Finding the courage to create
Jordan Raynor sits down with Andy Le Peau, a lifelong editor and author of Write Better, to talk about how the gospel gives us the courage to create and stop creating, the wisdom of taking all your vacation at the same time, and how "the idol of individualism” can impact our work.
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[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey there, welcome to The Call to Mastery, I’m Jordan Raynor.
Hey, I hope you guys had a terrific resurrection Sunday, this past Easter. If Easter wasn’t enough inspiration for you to go and create new things in light of who you are in Christ, I hope this episode will provide you with some motivation to do so. That’s right, today, we’re talking about how the gospel and the resurrection of Christ gives us the courage to create with Andy Le Peau, the legendary editor who spent 40 years as an editor and publisher InterVarsity Press, one of the top Christian publishing houses. Andy has edited some of my all-time favorite authors, including Andy Crouch and N.T. Wright who both of them you’ve heard me talk about numerous times on The Call to Mastery.
Andy’s also successful author in his own right, whose books have sold more than 750,000 copies. Trust me, that is a mindboggling number of books. Andy recently published a book called Write Better: A Lifelong Editor on Craft, Art and Spirituality, which was chosen by Christianity Today as the best book of 2020 in the culture and arts category so Andy and I recently sat down, we talked about this new book, we talked about how the gospel gives us the courage to create and to stop creating. We also talked about the wisdom of taking all of your vacation at the same time.
Andy talked about how for years, decades, he would take three, four weeks of vacation all in one big chunk. We also talked about the idol of individualism and the impact that that can have on our work, that might have been my favorite part of this conversation.
So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with literary legend, Andy Le Peau.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:59.4] JR: All right, Andy Le Peau, thank you so much for joining me. Andy, you’ve been in publishing for more than 40 years now. I’m really curious how you started in this industry, going back 40 years. How did you break into this space, what did that look like 40 years ago?
[0:02:13.7] ALP: Well, it started in grade school. I mean, looking back on it, it looks obvious, at the time, I had no clue you know? Because you know, when you're young, you’re interested in all kinds of things but yeah, I mean, even in grade school when I had a report to do for history or whatever. I would make a title page, I’d have a table of content, I would divide the report up into one page chapters and have a heading for each one and so I just thought that was kind of cool to do but I was just naturally making books.
Even at that age and then in high school, early in high school, a friend and I actually self-published a humor book and this was even before self-publishing was a thing.
[0:02:57.4] JR: Yeah, sure.
[0:02:57.5] ALP: We just went to a local printer and said hey, would you print this up for us and he did and so we just sold 500 copies for a buck each and that was a lot of fun.
[0:03:07.2] JR: That’s pretty impressive when you’re 16. What did you go to school for? English, journalism?
[0:03:11.6] ALP: I was a mathematics major.
[0:03:13.6] JR: Interesting, okay. Was your first job out of school in the publishing industry?
[0:03:19.3] ALP: It was actually with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on the campus side, in the campus division. I was a campus minister, campus staff member for a couple of years in Saint Louis and then I heard about an opening in the editorial department, that they had at InterVarsity Press which is a division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship so I applied to that. I was hired.
[0:03:42.4] JR: That was that, 40 years later, here we are, right?
[0:03:45.3] ALP: Yeah, the rest is history as you say, yeah. I mean, I’ve spent my entire career with one organization, you know? Which is, it never happens.
[0:03:52.3] JR: It’s unfathomable. I mean, especially today, but even y our generation, that is quite rare. In the book, in Write Better, you talk about kind of coming to this realization of calling after the fact, right? You kind of looked at it in retrospect, it’s oh yeah, that’s my thing. Can you explain what you mean by this because I think this is a common field, of being able to see the common thread afterwards. Talk about how that happened for you.
[0:04:18.9] ALP: Right, well, a lot of common advice that you get and I’ve given it myself to other people is when they say, "What should I do?" Well Follow your passion. The problem is, especially when you’re in your teens and 20s. Sometimes even in your 30s, you don’t know what your passion is, you just don’t.
The only option is to – I think, is to just experiment, try a lot of things and see what you like, see what you don’t like. Yeah, as I said, I had a lot of interests when I was young. I still have a variety of interests. But I found that you know, and somebody in college, this was really a key conversation, a friend in college. I don’t remember the context or how it came up but she turned to me and she said, "You ought to going into publishing? The penny dropped for me right then, I said to myself, "Of course," how could I not have seen it?
[0:05:09.4] JR: Right.
[0:05:10.0] ALP: But the thing is, we’re all too close to ourselves, we’re all too close. We can’t see it. We need other people in our lives who can reflect back to us, who can tell us what they are seeing and who can help us find direction in that way.
[0:05:22.6] JR: I couldn’t agree more and I actually talk about this a lot in my book that was just released, in Master of One. Of the value of asking others what you’re gifted at and letting others point the way to the work that we might be most gifted at because we don’t know, are passion. Follow your gifts, follow the things that other people are saying, "Hey, you’re good at this, you're really interested in this," and experiment widely, I think that’s terrific advice.
In the book, you talk about this conversation you have with your daughter when you are clearly articulated, how you described your calling. Can you describe that in you know, one or two sentences here?
[0:05:58.8] ALP: Yeah, sure. My daughter, Susan, who was in college at the time, she just again, this is out of context, out of the blue said, "Dad, what’s your calling in life?" I was shocked because I don’t think I’d ever really articulated it. I stumbled around a little bit and then I said, "Well, I think it’s to glorify god through words, whether written or spoken."
