digital stuff, I love all that stuff.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: However, I think we would be foolish to assume all that stuff is necessarily going to be like it is in the same form, accessible in the same ways as it is in 2018.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Can I say some comment about that?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, I journal a lot.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: But my journals are a lot of my dialogue with God, how I'm going through my life.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: You guys actually write a you write a lot.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: You're writing your story, emails, Facebook posts, Twitter.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're actually documenting and writing your story, and that's being recorded, and somebody someday that might all be it might be tomorrow.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Google might lose their security system, and everything in your life is going to be exposed.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um You're writing your story now, if you're already writing it down.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: What I felt with my journals, if someone goes back through it, I would like to give my take on that so that as people read about my college days and my college experiences, they can see what my take on that now is.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that I can, you know, I can have a little filter, a little bit of context, a little bit of now, here's what I learned since in Christ and what has carried me through.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, you might be surprised your book is already being written, but maybe you'd like to tweak that a little bit.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that is a really, really wonderful point.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh to me it goes back to some.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier a little bit, which is about being an entrepreneur.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the biggest impulses of being an entrepreneur is you're controlling you're controlling your own narrative.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, now Facebook is controlling your narrative, Google is controlling your narrative, all these things are controlling the stories that are being shared because it that's not our platform.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: We don't own that platform.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: But when we write books, when we and I would put podcasts and blogs in that same category.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or if we make something, we're controlling the narrative, we're controlling the story that people are going to to be able to listen to years from now.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a really important thing because um you know, I would rather have control than not have control, for sure.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not in a bad way, but just a filter to take us through and you know, we could spend literally days on this one question, but what are the major steps somebody would need to go through to go from zero to published book?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: I would say step one is just you know define what your book is about.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, whether you think of a title, whether it's the final title or not, you know, what is the main topic that you're thinking of?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for Jeff it was uh for for his wife, you know, it was I want to talk about this heart transplant and the effect it had on my life.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so she you know came up with a title and um and you know that sort of defined a little bit the book.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: That could change over time, but you know, in general, what are you trying to do?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I was talking to somebody at at a break and he wanted to write sort of about uh you know Christianity and politics and how you know how sometimes we need to separate those and merge those and how do they interact?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you know so I just asked him, you know, what's your book about?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Oh, that'd be a huge topic to try to explain it.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, just the nutshell, what would it be?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it came down to sort of politics and Christianity.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: How do you navigate that whole thing?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And he wants to help other people navigate that.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think just having what's that what's that main theme?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would start listing down some stories, and I just use yellow pads, and you know, I just think, you know, what what stories would I want to tell?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh for I I wrote another book uh uh 2015 called Fifty Shades of Grace, and it sort of told my story uh as the love story of my love with God and my love for my wife, and really how I came to Christ in the midst of of that whole thing.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I I used sort of the story of my life, and so I just started thinking, and I I went back through some of my my own writings and I just started thinking, you know, what story were pivotal?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the day I met Christ, the you know, that was a story that I wanted to tell.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I jotted that down.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I I just jotted down some of these some of these things, and uh and then I had an outline.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: That that made the outline for the book.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that you know, so so coming up with a title, coming up with what are some of the main things?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: It could be five or six, it could be ten or twelve.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that became the fifty shades of grace.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: And God's transformation in that whole process.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you have a possible title, although titles can always change.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Have you know a topic, an outline?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then what about writing an actual draft of the book?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: What if what if somebody hates writing and they just think that is absolute torture to write something?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get to that first draft and then on to the editing and the actual publishing and so forth?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some people just love writing, other people just it's like pulling teeth.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it's somewhere in between.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's in between because I spend so much time tweaking the words and the sentences and I want to make it sound just right.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: So to get past that, uh I found a thing called the National Novel Writing Month, NanoRimo.