Finalist, 2007 San Diego Book Award for Best Religion/Spirituality

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Praise for “I’m OK–You’re Not”:

“A lighthearted approach, with a serious message” — The San Diego Union-Tribune

” …. Shore is a humorist whose work is more comedic than Donald Miller, and his appeal to Christians is more direct. Shore is preaching and teaching under the comedy, and he’s very effective as a critic and motivator. Shore turns evangelism upside down and engages in just enough hyperbole to effectively make his point…. Shore ends each chapter with sets of extended comments from unbelievers on what they want to say to Christians. Shore calls these sections “Ouch,” and that’s what they are. These unbelievers are articulate, thoughtful and way out in front of many Christians on the subject of love, respect and dialog…. Shore appeals to Christians to ponder the nature of love, the importance of honest and mature Christian character and how relationships with non-Christians really look. Shore speaks so much common sense, and skips so much Christian-ese and predictable rhetoric that some Christians will be offended immediately. Younger, thoughtful, humble Christians who know something is very wrong will find Shore saying exactly what they’ve been thinking. This is a great book for a discussion group, and it has questions to stir up those discussions. If you let this book loose “in church,” however, the response may be explosive, which would be a lot of fun. … [An] Outstanding book to stir up thought and conversation. And a good book to show to a thoughtful unbeliever.” — Michael Spencer, a.k.a The Internet Monk, author of the bestseller Mere Churchianity.

“A must-read not just for pastors, but for anyone who has a passion for the Gospel, yet lacks the ability to see the Church as others often see it. … Shore succeeds in presenting a viewpoint worthy of consideration and advantageous for the growth of outreach-focused believers.”– Outreach magazine

“John Shore is one of those rare writers who can make people laugh and think at the same time. Irreverently reverent, I’m OK–You’re Not is a book perfect for the times we’re in. Ministers should read a chapter to their congregations every Sunday. That would be the Christian thing to do, because John offers us compassionate laughter during a most uncompassionate and unfunny period of our nation’s history. Non-Christians will love this book, too–which proves John’s point.” — Richard Louv, author of the international bestseller, Last Child in the Woods, and The Nature Principle.

“Humorist and Christian writer John Shore presents I’m OK – You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop, a frank discussion of a crucial flaw in modern evangelical movements – that they have come to resemble sales calls made during dinnertime, and as such are just as unlikely to achieve results. Emphasizing the concept that letter others experience God’s love is far more potent than simply telling them about it, I’m OK – You’re Not emphasizes the importance of listening to the Great Commandment above all. The Great Commandment referred to is as spoken by Jesus Christ and recorded in the Bible: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” Penned with gentle charm, Christian humor, love, and understanding, I’m OK – You’re Not deserves to be required reading for any Christian considering embarking upon an evangelical mission or career.”–Midwest Book Review

“John Shore has reminded us that there really is a positive, healthy, life-changing way to share our life and faith–and that there is also a very toxic way to do it. With incredible wit and lots of wisdom, Shore reminds us that God loves us in the midst of all our weirdness and quirkiness, and that we are to do the same to others.”–Jim Burns, host of the nationally syndicated radio show HomeWord with Jim Burns

“Has America been effectively evangelized? Have the non-Christians in our lives already heard the Gospel? According to John Shore, yes! Calling for a cessasion of domestic evangelism (while being very clear, however, about the importance of evangelizing both to people who’ve never heard about Christianity, and to anyone who has first asked to hear about it), he turns his razor-sharp wit towards exposing the problems inherent with the efforts of modern evangelism. While championing the Great Commandment over the Great Commission, Shore humorously illustrates his experiences as both a non-Christian being ‘evangelized’ and a Christian trying to share his new-found faith. First-person testimonies from non-Christians’ experiences with attempts to evangelize them are supplied to bolster his position, as are refutations of key biblical texts commonly used to support evangelism.” — Steve MacDonald, Evangelism books editor, Christianbook.com

“Warning: Shore’s I’m OK–You’re Not is a radical read. It’s right on the money. If you’re up to being challenged to reach today’s post-modern culture, John’s perspective will flip your switch. The book is worth reading for the story of John’s life alone. Buy it, then live it.”– Eric Hogue, host of the nationally syndicated radio show The Eric Hogue Show

“I’m OK–You’re Not is written with a warm, sharp, funny, self-critical, in-your-face sense of humor that makes me laugh out loud and give thanks for Mr. Shore’s challenge to the bad habits we believers can fall into. He should be especially terrific for young adults, but I hope every “evangelism committee” in the country will read and spend a day discussing this, he latest wake-up call.–Rev. Jack E. Lindquist, professor of religious studies, University of San Diego; Canon for Biblical Studies, St. Paul’s Cathedral, San Diego

“I am a fan of this book! Its take on the Great Commission and Great Commandment topic is priceless. Thanks for saying it the way it needs to be said, Mr. Shore.”– Rachel Knobles Cabal, Director of Evangelism, First United Methodist Church, Dallas, TX.

“John Shore clearly articulates the essence of effective evangelism. His humor is convicting as he exposes common mistakes and points readers to valuable insights for reaching this generation with the Gospel.”–Dr. Fred Wilson, host of radio’s Reaching for Life and pastor of Trinity Church, Sunnyvale, CA.

“This would be the sort of book I would use as a teaching tool for my congregation as we seek to share the love of God in the world. What makes it particularly helpful (in addition to the zany humor) is the format of each chapter: the ‘Ouches’ gave me not-so-joyful goosebumps of recognition of myself and many of my parishioners; and the discussion questions at the end of each chapter are excellent thought-provokers. As I was reading, I made a note that the “best line” so far (to surely be quoted in an upcoming sermon!) was on p. 107: “Being close to God is something to be grateful for, not proud of.” Then, at the end of the chapter, the quip about that line (p. 115) elicited the biggest of the many guffaws I had already guffawed. (I’ll let you check it out for yourself.) Good for John Shore for putting ideas out there that others are timid about expressing; we Christians need him to remind us exactly what it means to be OK — or not — with God and with each other.”– Rev. Rhonda McIntire, rector, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Pacific Beach, CA.

“John Shore is the real deal. He cares about people, he understands, in his heart and in his mind, that we are to love others. And it seems, from the stories and illustrations, that he spends time with normal people, not in a holy-huddle. Sharing the great news of Christ’s redeeming love is a calling for us all. It is an aspect of discipleship that is mired in funky expectations, weird theologies, and even weirder practices. It is, though, a splendid and exciting thing to do, to tell others about why you are a follower of Christ, what His death provides, how to find forgiveness and grace and meaning and life. If we are to announce the Kingdom with integrity, it is clear to anybody who has thought about it, that Shore’s insight is central and basic and urgent: we have got to stop turning people off. We certainly have to stop being so smug. We have to live out and model a way of life that is, well, good. We have got to show bridge-building love by being agents of grace. The sub-title nearly says it all, and he unpacks it well. Check it out: I’m Ok–You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop. This is a book about not doing evangelism. It is about starting with the Great Commandment and letting others experience God’s love as a way towards the Great Commission. I have read oodles of books on evangelism and there are many I like. This is truly one of them and, I’d bet, it is the one you will enjoy the most, laugh about the most, and shake your head (in agreement or, if you are a fire-breather, in disgust, for his seeming lack of proper religiosity.) I’d like to think that I am a better person when I read this kind of stuff, and, to be honest, feel more playful, even as a book reviewer. He’s a hard guy not to like. Thanks to the publishers who take risks doing these kind of little books that aren’t the formulas and cliches that are so often expected in this biz. Thanks to writers like John Shore for being authentic and fun. And thank God for the Spirit’s activity in days like today, where a slight offense brought two brother’s closer together in our joint calling of getting the words right, and getting the Word out.”–Byron Borger, owner/operator of Hearts & Minds Bookstore, Dallastown, PA; writer, Hearts & Minds BookNotes.

“What I know about Shore only comes from his book. And what seems clear to me is he is greatly concerned about how believers live toward those who are far from God and he tries to communicate that in a very laid back and humorous fashion. Both of these are evidenced in the style and tone of his writing, which is extremely informal and unorthodox at times, almost as if he were talking to the reader instead of writing a book. But more important than tone is what Shore actually says. And it is clear his desire is for believers to live out both aspects of the Great Commandment – love God AND love others. And so the book travels a path leading the reader to a place of positive engagement with those far from God, actually coming to the place of loving those who are different than us. It seems clear that Shores own background has a lot to do with his unique perspective on this issue. Growing up in a flawed home with parents who both, at one time or other, jettisoned their responsibility toward the family and then (apparently) becoming a Christ follower late in life, Shore knows what it looks like and feels like to be one of the “others.” This comes through in his sensitivity to the issues those far from God experience and the prophetic insensitivity he displays for those who claim to be part of the club – which seems an appropriate description for how Shore sees most of Christianity. One of the most interesting parts of the book was the end of every chapter had a section called, “Ouch” which was filled with real comments from people about Christians and Christianity. Shore took out adds on Craig’s List asking people to reply to him with their assessment of Christians and he the responses he received are extremely illuminating. (I thought this was a really creative idea.)” — Christian Book Lounge

I’m OK – You’re Not
By John Shore
Reviewed by Heidi Unruh

My grandfather Lou, an avowed atheist, taught at a prison where he was the focus of intense prayer and proselytizing by Christian inmates. One day an ardent devotee approached my grandfather. “Last night I was praying for you, and the Lord said to me, ‘Lay off Lou for a while.’”

This fairly sums up the message of John Shore’s I’m OK, You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop—just lay off.

Shore’s argument begins with our fundamental commandment to “Love God; love others.” Love entails accepting and respecting people just as they are. Telling non-Christians (a.k.a. “Normies,” in Shore’s lingo) that they need to accept Christ is inherently judgmental and unloving. Jesus gave us the Golden Rule: Treat other people the way you want to be treated. Honestly, would you want to hang out with someone with the hidden agenda of “You need to change to be more like me”? We need to love and live in such a way that people are drawn to our faith, to be open about our faith when people ask us, and to privately pray that they accept God’s invitation to his eternal party. But, Shore says, it’s not up to us to push them, kicking and fussing, through the door.

