Loading...I can now explain how I actually go about writing a trade book (how I do it with a scholarly book is a bit different, mainly because it is a much slower and laborious process). As I’ve indicated, before I start writing at *all*, I have already read everything that I have needed to read (nothing still left! Otherwise it’s a disaster), taken notes on everything, reviewed my notes assiduously, and made detailed and lengthy outlines of each chapter. Then I’m ready to go.
The writing of the book itself is the only anxiety-producing, tense, emotionally difficult point of the entire process. I feel no nervousness or anxiety or dread in any of the other stages of the work – only in the writing. Moreover, this is far and away the most intense point of the process, where I completely go into a zone and live in an alternative universe.
Different people have different views of how to write. Some scholars prefer to write slowly, carefully crafting every sentence, being sure that one sentence is right before moving along to the next sentence. That’s not my style. My style is to whip out sentences absolutely as fast as I can and to go at breakneck speed. There are two reasons for this. One is that I hate (it’s actually very much a love-hate thing; but very intense love and very intense hate) the actual writing process itself and want to get it over with absolutely as quickly as possible. The other is related: I find it SO much easier to revise something than to write it in the first place. There is no pressure when revising, no tension, no anxiety at all. The anxiety is entirely in first creating the words and sentences and paragraphs and pages and chapters. So I try to get through that as quickly as I can.
So, I should say before making my next point that I do not consider myself particularly gifted as a scholar. I work harder than most scholars, but I’m not as intellectually gifted as lots of others. I do have a couple of unusual gifts though (maybe literally just a couple), and one of them is that I’ve developed the ability to write fast. I can write very fast. I write faster than anyone I know. By a wide margin. It is SUCH a gift and I’m really grateful for it.
I didn’t discover the gift until about ten or twelve years ago. But once I discovered it, I exploited it for all it’s worth.
So here’s the short story. I can write a trade book in….
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Aha!
You still pray.
There’s no way you are not one of God’s very own. You are like Levin in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina but in reverse. 🙂
One of my favorite books of all time….
You left out your other gift, Bart.
You have the Asimov knack of sounding like a person talking to another person without pretension.
A friend who really knows his stuff talking to another friend in a conversational tone has a
legitimizing, penetrating tone.
Congratulate yourself for not coating your prose with a patina of hubris, piety, or William F. Buckley elitism.
That is 50% of your success in breaking in, again and again, to the Bestseller list!
Pat yourself on the back!
Ouch — I just threw out my shoulder!!
I have read before that you write trade books in 2 or 3 weeks. Totally amazing! Your main gift, however, is thinking and writing in an orderly and clear way. Much of the reading I have done in the field of Christianity is just plain not clear.
Based on this, I bet you can write a month of blog posts in one day!
I would need a very nice martini afterward….
Wow, so cool. I can see how you mange to finish a chapter in a day with all the preparation. I think it is why you come across in your books so well organized. You trade books have such an incredible flow to them. I just did not think it would “only” take a couple of weeks to write the trade books. I know the days are intense and exhausting, but you have certainly mastered the formula. Are these two week periods during the summer or during a break from teaching?
Any two weeks I can grab! But summer is definitely the easiest time to grab them.
Well I’m overwhelmed just reading about your process … thank you.
That’s amazing! I read your books straight through generally. You write very well for the general public. I bought one of your lecture series a few years back and find your books easier to follow and stay with.
Great post. Everything adds up now. The way you actually write and the product of your writing really seem to reflect each other. I find your writings quick, pragmatic, with no unnecessary convoluted arguments, no ostentatious presentations of facts or ideas. You always seem to find these specific words – put together in a very precise order in a sentence – that just explains it all. Sometimes it is just this one word that you choose that condenses in itself the whole idea of whatever it is you want to express. And *that* (this one word) is brilliant and ultra fast writing!
What composers are you most productive working to?
Mozart and anything Baroque. Anything complicated from the late Beethoven onward divides my attention too much.
So the 5th-9th, Wellington and the Piano Sonatas are too good to write to?
5-8 are OK, but 9 I can’t handle because of the choral part. And some of the sonatas are fine; a lot of the later violin sonatas are too straining on the intellect….
Here’s a related question to your writing process, not about you in specific but publishing in general. Does the publisher provide much editing? I’ve noticed a lot of errors over the past few years that I would have thought an editor would catch (things written by established authors and published by major houses). I may have even spotted a couple in your books (though I don’t have one to mind).
Do publishers just skip that expense these days?
Depends on the publisher. For good presses there is usually an editor *and* a copy-editor (very different tasks: the editor deals with substance; the copy-editor with everything from writing style to phrasing to spelling to punctuation etc.)
Ah the secret behind the fast writing: “Six or seven hours of intense focus later, with breaks to make an occasional espresso.”