How John Piper Prepares to Write Books

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - John Piper is back with us

00:00:07.120 | coming off of a six week writing leave.

00:00:09.720 | And Pastor John, you have written a new book

00:00:11.600 | and I wanna talk to you about what you've written soon.

00:00:14.600 | But first, as a writer, I would love to know

00:00:16.820 | what you've learned more generally

00:00:18.320 | about the writing process from this past six weeks.

00:00:21.240 | And maybe give us some lessons that writers can learn from

00:00:24.440 | as you reflect back on this time.

00:00:26.920 | - It's a huge gift to have a writing leave.

00:00:29.760 | Most writers write in between things

00:00:33.080 | and I get this incredible gift of once a year or so

00:00:36.240 | getting six to eight weeks where I can do nothing but write.

00:00:39.880 | And for me, the conceptualization stage

00:00:42.800 | is the absolute hardest.

00:00:44.840 | I tend to quit before I get started.

00:00:47.040 | It's so frustrating.

00:00:49.320 | But once I'm off and running, you know,

00:00:51.240 | it's like pushing a car.

00:00:52.500 | Getting the thing going is hard.

00:00:54.480 | But once you get it rolling,

00:00:55.600 | then you could probably keep it going by yourself.

00:00:57.520 | And you need about six guys to get started with it.

00:01:00.880 | So I stepped back and asked,

00:01:04.440 | what did I learn about that initial process

00:01:07.200 | and then the actual writing?

00:01:09.200 | And I'm assuming here that we're talking

00:01:11.760 | about a nonfiction book, about a topic.

00:01:15.720 | And I'm assuming that people are writing

00:01:18.280 | against the backdrop of ongoing Bible reading

00:01:21.440 | and meditation and prayer and participation

00:01:23.840 | in a local church.

00:01:25.720 | That's assumption.

00:01:26.840 | So here's number one.

00:01:28.120 | Plan a block of time that you can commit to regularly.

00:01:32.840 | For me, that was every day, six days a week

00:01:35.600 | from about nine in the morning

00:01:37.120 | after devotions and exercise and breakfast.

00:01:42.120 | So about nine in the morning to about seven in the evening

00:01:45.520 | with maybe half hour off for lunch.

00:01:47.760 | Number two, decide on a general topic

00:01:52.460 | that you intend to address.

00:01:54.680 | For me, that was a want to write a book about the Bible.

00:01:58.520 | And I thought it was a book about how to get from the Bible,

00:02:03.120 | the treasures of the Bible and how to live those out.

00:02:06.600 | In other words, a how-to book about using the Bible

00:02:10.280 | most effectively in your spiritual walk.

00:02:14.560 | And I proved to be totally wrong about that,

00:02:17.720 | but that should encourage people

00:02:19.080 | that you can set out to write something

00:02:20.920 | and then wind up writing something totally different.

00:02:23.320 | So that's number two.

00:02:24.600 | Pick out the general topic.

00:02:26.440 | Number three, pray earnestly and call upon others to pray.

00:02:31.440 | I have a whole prayer team

00:02:34.240 | that I keep posted on what I'm doing.

00:02:37.120 | Pray and have others pray for you.

00:02:40.240 | Pray daily, pray hourly over your work

00:02:43.680 | and ask God for motivation.

00:02:45.920 | Ask him for perseverance and for insight and creativity

00:02:50.000 | and ask him for competence and truthfulness

00:02:54.480 | and faithfulness to the scriptures.

00:02:56.920 | Ask him for a touch from God

00:03:00.920 | that will make the book a great honor to Christ

00:03:04.800 | and good for the church

00:03:06.660 | and an advancement to the global mission

00:03:09.760 | of the people of God.

00:03:10.600 | That's the way I pray about what I write.

00:03:14.000 | Number four, read over what you have already written

00:03:19.880 | about the topic.

00:03:22.160 | So for me, that was like 30 sermons

00:03:25.800 | that I'd written about this topic over the years,

00:03:28.760 | and I did not want to take the time to do that,

00:03:31.120 | and I didn't.

00:03:31.940 | I skimmed them and looked at their themes

00:03:34.600 | 'cause I knew if I took the time to read all of those,

00:03:37.320 | I would just get so bogged down.

00:03:40.040 | And here, I know I'm assuming

00:03:42.680 | that people have written something.

00:03:45.080 | And why would I assume that?

00:03:46.500 | Well, I'm assuming that if there's a topic

00:03:49.440 | on which you intend to write a book,

00:03:52.000 | you've thought about it.

00:03:53.080 | And if you're a writer,

00:03:54.880 | thinking about it means you've written down something.

00:03:57.760 | Might be in a journal, a blog, an essay, a sermon,

00:04:01.720 | a lesson, a notebook, somewhere you've written about this

00:04:04.920 | or you shouldn't be intending to write a book about it.

00:04:07.880 | Not for a long time yet.

00:04:09.760 | So dig all that stuff up,

00:04:11.640 | pull it out of your journals and wherever it is

00:04:13.600 | and then pull it all together and read over it.

00:04:16.040 | That's number four.

00:04:16.920 | Number five, as you read that stuff,

00:04:20.240 | make an ideal list of all sorts of issues

00:04:24.800 | that could be addressed in the book.

00:04:26.800 | You might be writing this on your computer,

00:04:28.600 | you might be by hand.

00:04:29.840 | I'll say more about that in just a minute.

00:04:33.320 | This will be a completely random list at first.

00:04:37.360 | It just be a mess on your piece of paper.