Shore’s “cease and desist” injunction targets the unsolicited spiritual browbeating of people who have already heard the gospel yet choose to reject Christianity. A fundamental flaw in Shore’s reasoning is his contention that this group includes just about every non-Christian in America. “At this point, our Good News is old news,” he asserts. Although Shore rightly assesses traditional evangelistic methods to be woefully inadequate and even counterproductive, this does not mean that we are off the hook with the Great Commission in our own neighborhoods. To the contrary, our culture is desperately hungry for the real Good News. People may not need to hear—again—the four spiritual laws, but they do need to hear about the Jesus who declared, “The Spirit has anointed me to preach good news to the poor …” And they need to see Christians doing it.

Christians too often adopt a superior attitude toward non-Christians, but Shore goes overboard by admonishing, “It’s got to be perfectly okay for non-Christians to be non-Christian.” Love does not mean uncritical acceptance. Jesus loved the tax collector, the Pharisee, and the adulterer—but he invited them to a radically new life. The call of Christ is still “Repent and believe the good news!” Shore’s own painful life story, shared with poignant humor, suggests how Christians can walk alongside nonbelievers on the path of repentance and healing.

Theological critique aside, I recommend this book for several reasons. First, anyone interested in North American missions must grapple with our culture’s negative perception of Christianity, revealed in quotes from non-Christians such as this one: “I’d rather go to hell than live the hypocritical life I see so many Christians living.”

Second, it’s good to remind ourselves that producing converts is God’s job: “We can love Normies just as we find them, and let God worry about the rest of it.” While I disagree that unconditional love excludes nudging people toward Christ, getting stressed out about results doesn’t bring anyone closer to the kingdom.

Finally, thought-provoking books are rarely this much fun. If I ever get to invite seven people to a dinner party, Shore might make it onto my guest list. And I’ll make sure he’s seated next to an unbeliever. — Heidi Unruh is director of the Congregations, Community Outreach and Leadership Development Project and staff associate with Evangelicals for Social Action, specializing in faith-based initiatives and equipping churches for external ministry.

“The human body has 206 bones. In the case of John Shore, almost all of them are funny. It’s almost as if the Almighty had implanted the cranial vaulted of this extremely talented writer with a divine glow, then surrounded it with silly putty and lime jell-o. This book is not a sermon. This book is not a devotional. This book is not a lot of things that I had in mind that it might be after picking it up and glancing at the liner notes. In fact, I was still puzzled after the first few chapters as to exactly what kind of book this really was. This book is, perhaps, an intervention, using the basics of Christianity as the foundation for it’s premise.
”The subtitle of the work from NavPress sets both the tone and the direction for the reader: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop. Shore launches his intervention by standing firmly on the historic two underpinnings of Christianity, The Great Commission and The Great Commandment … Whether deliberately or not, Shore gives a tip of his hat to the score of Mary Poppins, wherein we find guidance with which he seems to agree in the lyric, ‘a teaspoon of honey helps the medicine go down.’ In Shore’s case, it’s with a basket full of humor. But be not misled, dear reader. This is by no means a joke book, nor should it be taken lightly. Shore is addressing the all to large segment of the Church that seems to have the feeling that just because they’re saved, they are somehow better than their unsaved brethren with whom they are oft times trying to share the ‘Good News’ of the gospel in an attempt to persuade them to do as we have and accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The problem, Shore points out time and again throughout the book, is not what we’re doing, but how we’re doing it. I should mention that Shore spends page after page, chapter after chapter, sounding like a Christian Dr. Phil. However, while he’s doing it, he’s also unloading truck loads of information bout the state of the church today, trends, directions, problems and solutions.
”The more you read, the more you find and the more you find, the better you’ll like it. You’ve just got to love a guy who can come up with chapter titles like, ‘So What’s Love Got To Do With It?’ and ‘So Being Born Again Isn’t the Same as Being Normal?’ The final chapter is the icing on this literary confection. It wraps up one of the most practical, instructional, and enjoyable works on evangelizing I’ve read in years. And, unlike many books I’ve read, liked and put aside, I know I’ll refer to this one again and again.”– Paul McShane, book reviewer, Good News, Etc. (a monthly Christian newspaper in San Diego; circ. 42,000)

“This book gives me hope that Christ’s church might become the church Christ intended.”–Shari Llyod, co-publisher, The Phantom Tollbooth

“Unique blend of humor and Jesus’ teachings.”–Armchair Interviews

“I do really believe that John Shore has laid his hand on the very heartbeat of God with what he has written in I’m OK–You’re Not.”–Ray Searan, Senior Pastor, Intercultural Assembly of God, Fairbanks, Alaska

“I’m in love with I’m OK–You’re Not. I’ve lately been quoting it in meetings at which I’ve spoken, and it’s triggered lots of discussions about the realtionship between the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. I appreciate this book’s very fresh perspective. It’s sometimes hard for those of us who have been believers for a long time not to get lost in the bits and pieces of what we’ve heard; we sometimes forget to take the time to review why we believe what we believe. The thinking experience this book has brought me has been great.”–John Penrose, President, Children to Love

“This would be the sort of book I would use as a teaching tool for my congregation as we seek to share the love of God in the world. What makes it particularly helpful (in addition to the zany humor) is the format of each chapter: the ‘Ouches’ gave me not-so-joyful goosebumps of recognition of myself and many of my parishioners; and the discussion questions at the end of each chapter are excellent thought-provokers. As I was reading, I made a note that the “best line” so far (to surely be quoted in an upcoming sermon!) was on p. 107: “Being close to God is something to be grateful for, not proud of.” Then, at the end of the chapter, the quip about that line (p. 115) elicited the biggest of the many guffaws I had already guffawed. (I’ll let you check it out for yourself.) Good for John Shore for putting ideas out there that others are timid about expressing; we Christians need him to remind us exactly what it means to be OK — or not — with God and with each other.”– Rev. Rhonda McIntire, rector, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Pacific Beach, CA.

“John Shore’s latest book, which is being used in my adult Sunday school class, has the audacity to suggest that it is more important to love people than to convert them. His premise is that everyone in our immediate surroundings has already heard of Jesus, and has at some point made a conscious decision to either become active in a church setting or not. The best way we Christians can invite people into the community of Christ is not through threatening them with hellfire and damnation, but by taking the time to develop real and lasting relationships with them, showing them Christ through our decisions, actions, and compassion. And of course, this book is full of his nervous, and sometimes irrevrerent wit, which makes it an enjoyable read.”–Martin Zimmann, pastor, St. John Lutheran Church, ELCA, Dundee, Michigan

“I’m OK — You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers And Why We Should Stop was an awesome read… I enjoyed every bit of it. And it even made me think! I really can’t say enough good things about it. So you’ve got an idea what you’re getting into when you read it (and I do mean when… it’s a must read!), John’s book is quite controversial amongst evangelical Christians. Why? He basically proposes that evangelism, as we know it here in the States, really needs to stop. Sounds heretical, doesn’t it? The Great Commission… on the back burner? Yeah. It does sound heretical. But if you read the book, you’ll likely agree with him (at least to some extent). How so? John’s premise is that the Great Commandment (to love our neighbor as ourselves in case you’ve forgotten) takes precedence over the Great Commission. When we evangelize the lost, most times our message is not one of love… it’s, as John’s title suggests, “I’m okay [because of my relationship with Christ]… you’re not [because you’re going to hell without Jesus].” When we share the gospel with a “Normie” (as John refers to your stereotypical lost person), the message often sounds like one of superiority and arrogance. We almost instantly build a wall between us and them that prohibits any real relationship to develop. John proposes a somewhat radical alternative… just love people, as they are. Get to know them… develop a real relationship… don’t see them as just another person to convert… another “notch on your belt”. Chances are, if you do that (love them, that is), you’ll eventually get the chance to share your faith with them … they’re bound to ask at some point. At that point, share with love, and don’t insult what they hold oh so dear in the process. Just don’t let loving them simply be an end to a means. Again, I have to emphasize that this is a great book, and I really think it would be an excellent text to use for a Sunday School class or small group. The chapters are all relatively short, very thought-provoking, and extremely easy to read (John’s writings are very entertaining!). What makes this book even more special, though? At the end of each chapter, John includes several “Ouch!” statements (messages written by nonbelievers, intended specifically for Christians) followed up by some questions to reflect upon. Both are guaranteed to provoke some awesome discussion… if that’s all that were in the book, it would be worth reading. All in all, this book is phenomenal… even if I don’t agree with everything he has to say 100%. If I had to rate it, it would get six stars (on a five-star scale). Be sure to get a copy of I’m OK — You’re Not. You’ll be glad you did.”–John Stickley, writing on his blog, Toward the Goal

