Year-end Praise for Two Special Books

I'm grateful to see the honor given to two books I recently edited.

----John Hendryx, in a year-end newsletter from Monergism Books, includes Jesus + Nothing = Everything by Tullian Tchividjian (published by Crossway) on his list of the "10 Best Books of 2011."

----Hendryx also gives "honorable mention" to Family Shepherds: Calling and Equipping Men to Lead Their Homes" by Voddie Baucham (also published by Crossway).

Congratulations, Tullian and Voddie, and Crossway!

UPDATE (Friday afternoon, Dec. 30):

I just read that Tullian's Jesus + Nothing = Everything has won the 2012 Christianity Today Book Award in the "Christian Living" category. More good news--and further congratulations to Tullian and Crossway!

Why seek professional editing help for your book?

In our culture that so loves do-it-yourself, book publishing is becoming more do-it-yourself than ever. In so many ways, that's a good thing. You, as an author, can now be far more in control of both the process and the product than was possible, or even conceivable, not too many years ago.

So when it comes to your very own manuscript which you want the world to see and enjoy at once, why bother seeking help on it from a professional editor? Why commit the time and money?

Here are 5 random answers:

1. First, no one is a perfect writer or self-editor. You can be assured your manuscript has flaws that are invisible to you--places where the reader gets stalled or confused or bored, or strays from your intended meaning. As the author, you're simply too close to your manuscript to clearly see those. An editor's fresh, professional eyes can spot the vast majority of them and fix them, or help you fix them.

2. Your book isn't ultimately about you--it's about your readers. An editor's job is to be the advocate for your readers--and you owe that to them, for their sake.

3. Although your mother and all your best friends have pronounced your manuscript to be perfect just the way it is, the sad truth is that they simply can't be trusted on this. Only someone who doesn't know you can maintain the objectivity required to make the most of your manuscript.

4. In the grand scheme of things, the time it takes a good editor to process your manuscript is not really that long. Making your book better is well worth a delay of a few weeks, or a month or two at most.

5. The better your manuscript already is, the more likely a good editor can do what's necessary to help your book reach the upper echelons of high quality, long life, and lasting impact.

Grateful

I'm approaching the five-year mark since starting "BookOx" and becoming a free-lancer. Very grateful to the Lord for a steady supply of jobs, and new ones coming my way. Grateful as well for learning many lessons (often the hard way!) about my work capacity and job-flow issues.
THANK YOU, LORD GOD for your grace and mercy and constant encouragement, expressed through Your Word as well as through so many of Your servants who I've been privileged to work with.

Crossway Releases Tchividjian's "Surprised by Grace"

I just received printed copies from Crossway of Tullian Tchividjian's book "Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels," which I had the privilege of co-authoring with Tullian.

Tullian is as relentless in proclaiming and explaining the gospel as God is in pursuing rebels, and it brought significant fulfillment for me to work on this project with him.

My part was to start with transcripts of Tullian's sermons on the book of Jonah, then to craft and arrange that content into book chapters. I also researched and added support from various biblical commentaries on Jonah -- plus a great deal of illustrative themes and narrative and transitions, much of it based on the way the Jonah story has been perceived and retold down through the centuries in the visual arts (especially sculpture and painting) and in literature. I wove in explorations of works by folks ranging from Raphael to Salvador Dali, and from Herman Melville to Robert Frost, and many other artists and writers. (By the way, Crossway has included color reproductions in the book of many of the works of art mentioned in the text.)
I also included perspectives on Jonah from men of God such as Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Spurgeon.

I set up the flow and structure of the book to try to retell the story of Jonah--as much as possible--as if we were reading or hearing it for the very first time.

What a rewarding project this was! My thanks to Tullian and to Crossway for allowing me to be a part.

"99 Ways..." Receives Mention by Justin Taylor

In a blog note this week, Justin Taylor mentioned my book "99 Ways to Entertain Your Family for Free!" Fun to see that....

Check it out:

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/05/06/99-ways-to-entertain-your-family-for-free/

Recent Reading

Very strongly recommended: J. I. Packer's A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life. To Packer, the Puritans are "a breed of giants," like the California redwoods, and through what he shows in this book, I have to agree.

Also reading now: Greg Gilbert's helpfully clarifying What Is the Gospel? (from 9Marks) -- along with examining & learning the "Two Ways to Live" gospel presentation from Matthias Media --- http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/2wtl/

Just finished --- two very well written battle histories by Walter Lord: (1) The Dawn's Early Light on the critical events in August 1814 (the British burning of Washington D.C. and their subsequent unsuccessful attack on Baltimore; and (2) Midway: The Incredible Victory, which vividly recreates this destiny-altering battle, the heroism of the men involved, and the utter unlikelihood of this victory that was providentially granted to the Americans....

Thank you, President Lincoln

Today, February 12, is Abraham Lincoln's 201st birthday--and I'm freshly grateful for what this man meant for the cause of freedom and democracy not only in the United States, but for the whole world.

I'm also reminded again that President Lincoln was not only a great liberator and leader, but also a profoundly excellent communicator.

Jacques Barzun, in "Lincoln the Writer," captures well Lincoln's greatness in this respect. He speaks of "Lincoln the artist, the maker of a style that is unique in English prose and doubly astonishing in the history of American literature, for nothing led up to it." Barzun praises Lincoln's "singular determination to express his thoughts in the best way.... As a writer he toiled above all to find the true order for his thoughts--order first, and then a lightninglike brevity." Barzun is also impressed that as an artist, Lincoln "undertook to frame his ideas invariably in one idiom, that of daily life"--and that "one superior gift he possessed from the start and developed to a supreme degree" was "the gift of rhythm."

Barzun observes that "Lincoln acquired his power over words in the only two ways known to man--by reading and by writing. His reading was small in range and much of a kind: the Bible, Bunyan, Byron, Burns, Defoe, Shakespeare, and a then-current edition of Aesop's Fables. These are books from which a genius would extract the lesson of terseness and strength."

After citing again "the four main qualities of Lincoln's literary art--precision, vernacular ease, rhythmical virtuosity, and elegance," Barzun concludes this way: "Lincoln's use of his style for the intimate genre and for the sublime was his alone; but his workaday style is the American style par excellence."

I'm grateful to God for giving this nation and the world the talents and voice and wisdom and leadership of Abraham Lincoln.

("Lincoln the Writer" is a chapter in Barzun's book Writing, Editing, and Publishing [University of Chicago Press, 1971, 1986]. It was earlier published as an article entitled "Lincoln the Literary Genius" in the Saturday Evening Post magazine, in honor of Lincoln's 150th birthday in 1959.)