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and every November, this group of people online, uh, you can go to nanorimo.org and they will encourage you to write uh a book in 30 days.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you take the month of November, you sort of have an idea in mind and maybe an outline, and then starting on November 1st, you the goal is to write a 50,000-word book by the end of November.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you just write every day.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: You just you just write and write.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And they said the number one reason people don't write the book is because they just they they never get started.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: They never start writing it.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so their goal was to get people to start writing their book.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh I thought about that for a few years before I finally did it.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had written a few books by then, but there was a book I wanted to write about St.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Nicholas, um, the story of his real life back in the 300 ADs.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: This was actually my wife's dream.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh speaking of going after your dream, sometimes there are people around you have dreams, and they're never going to get to it, so you need to help them.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I I thought, my wife wants to do this thing, but she's she's got six kids she's taken care of and me, and I I would like to help her, and I write, and so maybe I'll spend November writing uh writing this book.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: She can just tell me what she wants to say.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: We'd done a lot of research already.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: She can sort of tell me with the flow, and I outlined it before November 1st, and then I just started writing.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: So every morning I'd wake up, this is the practical thing, and I'd spend about an hour, maybe, maybe 45 minutes to an hour, and I'd just write about one of the stories of of his life.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um he gave some gold to the three girls who were going to be sold into prostitution.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I just told that story.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, and the next day I spent about an hour and I told a different story from his life, and a different story from his life.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I since I had an outline, I had sort of a plan of where I wanted to go with it and how I wanted to develop it.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: For my own books, my own life, you know, the fifty shades of grace.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, it was very chronological, so it was, you know, uh my life before Christ and sexual experiences that were outside of God's will.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I just I would spend I would spend about an hour at most writing.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you're not supposed to go back and edit, don't change anything, don't don't don't think about it.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: You just start writing the story.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was doing this just this week.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've gotten a little head start because I have two books I want to write this year.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it's October still, but you know, I I was I I have this book in mind that I want to write.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I'll ever even publish it, but it will help me to process through some of my life.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was sitting at Denny's at breakfast with Dave from this group, and um I got a text from my daughter, and you know, that text just catapulted uh some things in my life.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And um so I j I just spent one page, I just wrote for about an hour describing that scene, you know.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I could say, you know, I was sitting with Dave talking and and had uh you know got this text.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: But then I thought there's this whole there's this picture of I have a very vivid picture in my mind of the exact table I sat at, the Denny's sign outside, the we had just finished breakfast planning for a retreat, we were having a second cup of coffee, and so I had to just describe that picture because no one else can see that.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I sat and I described that scene.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: I just had one scene in my mind, and I said, you know, I was sitting having a second cup of coffee with Dave at the at the Denny's, and we had just been at this planning meeting and talking about casual things when I got a text from my daughter that changed my life, and hearing what she had to say, and just you know how that catapulted this whole what's gonna unfold in the whole rest of the book.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I just wrote that.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the next day I woke up and I I wrote another story.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: I said, okay, what was the next scene that came to my mind?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and uh you know, it was a funeral of someone, and it was like, ah, okay, you know, and I have a very vivid picture in my mind of that, you know, just one still shot of that funeral, and I just described that.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and then the third day there's another scene, you know, it's just okay.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Here was this uh, you know, whatever it was.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think you know, just taking that taking that 30 days to write, I have never made the 50,000 word goal, I have to confess.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um but by the time I'm done, I have finished, you know, and sometimes I'll go into December because I just haven't finished the whole story.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll have a great rough draft.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't wouldn't show it to anybody because it's terrible, you know.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's but over the next six months, and I did this with you, Kent, for over the next six months would was my next step, was going back and polishing that, looking through my journals, looking through my receipts, looking through my old pictures to try to flesh it out and say, okay, I have this one-page story about a paragraph.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: What would that look like in three pages if I really included a few quotes that I remember from my journal, a few th emails, the very specific words that took place there, a few quotes from other people, a few Bible verses, and that's what I sent to a few trusted friends uh for Fifty Shades of Grace.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I sent it to Kent, and each week I'd sent you, or every few days I'd send him something and say, I have this book in mind.