“I have had my own moments of saying all the wrong things to non-Christians, some close friends, some acquaintances — some even complete strangers. I don’t doubt some of you have done the same, and maybe even, like myself, cringe when you look back on those times. What are we doing wrong? What can we do differently? What do non-Christians really think of Christians these days? Author John Shore does an excellent job of answering all of these questions. Again, as in my previous book review, I find there are some comments/views that the author gives with which I am not in full agreement. But on the whole, I feel that every single Christian should read this book and really pay attention to what is going on in our world. Or to put it more plainly, to what we have been saying and doing to alienate those in our world. First, the main point the author is making is that, while The Great Commission (‘go out into all the world and preach the gospel…’) is so very, very important, it seems that Christians have climbed on board to that way of thinking so passionately that we have sometimes forgotten The Great Commandment — ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Shore makes a strong argument for really getting to know people, and love them just as they are, rather than letting them know how we think they need to be living their lives. Second, this guy is just plain funny. I know there are many different sorts of humor, but I feel that Shore’s wittiness and sometimes self-deprecation would connect with just about everybody. I don’t do this often, but I actually found myself laughing out loud at most of the book — in the doctor’s office, no less! Chapter titles such as ‘How Dare They Leave When We’re Offending Them’ and ‘So Being Born Again Isn’t the Same as Being Mature?’ caught me in a way that I knew I wanted to keep reading. Third, I’m OK — You’re Not isn’t all about the laughs. There is plenty of humor, to be sure, but I feel that in order to not get too upset about damage we may have done there is kind of a need to approach the subject in a bit of a joking way. Shore is smart enough to realize that it probably isn’t the best idea to preach at people about how they’ve been preaching at other people too much. It also seems that, after reading what the author shared about his very tragic childhood, that humor is a huge way in which he has learned to cope with some aspects of his life. That alone connected very strongly with me, because Casey and I have used laughter a lot to get through the entire past year.
”My very favorite part of this book came at the end of every chapter. I truly looked forward to it, even though it is so raw and sometimes so very difficult to read. Shore titled these sections appropriately ‘Ouch’ because they are a collection of quotes from non-Christians sharing how they feel about Christians, or what their experiences have been with Christians. These were obtained by the author through Craigslist. A brilliant idea, but wow…there are some harsh things. Nevertheless, I think they need to be heard, and so I applaud Mr. Shore for being so innovative in getting those quotes. Overall, I’m OK — You’re Not has been an awesome read for me. Before I had even finished the first chapter, I was telling Casey that this would be a great book to use in the campus ministry. It is just so relevant and I know that the humor would really draw students in and connect with them as it did with me.” — from Trace Talks

“I highly recommend I’m OK-You’re Not. I give it 4.5 hockey sticks out of 5.”– Kevin Bussey, Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

“You really must read I’m OK for yourself. … John Shore is a funny, witty man. The meat of this book is seasoned–no, peppered with a great deal of humor; good humor. I completely loved it. … Shore wants us to understand where people are at when we Christians are developing relationships. The logic is strong and the alternative way of treating unbelievers, Normies–he calls ‘em–is a valid suggestion and inspired me to at least try it. Besides, John Shore isn’t stepping way out on a limb here, I have heard plenty of good teachers, Jerram Barrs for one, talk about this very suggestion. … That’s why I’m challenging you all to get a copy. Read this book. I really believe that John Shore has an excellent point here; and he doesn’t just scold his brothers and sisters without a New Plan. However, this book isn’t just for Christians. Nonbelievers will enjoy the breath of fresh, evangelical air that Shore provides.” — from Sadico Junction

“I’m reading an awesome book that my husband picked up in Alabama while he was TDY last week. It is along the lines of Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz) except a little more….Everyday Guyish. Which I like. It’s called I’m OK – You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop, by John Shore. I love the whole premise of the book which is based on THE MOST IMPORTANT COMMANDMENT (Mark 12:28-31). … [I'm OK] is convicting, witty, and energizing. My heart totally resonated with everything he said.”– from Conversations With A Kat

“Once again, John Shore has partnered with the Holy Spirit to produce a brilliant, entertaining and remarkable book. I’m OK – You’re Not speaks to 21st century Christians with wisdom and insight comparable to that of the first-century John. John Shore doesn’t preach, but rather engages his readers with humor and logic, thereby radiating love for them (though they may be misguided). The message is simple: The Great Commission has been accomplished here in America and most of the world. It’s time to stop foisting our faith on people who aren’t interested. It’s counterproductive, insulting, disrespectful and holier-than-thou. Instead, we need to accept and love them as they are — as we would want to be loved, ourselves — and share our faith only when and if they ask. John’s right, of course…and isn’t it a huge relief?”– Debra Lee Baldwin, award-winning freelance writer for Sunset and Better Homes & Gardens; author of the just-released Designing with Succulants

“Have you ever wondered why evangelizing doesn’t work? It really doesn’t matter if you’re trying to convert others to Christianity, to your particular political beliefs, or any other kind of evangelizing; John Shore explains why it’s so ineffective. Assuming you really want people to listen to you, he then goes on to give some practical suggestion. Along the way he says a lot of things that are important in iife in general. If you read for the “big picture”, you’ll get a lot more out of this book than if you only focus on the main topic. The author also shares some pretty personal stuff from his life. It takes a lot of guts to be this personal, and it’s pretty useful in understanding his perspective. This book is easy to read. Though the title (and the main message) may sound critical, the author uses generous doses of humor to help the medicine go down.–Janice Meyer, “Can I Change a Life?”

If you love God, God will reward you for that love by blessing you with an eternity filled with joyous bliss.

If you do not pledge to God your loyalty and fealty, God will punish you by cursing you with an eternity filled with horrendous physical torture.

Die a Christian? Up you go to heaven!

Die a non-Christian? Try to make sure that before it closes shut someone tosses a bag of marshmallows into your coffin. (And then—what with where you’re going—prepare to never find a stick.)

And don’t think it will matter why you died a non-Christian, either. Because it won’t. Maybe you were born and raised a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Native American, Bahaist. Maybe you were raised by dingoes in the aboriginal wilds. Maybe you decided there is no God, and became an atheist. Maybe you decided you just couldn’t decide, and became an agnostic. Maybe you just didn’t care all that much, and figured you’d know soon enough anyway so why pick a lane you don’t have to?

Yeah, none of that will matter. All that matters is that if you die anything but a Christian, then no heaven for you!

That’s what being a Christian boils down to: Be one—or else!

And that, friends and fellow earthlings, is the Christianity in which so many believe.

And that is the Christianity that’s responsible for so many people today leaving church—and for so many others refusing to ever go near a church in the first place.

And that’s the Christianity that has just got to go.

“Love me, because I love you. And if you don’t love me, I’ll torture you forever.” What would that be, from the Stalker line of Hallmark cards? What kind of sickness is that? And what kind of unhealthy relationship must it produce?

Who wants to be in a relationship because they’re terrified not to be in that relationship?

The model of Christianity upon which that kind of relationship is predicated needs to go the way of the dodo bird, slavery, and blood-letting. God is still talking—and he’s telling an awful lot of us to grow up already, and stop treating him like some big mean Daddy in the sky who’ll whip us all real hard forever if we’re not good little boys and girls. That’s not who God is. That’s not how God operates. Those aren’t God’s values.

That kind of Christianity belongs to a mentality that feeds on the fears and resentments of men, not the love and acceptance of God.

That kind of Christianity is mad about naming who exactly is and isn’t with it, and why.

That kind of Christianity needs enemies to give it focus and purpose—and the more enemies it has, the happier it is.

That kind of Christianity swaggers, preens, points, scowls, judges, and with its confident, braying bravado opportunistically and purposefully strikes fear into the hearts of perfectly decent people who want nothing more than to know that, in some real and lasting way, their human frailties are forgiven.

That kind of Christianity revels in pointing an accusatory finger with what it dares declare the hand of God.

Do you know that in the Bible Jesus never says a word about the ultimate fate of anyone who dies a non-Christian? Not once does it come up. We have no idea who does and doesn’t get into heaven. None.

Apparently Jesus didn’t think that was anything we should be worried about. Apparently he didn’t think that what happens to anyone in the afterlife is any of our business.

He sure was clear about how we should live in this life, though, wasn’t he? No waffling there, was there?

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)

There. That’s our mission.

That’s who God is.

That’s who God wants us to be.

We’re supposed to love God, and then—filled with God’s returned love for us—love our neighbors.

Heaven help the person who endeavors to turn that clear directive into a prescription for who does and doesn’t get sentenced to hell.

Along these lines I also once made this:

I don’t really like to write about stuff I’ve written. It’s like explaining a joke: it sucks the life right out of the universe.

And would you want to be responsible for killing whatever life there might be on Mars? Neither would I. So you see my point.

Then again, maybe I should do follow-ups to all my posts. Screw life on Mars. What have they ever done for us?

Pfft. Flying saucers. I’ve seen one. I’m fifty-three. You do the math.

I’ve got a cup of tea steeping seeping cooking becoming tea. I’ve got “The King Is Dead” by The Decemberists playing, which is a CD I bought on a whim at Starbucks the other day and have since had reason to celebrate because how often do you actually end up really loving a CD you buy on a whim because you like its cover?

I’m just in an expansively explanatory mood, is all.

So here’s what I was thinking with my last post: I’m sure there are a lot of nice, friendly atheists out there. I mean, of course there are. Duh. But as far as I know, I don’t really hear too often from members of that happy camp. I instead regularly hear from the legions of denizens of Camp We Loathe Christians—as I would, since I’m a Christian who writes about Christianity on Huffington Post. Which is like strapping on half a cow and diving into a shark tank. Waves and great thrashings will necessarily ensue.

I wrote a book, I’m OK – You’re Not, which is all about all the ways and reasons Christians sort of naturally have strained relationships with non-Christians (and what Christians need to do about that). So I’m kind of always thinking about how and why Christians and non-Christians do or don’t get along together. It’s probably just because I don’t have cable. But I don’t. So there we have it.

So before I wrote A Letter Evangelicals Might Use to Apologize to Christians, my thinking went along these lines:

Non-Christians think that Christians don’t respect them. And it makes sense they would think that, since that’s basically the message (“Become like us [cue Stewie voice]—or perish!”) generally communicated to them by evangelical Christians. And atheists think all Christians are evangelicals.

So we have this rift.

Evangelicals should apologize for that rift.

How cool would that be?

I should write that imaginary apology letter!

But picking on evangelicals for too aggressively proselytizing is like shooting sharks in a barrel. Too easy. I think I can do better than that. I think I can write an apology letter from evangelicals to atheists that at once acknowledges where evangelicals have and always are going wrong with atheists, and, at the same time, shows full respect for the evangelical’s loving imperative.

Except that’s impossible. No way, John! You can’t do it! No bridge reaches that far. You can’t write the letter as an evangelical really would write it, and at the same time not abandon or betray too much the evangelical holds so dear. Nobody can write a real apology for doing something that they really and truly believe was the right thing to do.

I don’t care, man. I’m doing it. I’m gonna try. I’ve got to try!

So I did.

And that’s what I was doing/trying/thinking with my last post. (And then into the letter I mixed another level of communication, whereby here and there I meant to signal to the reader my personal real feelings on the entire matter.)

With When Should Christians Start Pointing Fingers?, I proposed some moral guidelines that pretty much anyone could agree to.

