from blog to book deal
People have started asking me lately why I blog. “Why do you write a blog when you are a published author?”, they say.
Keeping a blog has done several things for me. The first is that it’s one of the few modes of writing that you publish instantly, and get an instant response. Not everyone wants that, but I like the sense of keeping in touch with what interests readers, and what they think. The second is that long ago someone said to me, “If you want to be a writer, write every day. Doesn’t matter much what you write, but you have to do it all the time.” The blog gave me a way of writing one short piece every day about what was going on around me. Readers bugged me if I didn’t write. And after a few months I had a message from TallSkinnyKiwi, one of the granddaddies of blogging, that said “I like your blog better now. You seem to have found your voice.”
The voice matters. When I started the blog eight years ago I was writing academic papers, lectures, supervision reports and committee reports. I knew more about theology than was strictly necessary, and I could write things down that made sense, words in the right order, delivering the information. That’s what I had been trained to do. But in the process I had lost my voice; in fact, one adviser in particular had criticised me for writing “too much like a book” and insisted I rewrite some materials in a strictly technical style. The blog helped me to recover and develop a voice again.
But you know what? Before the blog I had been published – a chapter or two in a book here and there. But the blog itself actually won me two publishing contracts. I didn’t have an agent; I didn’t send a manuscript to anyone. The publisher came to me and said “We want somebody who writes like you.”
So there you go. Now I write weekly instead of daily on the blog because I spend a lot of time writing books in the voice I developed here. Right now I’m finishing a manuscript for the book of 2011. When it’s done I have to decide what to write for the one after that. Any thoughts?
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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So true about finding your voice – I notice it now when new bloggers start up.
You could write something about Blogging as your next book?
I would very much like to write for a living.. any tips?
Great post Maggi. I too can do theology, but these days don’t have the time to grapple in an academic way.
I blog to catch and share my thoughts. To outwork my response to the Bible, and to share a little of what has made my journey mine. I guess it is a sort of apologetics.
Keep going!
Maggi – i blog on some community blogs and find that blogging is a great way to get instant feedback – where am I on target and where do I need to refine my thinking? What resources should I consider exploring? A book allows me to take all these thoughts and weave them into a narrative framework in say 35,000 to 60,000 words, a task one cannot do in blog postings that range from 400 to 1,500 words.
Great, and inspiring post, Maggi.
So inspiring, in fact that I had to blog on it…
J
Maggi, I agree with you wholeheartedly about blogging in order to write regularly and find your voice.
I devoured The writing on the Wall in two days flat – something I’ve managed only twice in my life!
Hello!
This is really encouraging! I have a published book and now am enjoying writing on my blog. My voice seems to be developing and it is giving me more confidence. Thanks for sharing your success story. I got to your blog through Ed. from Fulbourn Mill.
Hi Maggi – It’s been awhile! Read your thoughts about “voice” the other day and wanted to comment right away but was too covered up on a deadline till now to do it. You’re spot on about finding one’s voice. What I rue, and not having noticed what was occurring for years is another drag, is being talked out of my voice in the mid-1980s by an Evangelical publisher in order to develop that publishing industry’s voice, which was essential (that that publisher) for getting my first bk published, and then the second, the third, the fourth, etc. By the time the fifth had come out (I don’t mean from the cupboard. Well, maybe that, too!), I was beginning to twig to what was going on. By the time I was finishing the seventh (book, not bottle), that co-author job w/ John Peck (eventually published in 2001 by SPCK), I was determined to try to remember what my own voice was and to start writing in it. Which, come to think of it, may be why no Evangelcial publishers have contracted with me in the 2000s, ha! And not for lack of submissions.
So when I read your heart-on-sleeve sharing about finding your voice through blogging, that spoke to me. You see, though I now know blogging would help me in my voice quest, I’ve been putting it off, chiefly due to the inordinate amount of time that consumes this massive research and writing project I’ve been on since 2002, but which is finally reaching the tipping point. So when several months ago a dear British friend said he would build me a completely new website complete with blog (a guy who does this for a living), well, after I got up off the floor, I said Let’s go for it! The existing site has a lot of articles but no blog and the site itself is out of date and gives visitors no way to interact. So Chris’s offer was more than timely. The new site and blog are not fully ready to launch live yet, but your post has greatly encouraged me even more to get it done and start blogging. Thx for that.
Too, your post opens up a host of cool things we could discuss about the aesthetics of communication. Best, C.
Well, Charlie, you put your finger on the dilemma of the “jobbing writer” – very few people in the world have the luxury of making a living at writing what they like! (I can’t – not so far, anyway) So in addition to writing your own stuff you either have to get a job at something else, or take on some technical writing which inevitably means style guides and constraints on content. I write for several different agencies – bible study notes, journalistic pieces – as well as academic chapters here and there, and for sermons and conference pieces. I guess the trick is a) to ensure that those constraints become a creative force, by honing your skills in being concise, on time, working to deadlines, and b) finding one other outlet that gives you a way of looking forward to where your writing might go next. Not everyone wants to write a novel. But if you do, and you are a technical writer, you need some outlet aside from the 9-5 writing (or 11 am-midnight, or whatever!!) to allow your voice to develop. I don’t think it’s something that stands still: a voice grows and develops. Good luck with your own writing!
I know just what you mean about having to “tent make” while freelancing for your voice development. I’ve never been able to earn much, writing. During my “formative” writing years (the 80s), I worked full time in the automotive field and wrote on the side, evenings, weekends, and attended writing schools on holidays! By the late-80s I did earn enough from writing for a few years but by the early-90s, that was dwindling and I had to decide what to do.
Feeling compelled to keep writing, regardless, I began honing my skills in the field, as you say, and was able to start picking up some freelance editing jobs on bk mss from one publisher, then another, and so on. That was a great help, financially. So while I was writings my own stuff, I was earning most of my income from editing work (35 books so far).
I think a lot of up-and-coming writers need to be disabused of their romanticism. In the writing seminars I use to do, I would say: if you’re not the kind of person who is prepared to live a simple, even an austere, life for perhaps decades, you probably will have to be, if you’re going to rely solely on your writing income. During the 2000s, my income dropped dramatically again, but I got some small grant money for that research project, and I have an amazingly supportive wife whose income as a school teacher (first grade, 6-7 year olds) keeps us solvent. Cheers.
thanks for all the comments, everyone.
Lesley: you are a good writer. If you don’t mind being very poor you could probably pull it off.
Simon, Becky, Naomi – yes, blog posts are good for journalling but they don’t stretch to lengthy pieces: too cumbersome technologically and in any case no-one reads long blogposts. The long piece is indeed a different for, with a different purpose.
Johnny – thanks for the encouragement! See you at the next conference (and let’s say more than “hello” next time!)
Ed – thanks for the encouraging words. Glad to see your new blog is picking up speed.
For a while now I’ve been looking for something like “Mere Christianity”, but that was more up-to-date and intellectually robust. I think a few people have tried this, but often they re-hash arguments used by Lewis which are somewhat “dodgy”. Richard Harries “God Outside the Box” was something I enjoyed very much. Maybe there is a bit of competition in this area, but maybe you could do something like that?