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I'd ever publish it.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's very intimate, it's very personal, I'm really nervous about it.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I can ever tell these stories, but I'm trying to be brutally honest.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and Kent and a few other guys said, This is really good stuff, and you really should consider publishing this.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And even if you change your name, which I did, and you publish it under a pen name, which I did, um, you know, it's really good stuff to get out there.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that that was the next step, going back and polishing it and you know, finally printing and uploading it to Amazon and printing, you know, getting it published.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now I do want to interject here, and I don't remember the specifics of this, but a few years ago, whenever you were writing this book, there were several of us who were giving feedback on it.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember what it was, but there were several things where and my wife was involved in this too because she was I think reading some sections and giving some feedback.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: There were some things where several of us made suggestions on things and they were probably you know competing suggestions.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there were a few things where you didn't take our advice on some things because which you can't ever do with somebody.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can't take everybody's suggestions because if you have three or four people giving their input, there's no way you can incorporate those because sometimes they're at odds with each other.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that is an important point to make as you're getting feedback.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can't take everybody's suggestions, and sometimes you have to just do what you feel is right for the book.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um because at the end of the day, it is your book, and you're the one who's has their name on it, and you're gonna be owning that book, so you know you get feedback, but you can't take everybody's feedback all the time.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's you and your wife named that book for me.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: That was her idea, actually.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: I said this is a very intimate story and it's about God.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what do I do?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh she threw you had suggested, you know, Fifty Shades of Grace, which I think you both later said, don't do that.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's a terrible title.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't remember.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: I really, really liked it and I used it.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that feedback, even when I finished that book, I uh I I started running it by a few people when I was done with it, because I said, Should I use my real name?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Should I not?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Should I should I even publish this?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I I had two or three people that were like, Yes, absolutely, this is great.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: But then I had one person very close to me, very important person, and she said, Eric, you cannot publish this.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is you know, this would be this would be you know, you're sharing your intimate life and your intimate relationship with your wife, and you know you you can't do this.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is wrong.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you know, I had to really think through that.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I did, I expanded my list of people that I sent it to, you know, some more trusted friends, and uh it eventually turned into about a hundred trusted friends because I said, wow, I really don't want to mess up here.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: But it came back, about 80% of the people were so touched, so moved.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 10% of them were like, This is on the edge of what even I would ever read, Eric.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's tasteful, but it's on the edge.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then another another 10% were like, Eric, you know, you you really this is this is not gonna be helpful.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, in the end I had to I had to make that call.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I pulled the trigger, I published it, and I even you know, I even told people I wrote this, and this is my life with my wife, and um you know whether I made the right decision or not, but I I had a good, you know, I I did have to expand my input from people.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then I had to pull the trigger for myself.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell Can you share a little bit about what a book can do for you and your message that other things cannot?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, if you did not have your books, what would your ministry be lacking?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Are there people who would not have been touched?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Are there people who would not have heard your message if not for the books that you've written?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, let me put it in a third-person context.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, John and Charles Wesley were great, uh they were great hymn writers, they started a great movement, the whole Methodist Church came out of these guys back in England in 1800s, 1700s, 1800s.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um John was a prolific writer about everything that happened and everything that went on, Charles was not.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: John's story is the one that's told because John wrote it down.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's powerful.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Bottom line.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote it down, he wrote about his adventures to America, he's wrote about his failures, he wrote about his successes, he wrote about preaching in front of thousands, tens of thousands on the open fields, you know, back before microphones and things.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he talked about you know being kicked out of the church and uh uh because he wasn't doing things the way they wanted, or you know, he talked about his very real life, and um his story is fascinating to me.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Charles' story is lost.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know his version.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know his take.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean he has hymns, he's a lot prolific hymn writer, but uh but I just don't know his story.