People are stupid; defend the innocent.

Another great bumper sticker!

Anyway, as we all know, life can get pretty fuzzy in the area of applied (much less intrusive) morality. Whenever I think of how difficult it can sometimes be to tell when, or to what extent, you should become involved with trying to influence the moral decisions of another, I recall an incident from my own life.

I had a friend at work: let’s call him Dick. Dick was a definitely an alpha-male: very good-looking, fit, extremely smart, way funny. He and I were true friends; for at least a year we went to lunch together almost every day. At work we spent so much time goofing around together it was all I could do not to feel bad about getting my paycheck.

Dick had been married eight years. He and his wife had a one-year-old son. I’d never met his wife, but had a picture of her on his desk. She was ridiculously pretty.

One day Dick said to me, “Hey, there’s a band coming to town I really want to see. Wanna go? It’s this Saturday night.”

“But we’ve never hung out outside of work,” I said. “I think the shock might prove too much for you. For instance, in regular life I only wear swim trunks, tap shoes, and a bow-tie. Is that going to be a problem for you?”

“You know, I believe you? Freak.”

Anyway, he swung by my house late that Saturday afternoon.

“Well, don’t you two look handsome?” my wife said to us, as Dick and I stood side by side, grinning like Frick and Frack Find Hawaiian Shirts.

But she was right. We did look handsome. Especially me.

So Dick and I go to this little club out by the beach to hear this band.

By about 10:30 the band had been playing in the loud, packed club for maybe forty-five minutes. Dick leans into me, and says/screams at the top of his voice, “Check her out.” He nodded toward the dance floor before the stage. It was clear he meant the beautiful girl with a thin, knee-high dress who was barely pretending to dance with her girlfriend whilst overtly giving Dick the ol’ goo-goo eyes.

“Dang, dude!” I screamed/said. “Bummer about her being myopic.” He didn’t even acknowledge my solid 7.5 on a scale of 10 joke. He was too busy making Porno Movie Lascivious Faces right back at her. They were practically [bad words that rhyme with "fly thumping"] from across the room.

“Excuse me,” I said/screamed. “Your hormonal cloud is blocking my view of the stage. Knock it off.”

“[Bad word] that,” said Dick. He turned away from the stage, blocking himself from view of Dancefloor Minxy. Then he slid his wedding band off his finger. He looked at me.

“Whoa. Are you serious?” said my face.

Dick dropped his ring into his pants pocket. “I want this,” he said. He looked pretty crazed. “I’m going for it.” And with that he took off for the dance floor, heading straight for the girl, who, alone now, was facing and waiting for him, swinging her hips in a way that made it clear she was free of any major back problems.

They immediately started dancing together in a manner that would make Hugh Hefner blush. I didn’t know if I should run out on the dance floor and break them up, or what. Sure, it would take a crowbar. But what was my moral responsibility here?

About one song into their mating dance, Dick returned to me, his arm around the girl’s waist. “I’m taking her out to the beach,” he said. “If I’m not back by the time the club closes, I’ll meet you at the car.”

Before I could say, “But wait! You’re married!” the two of them were off into the night that was crowded right outside, but wouldn’t be on the beach.

Suddenly alone, I looked down into my beer. No answers there.

I considered the situation.

A. They were already gone.

B. Dick was an adult.

C. I liked Dick. He was a friend. I respected him. I was loyal to him.

D. Dick was an adult.

E. They were already gone.

They should make a beer that, when you shake it a little, has one of those things, like the Magic 8 Ball, that floats to the surface with an answer on it.

No. Yes. Maybe. Outlook good. You should stop your married friend from having sex on the beach with a girl he just picked up in a club. Ask again later.

I think a product like that would really sell.

About half a song later, I had a sharp epiphany. A real friend stops his friend from doing something bad. Having an affair is bad. Ergo, my way was clear.

I bolted from the club. Well: I walked with a distinct sense of purpose. But once outside, I actually ran the half-block to the beach.

Have you ever walked around a beach at night looking for a couple having sex? If you haven’t, try to avoid it. It’s … unnatural.

I couldn’t find them. It was too dark. The beach was … well, coast-line size. Plus really wide. And loud, what with all the ocean being right there and all.

Still, it was odd not finding them. I really looked. I was running around out there like Gilligan with an urgent message for the Skipper. At one point, I wondered if they were doing it out in the water. Then I pictured Jacques Cousteau bumping into them, with his scuba gear on. Then I ran around on the beach some more looking for them.

But no go.

You can’t stop what you can’t find.

I went back to the club. I couldn’t enjoy the music, though. (Not that I had been: I could put together a better band with four grandmas and a tuba). So I sat on a cement bench on the sidewalk outside a sandwich place.

The crowd began to thin as the clubs and businesses closed down.

Eventually Dick arrived back at my car.

Well, I hear my wife getting up for the morning, so I’m going to stop writing this, and have a cup of coffee with her before we start our day. During our drive home that night Dick and I talked—but not in any substantive way about what had happened. Within a month we weren’t really friends anymore. I still wanted to be friends with him, but after that night he never wanted to hang out with me too much. I understood.

****

You’re invited to join/”like” my Facebook fan page thing.

This is a collection of blog posts I’ve done on this subject.

Decide if you really want to make a living writing. If your primary interest in writing is to give expression to your innermost thoughts and feelings, and you don’t really care if anyone reads your stuff or not, that’s a beautiful thing. But if your goal is to have great numbers of people pay money in order to read what you write, that’s a whole other universe. Most people would say they only want to write for themselves, when what they really want is to be famous for the quality of their thoughts and the charm with which they’re expressed. Decide whether or not you want to be someone who writes personal journals, or someone who writes bestsellers. Because they’re not even close to the same thing. One is fun; one can be fun, but definitely involves insane amounts of pain. Be clear on your goal going in. You don’t want to pack for a day trip and then start up Mt. Everest.

Learn punctuation. (Oh: From here on out I’ll assume you want to be a Famous Writer.) It’s weird how many people want to become writers who haven’t yet mastered punctuation. And mastered is the word, too: You have to know that stuff cold. If you aren’t absolutely positive when you can and can’t use a semicolon, for instance, then you need to keep studying punctuation until you are. You can’t fake knowing punctuation. And you definitely can’t write to your full potential without the creative freedom that comes from understanding the most fundamental tool of your trade. (And here’s something huge: Learn the rules of punctuation so thoroughly that you know the difference between a punctuation “rule” and a style choice. That’ll be a fight you’ll fight one day; publishing is filled with people who think the “rules” of punctuation are whatever they happened to learn in the Editing 101 class they took in college twenty years ago. People think there are all kinds of punctuation rules that are really just style choices.)

Work for free. If you’re just starting out, write for free. Lots of beginning writers think it’s beneath them to write for free; don’t be one of them. You need a portfolio, and doing quality work for free is the fastest way to get a good one. Pick your favorite of one of those little free publications in your area — the kind of neighborhood newspapers and entertainment tabloids ubiquitous in coffee shops and markets — and study it. See what kinds of articles it runs; learn the word counts of those articles; become familiar with the general tone and style of the publication. Pick one of the shorter types of things the publication regularly features (usually a review of some sort: albums, restaurants, art show openings, whatever) and then write two or three pieces exactly like those. (I started out writing 250-word album reviews for a local free music tabloid, for instance.) Send those pieces to the editor of the publication you’re about to start writing for, accompanied by a short, friendly letter introducing yourself (keep stuff about yourself to a minimum: editors are too busy to care). Just say you wrote the enclosed or attached pieces in the hope that they’d use it in their publication (which, of course, you think the world of). Be sure to tell them that you’re perfectly okay with them cutting or in any way editing the pieces you’ve submitted. Just the fact that you’re flexible that way puts you in the upper .001% of newbie would-be freelancers, who tend to think their every word is sacrosanct.

Understand publishing. Every publication, from your free local rag to Vanity Fair magazine, exists on its advertising. First publications sell ads, then they flow editorial material around those ads. In a real sense, editorial content is basically filler between ads. The thing about advertisers is that they tend to be unbelievably flaky, which they can do because they know that in the relationship between themselves and the publisher, they have all the power — which is especially true down at the local level where you’ll be starting out. So advertisers come in late with their ads; they suddenly don’t like the proof of their ads; they don’t pay for their ads; they pull their ads. For all those kinds of reasons and more, publications are forever left scrambling at the last minute to fill space with editorial content that they thought was going to be filled with an ad. This can definitely work to your advantage. If I’m an editor (and I have been, a lot), and I suddenly find out that I’ve got to fill space that used to be an ad with editorial, you better believe I’m going to remember that stuff you just sent me. If it’s clean, and useable — and especially, usually, if it has a decent picture with it!! — I’ll use it. And I’ll be grateful to you, too, because you just became an asset to me. Which means I will be contacting you about future work. So if you really want to maximize your chances of getting published in a particular publication, find out that publication’s production schedule. Find out, in other words, what day of every week or month that publication needs to be finalized so that it can be sent to the printer. Advertisers tend to drop out right before a publication’s deadline. Make sure your stuff gets to the editor a day or so before it’s a sure bet that he or she is suddenly going to be scrambling to fill the space just vacated by an advertiser. That way, when they’re panicking to fill that space, your submission, having just come in, will be fresh on their mind, and at the top of their stacked in-box, which’ll make it easy for them to get their hands on. In publishing, as in life, timing is everything. Submit your stuff two days before your publication gets put to bed, and rest assured that you couldn’t have timed it better.

Learn about word count. Everything about a piece — being, mainly, its angle and tone — is determined by how many words it’s supposed to be. When you structure a piece, you have to begin by knowing its intended word count. What you’d say if you had five minutes to tell someone your life story is radically different from what you’d say if you have two hours. Or two days. Word count—which is to say physical context of the presented material—is core to understanding what and how a piece needs to be.

