An exchange about chapter four

Brian,

This chapter can be extremely helpful to the reader. But the first part — generally speaking, everything before the “living in sync with the gospel” section — seems to suffer from issues of labeling and reader expectations. Prior to diving in to begin a close edit, I'm sharing these thoughts to see if you wanted to comment or perhaps even undertake some rewriting.

Here are some questions and observations that the early part of this chapter raises for me on behalf of the reader.

As your target reader, the typical Christian in a good church, you ought not to assume I am significantly different from the average American. Greatest country in the world, cradle of opportunity, and all that good stuff being true, there are also the downsides. I want to be spoon-fed. On average I am intellectually lazy, materially spoiled (yet feeling entitled to more), chronically overscheduled and/or poor at personal time management, and I am constantly being trained by the culture to expect things to be even more clear and simple, and even more quick and convenient, than they were just six months ago. You can either meet me where I am or miss the opportunity to reach me.

Read more >>

Read more...

My mandate from Shepherd Press

My mandate from Shepherd Press on this project is essentially as follows. I am to:

1) involve the author and elicit input from him, to whatever extent and in whatever manner fits the circumstances, makes him happy, and serves the book;
2) and perform hands-on editing myself;
3) in order to produce a manuscript ready for a final copyedit and proofing prior to typeset.

I plan to do this by a combination of Directed Rewrite, Line Edit, and Substantive Edit work, all three of which I discuss in greater detail at my personal website. When I returned chapter 1 to Brian with suggestions, I was initiating a directed rewrite of that portion of the book.

Brian is looking forward to making the time to work on those suggestions. (He is, after all, a husband, father, and full-time pastor). In the meantime, I am making edits to subsequent chapters and hope to send him back two sample chapters of my edits within the next few days.

So for me, the work has now begun in earnest.

Read more >>

Read more...