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would say similar for a lot of pastors.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when I s when I was first starting my web ministry, my pastor would preach every week, and he would he wrote out full manuscript versions of his of his sermons.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: He'd preach every week.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: I said, you know, what do you do with your sermons when you're done with them?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Oh, I put them in a filing cabinet, and they're they're all there, 20 years worth of sermons all in my filing cabinet.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, man, can we just put those online?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are people looking for answers on divorce and marriage and kids and raising raising families, and and you've preached about all those topics.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: You've preached through almost every book of the Bible.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Just put it out there so people can see it.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Put it online, you know, and he started doing that, putting it out.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, all that leads to me, you know, I was preaching message after message each week, and it was going out to maybe 20 people.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, you know, I would really like this to go to more people.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of it for me was you know being able to repurpose uh initially, as I said, those one-on-one conversations with people.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, you know, I should probably just duplicate these conversations so other people can hear the the questions, hear the answers.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's what it's done for me.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's allowed me to multiply myself, just like John Wesley did, just like my pastor did when he finally published his sermons online.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Multiply yourself, multiply God's teaching, uh, reach as many people as we can.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because those books will go places where you could never go, especially when they're on Amazon and on the web and all this kind of stuff.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Eric, thanks so much for uh sharing this.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots more we could talk about.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do we want to open it up to a couple questions?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone have any questions on this topic?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the question is can you take notes on your phone?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially, can you write a book without having to sit at a computer and write?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say that's a fair that wow, that's pretty much your question, correct?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is yes, absolutely.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: I do that almost on a daily basis.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: I uh use my phone and I do dictation and I write out all kinds of things that way.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's things for my website, sometimes it's things for my classes, sometimes it's just notes and reminders to myself.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those do have to be edited because it's not a perfect technology.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the great thing about writing is that you don't have to be a writer to write a book.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now that doesn't sound like it makes sense on the surface, but you can always have a friend help you write it.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're really ambitious with this thing, you can hire a ghostwriter, actually, you could hire editors.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let that ever be a barrier.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that maybe you can't see a screen very well, or um your grammar is not that good, or your spelling is not that good.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you would be shocked at how many New York Times bestsellers are are not actually written by those people.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um they hire ghostwriters, that is an extremely common practice, or they hire people that are co-writers.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I would say that's that's not a barrier at all.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Would you agree with that?
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: I would agree.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh like Clayton Ermiger, who's part of this group, he's 87 years old, and uh he had some book ideas that he had written a few things down, um, but they weren't very fleshed out.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he sat with me and he's like, uh, what can I do with this?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Why don't we just sit down and I'll just interview you?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let me ask you about each page.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I recorded it on my phone, because on your phone there's just an audio recorder, just push it and record it.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we met uh several times, I don't remember five or six times, and just went through page after page of his you know bullet points that he had.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he, you know, he he just told me the stories, and I asked him questions like Kent's asking me, uh, and then I went and I wrote it down for him.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, I I put his pages and then on the back side uh I put you know some of the things from our conversation of why these were important points to him, why these were important verses to him.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um because he you know he just wasn't going to be able to write the book.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and same with my wife.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: She had a story she wanted to tell, so I just helped her tell it.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't even think writing is you know the be all end-all.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: I remember interviewing my grandpa on a little cassette recorder.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: My my mom said, you know, why don't you ask him some of his journey from Wales to America?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember he's talking about the waves and the wind, and they had to push all the horses off the boat into the ocean because uh it was so autopsy turvy and they they just needed to reduce the weight.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, just him telling me that story on a recording and having those recordings still to this day, you know, that's that's phenomenal stuff, you know, family history stuff.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have to write it down.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: You could get help or you could use an app, but even if you just recorded your stories, Gene, you know, that would be that would be perfect.