So far we’ve been talking, specifically, about magazine writing. Writing for magazines is a real particular discipline. There’s all kinds of writing, of course: poetry, mainstream journalism, magazine writing, short stories, plays, novels, book-length nonfiction. But most newbie writers, it seems, want to write for magazines. Cool! It’s an insanely voracious, wide-open market. I am a freak for magazine journalism; I can’t express how much I love writing in that style (um, which I’m pretty much doing right now). I quit working in magazines because, frankly, there’s a lot more money in books — and, in truth, I wanted something beyond the temporal nature of magazine publishing. But magazine writing is still, to me, Le Bomb Deluxe. Many of you apparently feel the same way.

Doing well as a magazine writer opens doors to just about any other kind of writing you would ever want to do. If you want to write books, for instance, magazine credits will automatically separate you (in the eyes of literary agents, and then publishers) from the umpteen zillion people who want to write books who haven’t ever been published magazines. Whoo-hoo! You’re in! Plus, the great thing about magazine publishing is that it lives on ideas. It needs ideas like elephants need food. In the world of magazine publishing, ideas are the Big Currency.

Anyway, here’s the core deal (or one of the them, anyway) on magazine publishing: Nobody cares about you as a writer. Magazines rip through writers like elephants rip through hay. And if you want to write for magazines, then you don’t want to care about you as a “writer,” either. What you want to care about is the editor of whatever magazine you want to publish in (or, in a larger magazine, the editorial head of whichever department in that magazine you’d like to publish within). That’s who you care about.

Your job — your goal, if you’re starting from the outside — is to make that person’s job easier. Because everything about an editor’s life is working against his job being easier. Freelancers are late with their stuff. Photographers send in shots of their feet. The graphics department decides the next cover would look good with everyone’s face bright red. The PR rep for the star about whom you were going to run a feature is suddenly insisting their client be on the cover of the magazine. The people running the ad on your back cover want that ad changed. Your rep at the printer’s quit, and her replacement is color blind. The publisher — your boss — decides at the last minute that you need to switch out a story you’d planned on running with a story about his wife’s yoga teacher.

For an editor, life is an endless series of issue-swallowing holes forever opening up around him.

But you! You,with your tight writing style; your  timeliness, your outstanding story ideas; your flawless execution; your blessedly low-maintenance personality; your flexibility; your plain, good ol’ fashion, astoundingly rare professionalism.

You’re someone who’s actually helping that editor, for a change!

Thus do you in very short order become invaluable to that editor. You become one of the editor’s go-to people.

You develop a steady income as a writer. You build a portfolio. You have a book idea. You write a proposal for that book. You send it to an agent. That agent takes you on, and sells your book to a publisher for Humongous Smackers.

And voila: You’ve got yourself a whole new world.

Some General Writing Advice

Never forget that it’s not about you. I think that’s about the most important writing advice there is.

What people usually mean when they say they want to be a writer is that they’re very keen on communicating to the world what it’s like to be, specifically, them: to have their unique vision, their ideas, their sensibilities, their relationships, their experiences, their … whole thing. Right? And that makes perfect sense: What is art, if not an expression of individuality?

Without question, a monumental part of being an artist is identifying, corralling, and ultimately allowing to dominate the process by which you express it the very essence of who you are. An artist must find his own voice, period.

But another massive, indispensable part of being an artist — of being a writer — is understanding that everything in the world has its own truth, a truth that doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with you. People who want to write are often so wrapped up in what they think about a thing that they never let that thing tell them what to think about it. Things — people, relationships, experiences, virtually everything — have their own integrity, their own dynamic, their own process, context, purpose, rhythm, reason. If you really want to be a writer, you have to learn to wipe out all your ideas and preconceptions about as much stuff as you possibly can, and let whatever it is that has your attention tell and show you what it is.

Here’s the bottom line: Someone who is more interested in themselves than they are the world at large probably won’t make it as a writer. You have to be insanely empathetic to be a writer. To be a writer you have to think everything is more interesting than you.

Writing isn’t about exercising your ego. It’s about erasing your ego. It’s about getting out of the way of whatever needs to be said, so that it can be said in a way that does justice to the thing that’s telling you what you need to say about it.

Would-be writers are forever wanting to share themselves with the world. Fair enough; that’s a big part of writing, for sure. But if, in being totally honest with yourself, you find that you are more interested in sharing yourself with the world than you are with, in essence, sharing the world with the world, then save yourself the trouble, and stop imagining you’re a writer. You’re not.

Lucky you. You’re normal.

A Few Big Deal Writing Points

Publishers and agents need you more than you need them. Writers tend to have this attitude that they’re weak and down below, and that book agents and publishers are high above them, and have all the power in the relationship. That’s exactly backwards. Book publishers and agents are useless without writers, and they know it. They need writers to do what they do; they have no income without writers. Go into your every interaction with a publisher or agent as if you, and not they, have the power. Then in your dealings with them you’ll present yourself with clarity and confidence — which, as a cologne, smells infinitely better than “Need.”

Exploit your relationships. “Exploit” isn’t really the right word (oh: and as a writer, always use the right word), but never fail to respectfully explore the possibilities inherent in every relationship you think could be of value to you in your career. A basic Fact Combo about people you should use to your advantage is that people like helping other people, and that few people actually ask other people to help them. That, combined with the truth that no one is above feeling flattered when another person shows respect for them and asks for their Expert Input, means that you should never be afraid to honestly ask someone who has shown any kind of interest in you at all to keep showing interest in you until they’re done (for now) being interested in you. You can go a long way down that road with a lot more people than you probably think — and in the end, you’ve got yourself a little network! It’s a beautiful thing; it’s a wonderful way to make friends and develop mentors. And you have to have that; without a network, you’re talking to nobody. Be likeable, be humble, be appropriately responsive, be succinct — but do be in the conversation.

Remember that the most valuable commodity anywhere in media is ideas. Ideas, ideas, ideas. In publishing, ideas are pure gold. Everything depends on The Idea. Books are sold to publishers every day on nothing but a title. The quickest way to become someone with whom others in the creative field of your choice want to be aligned is to be known as someone who consistently comes up with quality ideas. Think creatively! All the time! That’s how you make friends, influence people, and turn your brain into a cash cow.

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. New writers are always worried that an agent, publisher or fellow author is going to steal their ideas. Don’t worry about that. They are going to steal your ideas, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Part of the cost of being a new writer is that people who are further up the food chain from you get to steal your ideas. Your attitude has to be, “Go ahead, take that idea. There’s a million more equally good ideas where that one came from.” Let ’em have your ideas. If you’re not pretty much an idea factory, you’re never going to make it anyway. The universe is full of ideas just waiting to be grasped and formulated. So what if someone takes one of yours? They’re likely to fail with it anyway, because no one can execute your idea like you can. Jerry Seinfeld has a great line, where he says, “So what if someone steals my material. What’s someone else going to do with my material?” If someone steals your material, be flattered, know you must be doing something right, and move on. (And, if you’re like me — not that you should be — be sure to take names. You’ll want them later.)

Rejection can’t mean anything to you emotionally. Your stuff is always going to get rejected for perfectly good reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of your work. Forget rejections; they mean nothing. Keep going; there’s always another venue, always a new place or person to submit to. If you let rejections effect (affect? oh–and always keep a good usage manual nearby) you emotionally, you’ll never make it. Of course every rejection will hurt a little — but feel that pang, give it its proper acknowledgment, and then lose it like the useless weight it is. Writing’s a weird business: You have to be sensitive enough to be open and vulnerable and creative — and yet be The Terminator when it comes to rejection. No problem. You can do that. Life hurts sometimes. So what? Remember to keep your eye on the prize, which is to be so successful writing that you never again have to get a real job.

How To Become a Factory of Story and Article Ideas

Being an Idea Factory, is, after all, the key to being a successful writer, and no two ways about it. If you wait to get assigned a story, you die waiting; if you come up with a good story of your own, though, you’re gold. From fiction to poetry to nonfiction, idea is king.

Let’s first consider whether or not there’s such a thing as an original idea. Of course there is; if there weren’t then today we’d still be trying to open up cans with our teeth. Luckily, in 1972 Barnabas “Big Collar” Canopener invented the gadget that still bears his name, and cosmetic dentists everywhere were forced to become tile layers and make-up artists.

No, but yes: There are definitely new and original ideas. The whole point of good ideas is that they’re new. They of course exist in symbiotic relationship with their contexts: the cuff link, for instance, was just stupid until someone finally invented the loose, oversized, hole-bearing man-cuff. I feel safe in saying that each and every one of our brains is veritably abuzz with new ideas just waiting to coalesce, spark to life, and then burst out in such a way as to embarrass us in public.

I don’t in reality know if it’s possible to teach people how to come up with good writing ideas. I think it is, but I don’t know. I do know that in my years of trying to teach/impart that particular facility to freelance magazine writers, I invariably failed. I simply had a pretty much impossible time getting people to, as they say, “think outside the box.”

The reasons I personally have always had pretty good luck flopping around outside that stupid box are two: I’d rather burn alive for an hour than be bored for twelve seconds, and I in every last way loathe work.

Seriously: I think the two most important qualities a writer can have are an actual fear of boredom, and a deep and abiding drive to be lazy.

Here’s what I mean: One time when I was working as the managing editor of a monthly magazine, we got in a press release about how the performance season for this local circus troupe was about to begin.

“Why don’t you write a story about this local circus troupe?” my boss asked me.

“Why don’t you quit so I can have your job, you dribbling moron,” I replied. I’m kidding, of course. What I really did is storm into my office and slam shut my door.

Then my brain went like this: “Man, I love having my own office. I can’t believe I have to write a story about those stupid local circus performers. I do respect them, though; I can barely sit in a chair without toppling off it. Hmm. Lemme look at their press release.” Therein I learned that one of the circus’s featured performers was “Ivan, The World’s Strongest Man.”

“Hmmm,” I thought, staring at a photo of Ivan. “Must be weird being the world’s strongest man. Guy definitely needs to update his wardrobe. No one wears sleeveless leopard-print unitards anymore. How does he not know that? Then again, if you’re the world’s strongest man, making astute fashion statements probably isn’t your main concern in life. Your concern is that you keep breaking things. You try to open a door—and suddenly you’re holding a door. You go to apply your car brakes, and your foot goes through the floorboard. You scratch your head, and you almost bleed to death. It must be horrible being the world’s strongest man.”

