Writing a Book

I guess you've figured out by now that I announced the publication of Laughing with Sarah last week. Since then, many people have asked me about writing. How long does it take? How many have you written? How do you get published? etc. I started writing freelance articles for magazines about 15 years ago, but I still consider myself a novice.

How long does it take? It depends. If you write 3 pages a day, you can have a 300 page novel in 100 days. At that pace, you could write about 3 books per year. That's what many novelists do. For me, I only have a few hours each week to write, so it takes longer.

How many have you written? About 4 1/2. But only two have been published so far. I have one non-fiction work that is about 90% complete. One novel that my agent, Jonathan Clements with The Nashville Group, is attempting to sell to a major publisher. I'm about halfway through another novel. I have pieces of other books that I've started. Hopefully, they will be completed one day.

How do you get published? There are several ways: You can get an agent to represent you. Approach the publisher yourself. (However, most major publishers will only consider agent-represented works.) Or you can publish yourself. There are advantages to each situation. It depends on your goal for each book.

The hard part: Selling. It's one thing to write a book. It's another thing to sell it. Whether you publish yourself or have a major publisher, the author is the primary sales person. That's why you will get sick of seeing me promote LWS. Sorry. That's just how it works.

The fun part for me is the Dedication. I dedicated Laughing with Sarah to my dad. Since he is such a Bible scholar and LWS is based on Bible teaching, I wanted it to be dedicated to him. I took his copy to him last week and showed him the dedication page. That's been one of the highlights of this experience thus far for me.