• 37:08
  unknown: This is making your job.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: It would be fascinating.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Just this is yeah, you didn't raise your hand earlier that you want to write a book, but after talking about this, you're like, hey, you know, maybe there is something I need to tell.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: There is, yeah.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's got stories, yeah, absolutely.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the question is the process of actually putting the book online or a p creating a PDF and getting the book out.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I I self-publish all my books.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh these I just print myself.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like just printing it on a printer, except I use a company called createspace.com.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what's it going to be called now?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Kindle Direct or something.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're changing the name.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it's an Amazon company.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's KDP print.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: KDPprint.com.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just through Amazon.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh through Amazon.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when I I just type it in Microsoft Word or in pages on my computer, and then uh I save it as a PDF file, which is a printable format.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I just upload that file for free to this company, and uh and within a day or two they uh they proof it, check it.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they don't check all the words, they just check if it's printable.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um I can create a little cover on there.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: They have a cover creator, or you can create your own cover, and uh then within a day or two I can order a copy of my own book uh at my author rate, which this book's like$3.50.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: I can order one copy, ship it to myself for two or three bucks shipping.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's cheaper than me going to Kinko's or FedEx Express and and printing out a 250-page uh uh manuscript.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: I they've just got this science down so easily.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and then I I do this for my rough drafts of my book.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just upload it, I'll print a copy for myself, I'll give it to a friend, a few friends, they'll make their notes, I'll fix it.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I'm ready, I push a button and it says make it for sale to the world.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's for sale, both in you know electronic format or in print format, and whenever they order it, Amazon just prints one and ships it anywhere in the world to somebody.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, I have tried going traditional publishing routes, and it's just it's really hard.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's a hard business to to do.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought I don't want that to limit me from getting my book out.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are people that want it.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, they'll give you an ISBN number, which is your library number, you know.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: Some places are free, some I don't know, five bucks, ten bucks, twenty bucks or something for an ISBN number.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: So they walk you through all that stuff.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um but basically it's free to upload your whole book.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I don't pa I don't I didn't pay them anything except when I buy a copy.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then I can pick a price, I put twelve or fifteen bucks on it, and I'll make like five bucks on every book.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: They keep some, I keep some, and it works for both of us.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I've made money from book one.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's it's actually a I don't know if that sounded complicated or simple, but compared to what it was when I first did my first book, and I had to go to Kinkos and I had to order, you know, X number of books, and I had, you know, it was a big investment, and then I had these books, and then if there was an error, I had all these books in my closet with errors.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if I have an error in this book, I just upload a fresh copy today, and tomorrow if somebody orders it, they get the new version.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like so I can I can tweak it as I go along.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Which I had to do because Eastview, you know, after a few people read it, they've caught some more errors, and I'm like, okay, easy.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: We fix it, and you know, now it's clean again.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Simply complicated, yes.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: It can be complicated and it can be, and you can you can hire someone like Kent to help you through the process.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: You can get lost in the details for sure.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I think we had let's do one more question, then we'll break.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'll repeat the question, but you can answer it.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: How do you finish a book or if you have several ideas and you have you know you start one, then you get excited about another one, then another one, how do you finish one of them?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how do you well there's probably different answers to this?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: My answer would be I think you have to determine the validity of your different ideas.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: The way that I do that for myself is I have a few key people in my life who I validate ideas by.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: My first one is always my wife, because she's always brutally honest, but and she's insightful in ways that I cannot be insightful because she's that's just how God wired her to be.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: So if I also worked for years in a retail bookstore, that's true.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: She was uh selling books to her.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: She worked for Barnes Noble for 10 years, so she has a really innate ability to discern, okay, this is a good idea, this is not a good idea, that one sounds a little shady, or that's not gonna fly or whatever.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I also have a few key friends, Eric being one of them, who who's kind of uh a test pilot for some ideas.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's key.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: So having a few friends that you run your ideas by and just kind of explain the story or explain the concept and say, is this something that sounds interesting?
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: If they say no, then it's probably not the right time, or it's just not connecting with them.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if they say yes, then make an outline, write a sample chapter or two and see where it goes.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now that this is the part of the answer that nobody wants to hear when it comes to finishing a book, and that it's simply the truth that whenever you start writing a book, it's exciting, but whenever you get toward the middle section, it's a slog.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's the experience I think the vast majority of writers have.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's like anything else, you have to just push through the pain.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a commitment that you make, and you sit your behind down in the chair and you do it, and you crank out your word count for the day, or whatever system you have set up for yourself, and you just get it done.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know any other way to say it.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is that pretty accurate from your experience?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I've just found like this nano-rhymo writing in November, picking one topic and writing about it for 30 days, that's been the best thing for me.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: Really.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's how I can get them out, and because I'm I'm writing uh about one topic.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the other thing I do, I do write a series, like the Exodus book was every week I was writing a chapter for my online post, and I sort of made that commitment at the beginning.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I've done a number of books like that where I commit from the beginning and say, I'm gonna write about this.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have a ready-made audience for it.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have an audience already, and I and I've I outlined it on my calendar.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is gonna go out this day, this day.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that helps me get through those middle periods.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, that that does happen, and I'm like, I am so tired of writing about the Psalms, I don't want to write about King David one more week.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I had made an outline, I had different things I wanted to say about each thing, and I knew it was valuable, and I just had to press through until I was finished with it, and it came out nicely, you know, and it was uh but you need you need to have a few checks and balances in your own life to make sure you finish it.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I think that's really, really important.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: In my case, I have a newsletter I send out to my email subscribers every week.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have a thing I write for my college students every week.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um I do Facebook posts, things like that.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can have you can build up an audience.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even have to have a website, just put some stuff on Facebook or say, hey guys, here's a sample chapter.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think getting feedback on stuff often and early is really, really important.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the worst thing that you can do as a writer is write completely in solitude where you don't let anybody see anything until the whole book's done because hey, you might spend six months on a book and then it ends up being horrible because you didn't get any feedback on it from anybody.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some writers do work that way, particularly some fiction authors.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really write fiction, so I can't speak to that so much, but I think getting feedback from some people as soon as you write it is really, really valuable.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: And can I add another thing about helping you define what book is going to be the most important at the time?