So then I contacted the guy who plays Ivan, and asked if he’d be down for doing an interview with me based on the idea that he actually is the strongest human male currently alive on the planet. He thought it was a great idea—and bingo, I had my piece. And that story was fun to write: I got to talk about how as a baby Ivan used a lawn mower for a rattler, and how as a schoolboy he had to use special steel pencils, and was not fun to play with at recess, and how his dad had to run away from home from the shame of having a three-year-old son who could totally beat him up.

Point being: Writing that story didn’t bore me to death—and I didn’t have to work, as I would have if I’d done the normal kind of story, where you have to take notes and get all the facts right and learn stuff. I hate learning stuff.

I’ll give one more example, if you don’t mind my writing yet another blog post longer than the Constitution. Once, when I was the editor of a weekly tabloid newspaper in downtown San Diego, I noticed the city had put up all around downtown these round signs with nothing but the letter “P” on them. They were about the size of STOP signs. I thought, “What the heck are those signs for?” But right away I sensed that finding out what they were really for might involve actual research. So instead I simply went outside, stood underneath one of the signs, and when people walked by told them that I was a reporter doing a story on what people thought the “P” on these new signs stood for.

And that’s when people, yet again, started being the funniest thing since Charlie Chaplin.

“I think it stands for Padres,” said one guy seriously. (As in the San Diego Padres baseball team! Like the city would just put up signs everywhere showing the first letter of San Diego’s baseball team! Cracked. Me. Up.)

A portly chap guessed, “Pizza? That’d be cool. It is hard to find good pizza downtown.” A hippie girl mused with what I suspected was organically generated mellowness, “You know what? I think it stands for peace.” A wino-type guy said, “There’s a bathroom nearby?” I made a questioning face, and he goes, “You know. Pee?!”

That was about the best half hour of my life. I took a couple of Pictures of People Pondering the P—and just like that, I had half a page of usable material. (The sign, by the way, stands for “Parking.”)

One time one of my favorite writers—a guy named J. R. Griffin, for whom I used to freelance back when he was running a music rag in Los Angeles called “Mean Streets”—was interviewing a musician when he noticed the batteries on his tape recorder were running low. So part of his story became about how he didn’t stop the interview and say his batteries were low, because he was embarrassed about making such an amateur mistake and didn’t have extra batteries anyway. So in the profile itself, J.R. wrote things like, “When I asked him about how he writes his music, Bob said that when composing he liked to hurt his hubble, or hug his stubble, or something like that. I’m not sure.” Or he wrote, “And that’s when I’m pretty sure Bob said something about being inspired by his cat,” or, “‘I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a musician,’ I’m pretty sure Bob said.”

I died. I still count it as one of the funniest thing I’ve ever read.

My point is: If you really want to be a creative idea machine, think lazy.

What I’m really saying, of course, is think about things not so much as what they’re supposed to be, but what they actually are, if that makes sense. It’s all about pointed, ingenuous honesty. I really do think the secret to consistently producing quality creative ideas—whether it be for local, regional, or national magazine or newspaper work, or for fiction, or poetry, or play writing—is to never fail to be brutally, crazily, viciously, obsessively (and always politely) honest about whatever it is you’re writing about. That’s it. Say what you see. Never force things to be what you or anyone else most typically wants or expects them to be. Let things and people tell you who and what they are: Let the real truth of whatever you’re considering unfold itself before you—and then just hang on, and see what happens.

Watch and ride: that’s my motto.

The other Truly Excellent Way to find as many great stories as you can possibly write is to go out into the world secure in the knowledge that people are absolutely fascinating: that they do fascinating things, have fascinating histories, are involved in fascinating dynamics. Move around in life assuming that everyone you meet is astoundingly original and infinitely interesting—and sure enough, their stories will never disappoint you.

A Bit About Book Proposals

Because I am a very famous writer known far and wide throughout my apartment complex, people very often ask me why I’m staring into their window how to do a book proposal. And when they do I’m always kind of surprised, because wanting to get a book published and not knowing anything about book proposals is like wanting to be a dentist and not knowing anything about making people cry by drilling directly into their central nervous system.

If you’re wanting a publisher to buy a non-fiction book you wrote, you have to write a book proposal for that book. You have absolutely no choice about that. None. Zero. Trying to sell a book without a book proposal is like trying to stage Hamlet without actors. You can try it, but people will first ridicule, then pity, then sic their dogs on you.

Important note: Book proposals are only for non-fiction books. If you want to write a book of fiction, you’re going to have to finish that whole book and then submit it for publication, unless you’re already such a famous fiction writer that there’s no way you’d be reading this. If you’re not sure about the difference between fiction and non-fiction, then you are James Frey, and I want to tell you that, honestly, I only read three pages of your book A Million Little Pieces before I literally threw it away, because it was that obvious you were lying. How it took Oprah and so many other people so long to discover that is yet another reason I despair for the entire human race.

Anyway, a book proposal is a document that, though Mondo Hefto indeed, is still a lot smaller than a whole book, which no one in publishing is going to want to take the time to read. It’s a blueprint of your book, a comprehensive overview of it. It’s everything a publisher would need to know about your book in order to decide if they want to risk their money publishing it.

It really is a book proposal. It’s something you (through your agent) give to a publisher, by way of saying, ”Will you marry this book?”

There are three Major Reasons for which you have to write and submit to your literary agent or publisher a book proposal instead of a finished manuscript. (And remember, we’re only talking about nonfiction books here, not fiction.) First, publishers don’t have time to read a 40,000-plus word manuscript. They don’t even have time to read anywhere near all the proposals that every agent in the world is sending them. (Which is why, as you climb up the publishing ladder, you want representing you an agent with whom publishers know, respect, and have previously worked, since a submission from such an agent automatically goes atop publishers’ Must Read stack.)

Proposal? 15,000 words. Whole manuscript? 45,000 words. Publishers’ time? Priceless.

A proposal it is, then.

Secondly, the quality of your book idea and the facility with which you write is one thing. But what really matters to a publisher — who after all has to make a living selling books – is how sellable your book is. Before a publisher commits the kind of money it takes to bring a book to market, it has to be as sure as it possibly can be that that book will sell. Determining that — figuring out how many people can reasonably be expected to buy your book, and why — entails considerable thought. That’s where you come in. That’s largely what a proposal is: It’s your summation of all the reasons the publisher reading it can be safe betting that once your book is published the world will flock to it, and he or she will be rich and get a promotion and get to take the spouse and kids to Paris the following spring.

A proposal is a sales document. It’s a pitch. It’s everything an editor would need to know in order to boldly throw your proposal down on the table before the collected editorial, sales, and marketing people at his publishing house, and say with ringing confidence, “Here. I’ve got a winner. Praise me, ye underlings! Marvel yet again at my awesome perspicacity!”

Or, you know, whatever they might say.

Point is: Books are art. Art isn’t quantifiable. Money is. Publishers want to make money. A proposal is your best effort to show publishers that, artistic wonder or not, your book will result in Mucho Incoming Cash.

Thirdly, publishers don’t want you to have already finished your book before they get it. You know why? Because if there’s one thing of which publishers are confident, it’s that they know what makes for a good, sellable book. They want to participate with you in the writing of your book. They want to help you make it the best book it can be.

You are, after all, just a writer. What in the world can you be expected to know about writing a book?

It’s easy enough to be offended and/or disparaging about the degree to which publishers tend to assume a real kind of ownership of the text of the books they publish. And a lot of what they do in that regard is grounded in nothing more interesting than grunt arrogance: Editors and publishers are, after all, the gatekeepers to fame and fortune, and they know it, and … well, you know how people are. But it’s also more than fair to say that through long and hard experience, editors and publishers have learned that the most efficient way to create the best possible books is by working hand-in-hand with their authors. Especially given that most nonfiction authors aren’t primarily writers; they’re primarily experts in whatever it is they’re writing about. Most often nonfiction authors are glad to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of their editor; they understand the value of that kind of input. So it’s all good. It’s just that if you’re new, you want to know, going in, that you’d do well to hold lightly the sense of proprietorship that most authors naturally feel toward their work. It’s your book until you sell it; after that, it belongs to you and the publisher, and no two ways about it.

The Ever-Important “Platform”

It’s a terrible truth, but the bottom line is that what publishers care most about when considering whether or not they should take on a new author is whether or not that author has a “platform.”

If you’ve got a solid platform, all the other problems with publishing—needing an agent, needing ideas, needing marketing savvy, needing to know how to write—pretty wholly disappear.

A “platform” is the means by which you personally, without any help from its publisher, can sell a minimum of 30,000-50,000 copies of your own book. It’s the nationwide radio show you host, the nationally-broadcast television show you star or regularly guest on, the seminars or conferences that have you speaking before tens of thousands of rapt listeners a year. Your platform can even be the blog you write, if your blog is insanely popular. But it’s got to be something you do that makes thousands and thousands of people want whatever else you do.

All publishers need to make money off their books. That means they need to sell their books. And that’s really, really difficult to do, because there are some 200,000 books published in America published every twelve months. How do you break through the water’s surface in an ocean that packed?

One way to at least have a chance is to start out being a big fish. Publishers don’t want to market your book. That costs them way too much money; it takes mad cash to run even the most modest ad campaign. What a publisher wants is an author who shows up with their own advertising campaign, their own marketing clout, their own known brand.

What an author can do and bring a publisher doesn’t have to make and deliver.

Publishers aren’t risk takers. They can’t afford to be. (And who can be these days?) What publishers are—or certainly what those holding the Publishing Purse Strings are—are business people. And—and this is everything—they’re business people trying to make money selling art.

Business and art: that’s the Ancient Dichotomy. The people in publishing who cut the checks that keep the rest of us in publishing aren’t artists. They’re not Aesthetic Visionaries. (And again: Who is?) They’re people trying to make a living. They’re people trying to keep their jobs.

Just like every other company that interrupts your television viewing for twenty-two out of every thirty-minutes, book publishers are people with products they need to sell.