00:04:40.560 | When you've read all your material,

00:04:42.600 | make a brainstorm about what you've got there

00:04:44.860 | and make that list as long as you can.

00:04:46.840 | In other words, when you're done reading,

00:04:48.360 | keep making ideas and putting them down.

00:04:51.040 | So now you've got a page or several pages

00:04:53.320 | of just jumble of ideas that this book might contain.

00:04:57.680 | Number six, step back and look at that ideal list

00:05:02.680 | and use a pencil to draw lines.

00:05:06.320 | Now here, if you put that on a computer,

00:05:08.120 | if you made that list on a computer, print it out.

00:05:10.700 | I don't know any way to do what I'm talking about here

00:05:13.060 | on the computer.

00:05:14.200 | I don't think the technology's there to do this.

00:05:17.320 | Print it out or two or three,

00:05:19.240 | lay them all out in front of you,

00:05:21.340 | tape them together if you have to,

00:05:22.800 | if you got more than one sheet

00:05:24.880 | and start drawing lines between them.

00:05:28.120 | Circle them and block them and look for patterns

00:05:31.800 | on that jumbled sheet of ideas

00:05:34.560 | until you see things kind of falling together

00:05:38.200 | and keep scribbling down new ideas as you do this

00:05:42.340 | because every time you start to make a connection,

00:05:45.040 | another question, another idea is gonna come to your mind.

00:05:48.420 | Number seven, from all that confusing, random, messy,

00:05:53.420 | big taped together piece of paper

00:05:57.660 | that seemed to have no coherence whatsoever

00:06:00.740 | except a few jumbled connections

00:06:02.760 | that you've circled and drawn arrows to,

00:06:06.760 | this is the real discouraging, paralyzing point

00:06:09.620 | where you look at it and say, "Good night.

00:06:11.840 | "How will that ever become a book?

00:06:13.340 | "How can I ever bring sense out of that

00:06:15.600 | "or turn that into a book?"

00:06:17.120 | I mean, it really keeps a lot of people

00:06:19.440 | from moving forward.

00:06:21.880 | So here, at this point, I'm saying,

00:06:24.040 | take a few minutes and jot down

00:06:27.120 | one of the ideas from that sheet

00:06:31.160 | that you think you could start writing about.

00:06:33.480 | Doesn't matter whether it become a chapter

00:06:34.820 | or whatever, just something you could start writing about.

00:06:37.940 | Put that at the top of a piece of paper,

00:06:39.960 | that idea, that sentence, and then jot down under it,

00:06:43.360 | don't take too long doing this,

00:06:44.440 | 15 minutes of ideas that you might say about that.

00:06:49.440 | And that's, you haven't even begun to write yet.

00:06:52.840 | But I'm not talking about weeks of doing this.

00:06:54.800 | I'm talking about that would take maybe a day or two,

00:06:57.080 | depending on how much of your stuff that you have to read.

00:07:00.960 | And this is the point that's so frustrating

00:07:03.440 | 'cause everything's a jumble.

00:07:05.560 | And so that's everything up till writing.

00:07:08.680 | I think I'll stop here and maybe continue next time on,

00:07:12.080 | okay, now the writing.

00:07:14.040 | What lessons did you learn about the actual writing?

00:07:17.320 | - Excellent, that sounds good.

00:07:18.360 | Let's do that.

00:07:19.200 | But one immediate takeaway for someone

00:07:20.560 | who wants to write a book,

00:07:22.200 | but for them it seems like a far off dream at this point,

00:07:24.880 | they should just be journaling right now, right?

00:07:27.080 | - Right, if a person doesn't have the book

00:07:29.880 | on their agenda for tomorrow, but five years out,

00:07:32.680 | because they're dreaming of something

00:07:34.640 | that's just utterly fascinated them,

00:07:37.320 | then yes, they should be thinking,

00:07:41.460 | and that means writing now.

00:07:44.000 | So a journal is one possibility,

00:07:46.360 | or some kind of idea, notebook.

00:07:49.020 | In my early days as a pastor, I kept two,

00:07:52.440 | I only made two of these and then I stopped,

00:07:54.420 | but they were really fruitful.

00:07:56.320 | I call them the sermon garden.

00:07:58.520 | I still have those, they're ring binders,

00:08:00.240 | about 50, 60 pages each,

00:08:02.240 | where I just gave idea after idea after idea

00:08:04.660 | that came to me in devotions and elsewhere.

00:08:06.560 | So yes, a book comes into being not out of nowhere,

00:08:10.760 | it grows in the garden of thinking and ideas.

00:08:15.080 | - Wonderful, thank you Pastor John.

00:08:16.600 | And if you are listening to this and you're a writer,

00:08:18.800 | or you wonder if maybe God has called you

00:08:20.620 | to become a writer in the future,

00:08:22.040 | we have a very interesting episode

00:08:24.440 | from early in our episodes, episode number three in fact,

00:08:28.640 | titled "How Important is a Christian Writer's Influence?"

00:08:32.800 | You can find that in the podcast archive.

00:08:35.080 | It's episode number three,

00:08:36.640 | "How Important is a Christian Writer's Influence?"

00:08:40.560 | So we have talked about the research phase,

00:08:42.680 | so what has Pastor John recently learned

00:08:44.680 | about the writing process?

00:08:46.020 | I'll ask him this tomorrow.

00:08:47.700 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:08:48.960 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:08:51.600 | (silence)

00:08:53.760 | (silence)

00:08:55.920 | (silence)

00:08:58.080 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

How John Piper Prepares to Write Books

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