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Dean was sharing how he's had people ask him over and over over the years about raising kids.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how did you raise your kids to be the way they are?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: How did, you know, what what are some parenting tips?
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Should I really write a book?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: I feel a little awkward writing this, but you know, if you have people asking you over and over and over the same question, uh that might be a ding-ding in your head to say.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's a clue.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's a clue.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: And Kent has said this often.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what are what do people ask you most?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, you know, people were asking this question can you give a guide for me as a parent, as a friend of a gay person?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do?
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I I sort of default to telling my own story because that's my familiar thing, but I have counseled with a lot of friends and a lot of parents.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: And after hearing that question over and over and over again, I'm finally like, okay, maybe I need to put that to the front of the hopper and um really address that.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and as I did, people responded.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, man, come speak to us about that, come share with that.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because people were asking me already, so I knew there was an audience for it.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: One last thing.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: I had I had three books.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is the first time I tried writing three books in a year, last year.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: I had this one on homosexuality, I had one on the Psalms series that was uh prayer, helping people with their prayer life, and then I had a musical that I was writing about the St.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Nicholas story.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: We had written the book, but now I was turning it into a musical writing music and the book.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I could not decide between the three, and I'm like, I'm just gonna write all three.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: And Monday I'm gonna do this, Tuesday I'm gonna do this, Wednesday I'm gonna do this, and and I would write each day.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what helped me filter was, you know, when Mike Baker asked me, Hey, would you speak in a few months on this topic?
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: And if your book's available, I'd like to make it available to the congregation.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, it will be done.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: By August 27th, I will be sure to have that book done.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: And both other books fell away, and I was like, all right, and this book took precedence.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: But then I also had these subscribers to my newsletter, and I was writing every week about the Psalms, and so by the end of the year I finished that book.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then I had this musical about St.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Nicholas that I'd been working on for years.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: We've been, you know, it's been a 20-year project, and I was sort of like that had taken the back seat.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: But just a month or so ago, someone emailed me from a ballet company in South Carolina.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: They found my book about St.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Nicholas on Amazon.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: They had read it, fell in love with the story, they emailed me and said, Hey, we'd like to do a ballet adaptation of your book on this whole story, an hour and a half show for Christmas this year.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: Would you give us permission to do that?
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know, actually, I've written half a musical and I've written some songs and I've written I've fleshed it out for the stage, not for the ballet necessarily, but it might give you some helpful ideas.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: You want some of that stuff too?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, that would be great, and whatever we can work in, we will.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so they are now going to do this show November 30th and December 1st.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're in rehearsals right now.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working with Matt Ludwig at church to turn two of my songs into ballet Tchaikovsky sounding music, and it's incredible.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh all of a sudden that third book is now at the forefront of my mind because I'm like, man, there's an audience for this.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: People want this on stage.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: I need to finish this book so my next year, uh we can I mean there's no way I can get it all done for the ballet this year, and you know, they're they have their own ideas too.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: But uh start all three, you know, you start all three, and then you see what God what God filters, and He'll you know He can put one to the front and then in the next one and then the next one, and uh I'm I'm excited with God what God's gonna do.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: But again, I mean that whole book about St.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Nicholas, just putting it on Amazon.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, did you find a uh are you on my newsletter list?