But how do you sell a book? Books are based on writing—and writing is, still (and ever, of course) an art. Business people don’t understand art. Or, rather, what they do understand about art is that it can’t be quantified. They can’t predict it. They can’t turn it into a formula. They can’t anticipate who’s going to like it, or why, or when.

Business people don’t like that. They want numbers they can count on, formulas they can depend upon, market analytics they can apply. They need stuff that, as much as possible, they know will work.

The answer? Publish a book with the name of someone on its cover who can effectively promote and sell that book.

You tell a publisher how many copies of your book you can sell, and you just became someone that publisher can work with. Make that number even fairly substantial, and you just became that publisher’s best friend.

If you’re a writer going into publishing without a platform, you’re going in without much of a chance at all.

Now. That’s true.

But, ultimately, it’s not the whole story. Look at me! Not that long ago at all, the only platform I had was on the forklift I maniacally drove around in a warehouse all day. I had no connections; the only person I knew in “publishing” was the dimwit who used to tag the inside of the trucks I was helping load. And now I make a ridiculously huge amount of money writing books on just about any subject I want.

So while needing a platform is huge, it’s not everything. Like all Monolithic Realities, it leaves all kinds of holes you can wiggle through. And doing that, really, is half the fun.

A Would-Be Writer Asks: “MUST I Go to College?”

This morning I received an e-mail from an aspiring author. “I am currently paying the bills with a job in telecommunications,” he wrote, “but ultimately would love to make the transition to being a full-time writer. From your experience, how much would a formal education/bachelor’s degree help me to make this transition? Having been to college for two years already (even though that was over 10 years ago), I can certainly understand the benefit of formal instruction. But I’m wondering if the benefits of that formal education would justify its cost. Any professional writer thoughts or wisdom you’d care to share?”

My answer:

Bend your life as far as you can in order to enable yourself to go to the best college you can afford. You’re unlikely to make it as a writer without a college education. You can, of course—anything’s possible!—but (and especially these days) trying to make it as a writer without a college education is like trying to play the violin without lessons. It’s possible that you’ll create great music, but it’s way more probable that you’ll spend some time making noises no one cares to hear, and then quit.

The main reason college is so critical for a writer is because it’s hard to have anything interesting to say about the world if you don’t know anything about the world—about history, culture, literature, science, etc. Generally speaking, the broader the context, the richer the thought. College is also good for writing insofar as you have to do so much writing in college, all of which gets read and evaluated by professors who have spent their lives engaging with great writing. College also has humongous value in a purely utilitarian sense, because those same professors know people out in the publishing world who can help jump-start your career. The publishing business is just like any other: Whom you know seriously helps. College professors know people.

All that said, though, it’s also true that creative writing is just that: creative. It’s an art form. And while you can certainly nurture and train an artist, you cannot make an artist out of someone who’s not. Journalism, you can teach (though I doubt whether you can teach the qualities of personality good journalism demands). But you can no sooner teach or instill the kind of artistic vision it takes to be a successful creative writer than you can teach a cow how to play canasta.

The Book Doctor Will Needle You Now

Not long ago I took a job doctoring a novel. If you don’t know, “doctoring” a novel means taking someone’s novel and either outright fixing it yourself, or directing its author on what he or she needs to do in order to fix it themselves. It’s the most intrusive and inclusive kind of editing; it covers every aspect of the book at hand: pace, setting, characters, dialogue, wardrobe malfunctions, etc. I sometimes take on this sort of work if I believe in the author, or think the book has potential.

Below are excerpts from the last summary report I wrote for a would-be novelist (a fellow whom I’m proud to say took my advice, returned to college, and is now well on his way to making it as a writer of literary fiction).

Back to basics
Just like a physicist must first master basic math skills, so a writer must first master punctuation, grammar, syntax and usage. You simply have to know this stuff, cold. I don’t know how you’re going to learn it as thoroughly as you need to—if you’re going to take an adult ed class in English composition, or buy some style or usage guides and study them, or what. I can tell you what I did—though I wouldn’t recommend it. I taught that stuff to myself. I spent about three years with my nose buried in “The Chicago Manual of Style,” and Kate Turabian’s classic style manual, and the “Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage,” and the AP Style Guide, and about a zillion other such titles. (One of the best, most comprehensive books of this sort available today is “Quick Access” by Lynn Quitman Troyka. It’s awesome. If you’re only gonna have one such book—and don’t, of course—make it this one.)

I wouldn’t recommend teaching yourself this material because the best way to learn anything so vast and complex is systematically, which is pretty much the whole purpose of (shudder!) school. I think you want to take some classes in English composition. You need to know what constitutes a complete sentence; the basic rules of punctuation; the pitfalls and earmarks of sloppy syntax. However you go about it, do not try to short cut around learning this stuff, because without it I guarantee you will never get off the ground as a writer….

Reading is really the best way to learn the basics of writing. If you read enough, for long enough, after awhile you just know what does and doesn’t make for a sound, clean sentence; you understand the functions of punctuation; you come to have a solid feel for syntax and usage. Read any modern master: Updike, Vonnegut, Hemingway, John Irving, Steinbeck. Read it hard. Study it. Take a class or two (or ten) on English literature. Give it a some time. It’ll be worth it, because once you know grammar and syntax you’ll be in possession of all the bricks necessary to build yourself virtually any building you want….

Show and (not) tell
If I say to you, “Bob was angry at Tom,” that’s one thing. But if I create a scene in which the living, breathing person that is Bob is railing violently against a cowering Tom, then I’ve given you something you can really get into; I’ve made the fact of Bob’s anger come alive for you. If I just tell you that Bob was angry at Tom, you kind of … don’t care that much. It’s the difference between reading about being on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and being on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Whole other thing. They have so little in common that they’re almost unrelated….

Besides committing the cardinal sin of inserting yourself between the reader and whatever you’re meaning to convey to the reader, one very definite thing about telling rather than showing something is that it’s soooooo much easier. You can see the difference between just saying, “My father was a difficult person,” and actually taking the trouble to construct a scene in which you not only show an example of your father being difficult but also convey how typical that behavior is or isn’t for him. “My father was a difficult person” is six words. A scene showing your father being a difficult person will cost you many, many times that. Directly telling and artfully showing represent radically different orders of work. (And because properly/effectively showing something takes up so much more room than does essentially reporting it, in a novel you have to be very careful about what scenes you choose to focus on, to present in their fullness to the reader. Everything that happens in a novel must have an extremely good reason to be there; you’ve no time—you lack the raw available word count—to present anything that’s not critical to moving the story forward or helping us understand or empathize with a character.) ….

Read ‘em and weep
Without knowing you (and I certainly don’t mean to insult you), I would hazard to suggest that you need to read a lot more great novels. Read “The World According to Garp” by John Irving. “The Fixer” by Bernard Malumud. Definitely “Huckleberry Finn.” Definitely Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” The classic first person American novel is J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” Any modern classic of this sort—anything by John Updike, for instance, is golden. You need to read a lot of great books, so that the style of such writing sort of sinks into you, becomes part of your subconscious bedrock of knowledge, power, and aesthetic understanding into which you can then dig as a source and even inspiration for your own work. You need to ask yourself the degree to which you’re familiar with the basic cannon of Western literature—at the very least, of modern Western literature. If you can’t say that you’re truly familiar with our best literature—that you really have read at least as much as any student with a Master’s degree in English Lit.—then I’m afraid there’s no getting around your need to change that. Get a library card. Start hitting used book stores. (And thrift shops! The best book deals are at thrift shops!) I would even recommend you take a year or two off from writing, and just read. In the end, there’s nothing better you can do to improve your writing skills. And there’s no question but that you will never improve as a writer without that kind of reading under your belt. Every writer knows he owes everything he writes to the authors he’s read and loved, to the writers before him who inspired him. Find out who those authors are for you. (For what it’s worth, mine include Twain, Chekhov, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, John Irving, Jane Austen, and John Kennedy Toole, the guy who wrote one of my very favorite novels, the unbearably hilarious “A Confederacy of Dunces.”)….

And in conclusion…

What I hope you’ll be left with coming out of this is what I know you had coming into it: your desire to be a great writer. If that core desire remains intact, then believe me it’s possible for you to achieve that goal. You’ve got the brains; I assume you’ll keep the drive. All you lack is foundation; all you need to do is take the time to establish that foundation. If you have a community college near you, enroll in it, and get an A.A. in English Literature. My personal opinion is that that, right there, would give you everything you need to start a serious career as a real writer. You’d learn mechanics: grammar, punctuation, syntax. And two years of study would give you a good sense of Western Literature—the same body of work of which you’d like your own work to one day be part. Take some creative writing classes; get involved with some writers groups. Start writing short stories, which of course constitute their own art form, but also prepare you for novel writing. Share your stories with readers you respect, inside or outside your writers group. Get them critiqued. Have people talk to you about your work, and talk to others about theirs.

This is how you learn to write. It’s the only way to learn to write. And we’re talking about a total of three years here. You do that stuff—go to school for two years; join a good writer’s group; start writing short stories–and at 50 years old (if I’m remembering correctly that you’re 47) you’ll be ready to write your first real novel. I personally think that’s the perfect age to begin saying stuff nobody knows until about that time in life anyway.

How To Write in Tandem with God

I get a fair amount of questions/input around the dynamic of writing in conjunction with God. So I thought I’d burble out a little sumpin’ sumpin’ about that particular phenomenon.

First of all, if you’re trying to do any sort of creative work, do you have any choice but to access and stay with the divine within you? All creativity is born of the Great Power, however you personally understand or conceive of that. Being Christian, I say that in order to do my best creative work I must tap into and let flow through me the Holy Spirit; I assume if I were a Muslim I’d say the same thing about the spirit of Allah. However you personally understand The Great Being or Divine Power Within, you’d better connect to it, and let it work through you, if you hope to write anything more interesting or substantial than whatever you could scrape together with your normal, everyday brain.

Your everyday brain is great for doing taxes, returning DVD’s on time, and remembering why you shouldn’t attack your boss in an elevator with a stapler. It’s generally useless, though, when it comes to creative work. For creative work, you’ve got to get down and give it up for the source of all creativity.