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: Do you read it every year when I send it out for the and they're like, no, we just found it on Amazon and ha ha crazy world, you know, that we live in.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: So who knows who's gonna find what and what God's gonna do with it.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks so much for the questions, and uh, I guess we'll wrap it up there.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: All right, great.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with my great friend Eric Elder.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, if you've listened to any of these episodes, at the end of every interview, I always give three specific things that I learned from the conversation, and these are three action steps that I try to implement into my own life, and these are things that you can implement as well, hopefully.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: So let me share my three key takeaways from my conversation with Eric on why you should consider writing a book.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is repurpose your content for multiple audiences.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: The cool thing today is that with podcasts and blogs, YouTube videos, uh email newsletters, coaching material, speeches, online courses, workshops, social media posts.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's almost an endless number of ways that you can take some content that you've written and repurpose it for different audiences.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now the thing to remember is that someone who sees a social media post that you wrote may not be the same person who sees an email newsletter that you send out, or who will read a book that you wrote, or will or who will read a blog post or may listen to a podcast.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: So those are all different audiences, and there may be some overlap, but just remember that you can create content once and then you can use it a bunch of different places.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's pretty cool, and that's something I actually practice in my own writing business as well.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: Key takeaway number two is to play the long game and write multiple books.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think in terms of writing multiple books, not just writing one book, I think that really takes the pressure off because you know, so many people go years or decades and they think, Man, I really want to write this book.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this great idea for you know a book, it may be a story or a nonfiction book or a memoir or whatever it is, and they go decades and they never actually write the book because they're only thinking, I want to write that one book.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we put so much pressure on ourselves to write some sort of Pulitzer Prize winning book or this bestseller or New York Times bestseller or whatever it is, and that's kind of crazy.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: So when you think of it as multiple books and creating a body of work that really takes the pressure off of having to write one super, super awesome book.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: So just think in terms of okay, you have an idea, write that book, and then write the next one, or write the next one, and write the next one.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's an interesting way to look at it.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the cool thing about all this is that even if you just have one idea for a book right now, when you write the book, you're going to get more ideas.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's how creativity works.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not as if it is a well that only produces water one time.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: The more that you draw from your well of creativity, the more that that well will get replenished.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Key takeaway number three is that a book is the best way to leave a legacy for those who will come after you.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: And in our conversation, my friend Eric gave a really powerful illustration of why we remember John Wesley more than Charles Wesley.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: So why is that?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, both of them were influential, both of them were well known during their lifetimes.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: However, we remember more of John Wesley because he actually took the time to write down his story.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that to me is a really powerful reminder of how writing can impact not just people today, but how it can impact future generations.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: So think about this for a second.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, today we have social media, we have podcasts, we have blogs, we have video, you know, all those all those things.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I am involved in all those things, I love all that stuff.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: However, I think we're deluding ourselves if we really think that all of our podcasts, you know, all of our audio files, all of our video files, all of our video files are going to be readable by somebody a hundred years from now.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think of you know, your great grandkids or great great niece or nephew or family friend or you know, whoever it is that you're picturing a hundred years from now.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: How are they actually gonna learn about us?
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: How are they going to know what we thought?
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: How are they gonna know our story?
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: How are they gonna know you know, how are we gonna pass on our knowledge and our wisdom to them?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a book is the best way to do that because I'm not putting my faith in technology.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: I honestly believe that a print book, as antiquated as that may sound to many people, I think a print book is the best way to ensure that your thoughts, your story, your knowledge and wisdom is gonna be captured for future generations.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: That is the only way I can guarantee that my great-grandchildren and those who come after them are going to be able to know what I thought and what I cared about and my story.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, even though that may sound a little bit old-fashioned, that's okay because technology is changing so fast today.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: I want to ensure that they have a way to know me and to know what my story was.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: So those are three key takeaways.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: As you can tell, I love this whole topic of books and writing.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: But that said, that wraps up this episode of the podcast.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can find the show notes at KentSanders.net slash write a book.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: It just takes a couple seconds and it really helps other people to discover the show.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can do that by going to KentSanders.net slash Apple.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or a family member who you think would enjoy it.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can find lots more resources to help you unlock your creative potential at KentSanders.net.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that you were born to create and designs to make a difference.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now go create something awesome.