The key to successfully doing that — to truly divesting yourself of what really does amount to all control over your writing — is trust. You have to trust in the quality of whatever God produces through you. The thing that most often causes writers to choke is thinking too much about the end result of their work: they wonder if it will be good enough, smart enough, clever enough, engaging enough. But thinking about all that sort of stuff is like taking a boat out into the water and then shooting a hole through its floor. You’re sunk before any of the fun can even begin.

Writing has to be about the process of writing, not its end result. And the key to experiencing a truly rewarding writing process is not worrying at all. You can’t create if you’re worrying about being creative. You aren’t creative. God is creative. The creative spirit residing within you is creative. You aren’t: You can barely tie your shoes without accidentally snagging your thumb in a tourniquet. So let God/The Great Creative Power use you to do his/her/its thing. All you have to do is ride the train of that blessed phenomenon to wherever in the heck it takes you.

The key is to trust that train will take you somewhere new, good, and exciting. Do not worry about the “quality” of what you’re writing: that kind of concern is for pursed-lipped Church Lady types. Worrying about the quality of creative work is the mortal enemy of creative work. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t do it to the creative spirit within you. It can’t be anything but a waste of time.

When you want to write, poise yourself with your pen in hand (or keyboard beneath your fingers), close your eyes, open your heart, and wait.

Pretty soon you’ll hear that distant train whistle blow. Then you’ll hear the train coming closer.

Then it will be upon you. Hop aboard.

See where it takes you!

My Last, Best 10 Tips on How To Make It As A Writer

Take it seriously. It’s just about impossible to make a living writing, so doing so means Fanatical Focus. When I decided to start making a living a writing, I wrote (for free, for all kinds of local publications) every night after work for four to six hours, and throughout every weekend. Six months into that I was offered my first job as an editor; three months after that, I was making a great living as the main entertainment features writer for (then) new website of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Lesson being: Sweat pays.

Decide right off what kind of writing you want to do. Journalism? Fiction? Nonfiction? Magazine articles? Plays? Poetry/song lyrics? Each of these fields has its own rules, outlets, primary players, processes — and each is filled with talented people who are totally dedicated to only that form of writing. Decide what you want to write, and immerse yourself in that kind of writing. You can really only swim in one pool at a time.

Learn to think before you write. So many writers think that beautiful thoughts come from beautiful words. Wrong. First have the clear, beautiful thought, and then let the only words that can express that thought naturally attach themselves to it. That’s how you get a style. Put developing a style first, and at best you’ll end up as a writer with a nice enough technique, but nothing to say. The world has plenty of those. Never forget that the only point of writing is to serve thought.

Cultivate relationships. People in publishing are just like everyone else in the world, and everyone prefers to do business with people they know, or at least people who know people they know. Buy a Rolodex. Get busy emailing, phoning, writing, networking. Be proud; never act like you need anyone more than they need you. But make it so that when as many people as possible do need someone, they think of you.

Believe in your lack of competition. It’s true there are a zillion writers out there, but 99.99% of them have no idea what they’re doing. A decent writer (let alone a great one) is as rare as rare gets. You know all that great writing you see in magazines? That was all done by editors who shaped whatever they got from their freelancers into whatever you read. Writing is freakishly difficult (because it’s so hard to make what’s subjective objective). Very few people are good at it. Become one of those few, and within a very short time you’ll have more work than you can handle.

Start where you are. You’ve got to work your way up. You’d think that you could write stuff so great that an editor will see it and basically pluck you from obscurity and publish it — but boy, would you be wrong. Everyone along the food chain of publishing is already swamped with people and material appropriate to their level of publishing. You can’t just step into an arena you don’t naturally belong in. Start where it’s not at unreasonable to expect you could get a foothold. Get that foothold — and then take the next step. Try to go around, or try to take a short cut, and you go nowhere.

Don’t sweat rejection. There are an infinite number of perfectly good reasons why anything you write might get rejected that have nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the rejected work. If someone bounces your work back to you, forget it, and move on. It means nothing. Keep submitting. There’s always another outlet you can approach. And it only takes one to publish you.

Get an agent. Trying to publish a book with one of the larger, mainstream book publishers without an agent is like trying to fly without wings. It can’t happen. Publishers depend upon agents to bring them stuff to publish. If you take your writing career seriously, know that you do need an agent. And as is true in every field, agents are aligned along a power hierarchy. About 5% of them sell 90% of the books. You want an agent in that 5% club. And that means you’ve got to have a body of work behind you that makes at least one of them want to participate in your future. (And forget whatever nonsense you’ve ever heard about agents not being worth their 15% of your money. A good agent is worth twice that.)

Believe you’re a genius. Hey, someone’s gotta be. Why not you? And it’s surely not your goal to be a mediocre writer, is it? Believe you’ve got a unique, valuable, indispensable, irreplaceable voice. Because you do. (That said, though, let me cram this in here: Do not think that just because you can talk you can write. They’re not the same thing at all. They’re exact opposite uses of language, actually. Which is actually a whole other piece I’ll be happy to write if anyone wants me to. [Update: I did write that piece: see Talking is to Writing Like Mime is to Opera.])

Write a lot. A lot. For years and years and years and years. And not for yourself, either: For others. For publication. Subject your work to the brutality of the marketplace. Learn to hone it, trim it, shape it, toss it, bend it, maul it, polish it, lose it. Write for so long, and so consistently, for so many different kinds of outlets and editors, that eventually you come to know, without reference to what anyone else thinks, what’s good. That knowledge is your ticket. Costs a lot. Worth a fortune.

And Finally …

My advice to people who think they should be writing more but for some reason aren’t? Quit Trying.

Struggling to write doesn’t mean you lack discipline or inspiration. It means you’re not writing the right thing for you. It means you’re trying to write what you think “writers” write. You need to forget that; trying to be a “writer” guarantees that your authentic creative self won’t only not participate, it’ll shut down the whole effort before you’ve sharpened your pencil.

It’s not about making yourself write. It’s about discovering what, for you, writes itself.

“Writer’s block” is just your heart refusing to go where your brain is insisting it should. It just means that you need to dig deeper, be braver.

Four Critical Points for Writers

Lately I’ve been getting the vibe that a lot of people out there are feeling newly inspired about their writing. Maybe it’s just spring coming on. I dunno. But I do know that the subject of writing and writers is near to my heart (not to mention my everyday work life). So, for what it’s worth, this is for anyone out there lately feeling moved by the writing muse to do your/her/its thing.

1. Be insanely brave. Real writing is no place for people-pleasers and/or congenital followers. Either have the nervy verve to get out ahead of the pack, or lie down so at least the pack doesn’t trip rampaging over you. Say what you know other people are thinking—sometimes before they even know they’re thinking it. Believe that you have to offer a new perspective, a new modality of perception, a whole new paradigm. Don’t be afraid. Think boldly. Write passionately. Keep coming at ‘em.

2. Think of yourself as an artist. Dive so far down inside your soul you reach that crazy dark place where all the rules are broken and real art is born. Stay in that place. Draw your ink from that well. Don’t think of yourself as a writer. Think of yourself as an artist whose principal medium is words.

3. Care about you only. If you write in hopes that others will like what you write (or, heaven forfend, like you for writing it), get yourself another hobby. Writing’s not your game. Write what you write for you, period. If others like it, yay. If not, love them, wave good-bye to them, and get back to your work. Write to find out who you are, what you think, what you feel. Trust that if you’re terribly honest about articulating your personal, richest truths, then what you say will resonate with others, because at that point you’ll be ringing the common bell.

4. Know your mechanics. Passion, art, courting inspiration, riding the tornado of the moment: all perfect and indispensable to the process. But in the end a writer who doesn’t know the grunt mechanics of punctuation, grammar, and syntax is like the professional sniper who’s never fired a gun: something’s gone hinky somewhere. If, for instance, you’re not perfectly sure of how and when to use a semicolon, then don’t write another word until you are. (See my When Punctuation Goes Really, Really Wrong.) That stuff’s not that hard to learn. Don’t undermine your art by failing to master your craft.

In the last three days, these are what someone somewhere typed into a search engine (which then brought them here to my blog):

Bad word bug wiggles [From some kind of deranged entomologist?]

A list of testes to put a boy through to [Yikes! And two--I am so not kidding--people searched this!! Do people not know what "testes" are?? God, I hope not.]

If you love someone you do not want them [From the world's worst love advice columnist?]

Did Mr. Ed have a wife? [From the world's most romantic horse breeder?]

My husband is suddenly ugly at 46 [Yikes. Poor guy. I hate it when that happens.]

Jerk christian way of loving drug yahoo [From the world's worst worst group drug counseling patient?]

What to do if a guy wants to end the tea [From the world's worst bed & breakfast owner?]

How to stop someone from trying to cave [From the world's most desperate psychiatrist?]

Squirrels of the white lawn [From the world's worst writer of horror book titles?]

Picture woody woodpecker bird [From the world's worst dream therapist?]

Sneak into charity parties [From the world's worst party guest?]

Man fit tight pants [Sorry. No joke comes to mind.]

Atheists are wrong [From the world's worst Christian apologist?]

Not reformable [From the world's worst prison warden?]

Where to buy ground squirrels [From the world's worst zoo manager?]

Why ex-husbands jerk [Again: Sorry. No joke comes to my mind.]

Deep pick-up lines [From the world's worst guy to hit on you in a bar?]

Christmas caroling and forks [From the world's worst person to sing Christmas carols to?]

A list of the most devastating things [From the world's worst singer of "My Favorite Things"?]

And finally (and I’m not kidding):

Crazy search terms.

The post you are looking for is included in HA!, a full-sized collection of five years worth of my best humor. If you are a Kindle owner and a member of Amazon Prime, you can borrow HA! for free, with no due dates. (If you don’t own a Kindle, here’s where to get one. To learn more about Amazon Prime—and to get a one-month free trial—go here. ) As per Amazon’s rules, content included in the Kindle Lending Library program cannot be available elsewhere online. Sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you.