She looked at me and kind of nodded her head knowingly and she said, "I thought so." Which you know, that’s interesting because I didn’t know so but she did.
[0:06:32.9] JR: That’s so succinct too, right? You have a tremendous amount of experience as an editor, right? You also have a tremendous amount of experience as a writer yourself, we’ve got a lot of writers and aspiring authors who listen to this podcast. I want to spend the bulk of our time talking about all right, how do we become masterful at that craft, which coincidentally is what your book is all about. I read in your bio that your books that you’ve authored, along with your wife, have sold more than 750,000 copies, is that right?
[0:07:04.1] ALP: Yeah, we’ve done a number of books together and cumulatively yeah, they’ve added up to that much.
[0:07:09.9] JR: For those of you that don’t know, that’s a mind boggling number. That is a phenomenal number of books and I’m assuming a lot of those have sold over really long period of time. I’m assuming some of those had a really long tail to them. What’s the secret to creating products that sell for years and years? What’s the secret to perennial sellers?
[0:07:31.4] ALP: Yeah, if I knew that, I would be a lot wealthier than I am. There is no one formula. You can try to follow the formula and one time it will work and another time it won’t. That’s just publishing is a funny business and that’s part of the humor of it. Just when you think you know what you’re doing, it will show you that you really don’t.
I think obviously, listening is a theme that I have in the book and Write Better. Listening in all kinds of ways and listening to what’s going on in the lives of other people. Issues that are coming across their lives, all of that, paying attention to what’s going on with other folks, friends or random people that you meet.
Being in touch with that. Listening to God, listening to the word of God, letting that be a source for you. Listening to other people when they have suggestions to make about your own life or your writing. Being willing to take criticism and not take it personally. Listening, to me, is critical and it’s a discipline that I think nurtures the virtue of humility. You can’t just say I’m going to be humble, you know? That’s my goal. But I think you can say I’m going to listen and you can try to develop that as a habit, as a spiritual listening in all dimensions and phases of your life.
[0:08:53.9] JR: No, I think that’s really good advice and I mean listen, you have a lot more experience than I do with creating perennial sellers. But if I were to have to answer the question, I think I’d answer it similarly, right? Which is write the book you think your audience needs. Listen to what your audience is saying, listen to what your audience are struggling with.
Now, it’s got to be something that you really want to write, right? I’ve seen a lot of authors sometimes write the book that they really want to write, without taking it into account what their audience needs and that’s usually not a recipe for a book that sells really well and that makes the author and the publisher really happy, would you agree with that?
[0:09:32.6] ALP: Well, there’s a balance there because if you write what you think other people want to hear or what they need, it can come off as pandering. People see right through that. They know that this is not really something that comes from deep within somebody. Yes, it has to be a passion but in the sense of any topic can be of interest, any topic can be of help. If you care about it. But you’ve got to write it in a way that relates to your audience so you can’t just shoot way over their head or try to be too simplistic, on the other side. You’ve got to pay attention to who it is that you’re writing for. Even if the topic may or may not be obviously of interest.
[0:10:16.9] JR: Yeah, I think it’s interesting, I got a new editor recently and she’s like, "Hey, what do you see yourself writing about for the next 10 years?" My response was, "I’m not exactly – I’m less clear on what the topics will be but I’m very clear on who the audience is," right? I know who I want to write for, right? I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that for – I think it’s one of the few things I’ve gotten right in my career as a writer is like, focusing really intensely on the who, which are the people listening to this show, Christians who very much want to do extraordinary work for the glory of God and the good of others.
Andy, I’m sure you hear this a lot, right? People who come to you and are like, "Hey, Andy. I want to write a book. They don’t have a topic, right? But they have this deep longing which I think is very human and I want to talk about the spiritual element of that later in the conversation. But just this desire like I want to write a book, don’t have a topic, what advice do you give to people like that, to say I want to write a book, I’m not sure what about. What’s a practical framework for unearthing a topic? Or do you tell them, "Come back to me when you have an idea"?
[0:11:21.8] ALP: That usually helps, yes. If you’ve got an idea, that’s a kind of a minimum base-level requirement. I’d say work at the craft, don’t start by saying I’m going to write a book if you’re never written anything before. It’s like saying, "Hey, I’m going to run a marathon next weekend and I haven’t trained, haven’t done anything but I’m going to you know, sounds like fun, let’s do it."
It’s not going to happen, you know, you got to start with, "Okay, I’m going to run a hundred yards today, okay? And then I’m going to run 200 yards tomorrow and 300 yards the next day." And you build it up over time and then, "Hey, I’m going to do some weights on the side, you know, maybe every third day I’m going to do weights and I’m going to run the other two."
You work at it and you work at your craft and I say, start small, write just a paragraph a day, a page a day, 300 words a day, whatever. A thousand words a day, pick a goal and then just write that and try to do some writing every day.
[0:12:17.2] JR: I think people under appreciate the marathon that is writing a book. It is a massive endeavor. It looks romantic, it looks beautiful and it is, right? It’s also grueling, emotionally, spiritually. Once you’ve got the concept though, I’ve got an idea for a book, you point out that one of the most common mistakes you see aspiring writers make is this feeling that a book has got to be about everything, right?
You say in your book, a book about everything is really a book about nothing, which I couldn’t agree more. How do you coach authors to hone in on the core message of what it is they’re writing?
[0:12:52.3] ALP: Well, sometimes it just takes a lot of talking. You talk back and forth with people and then because I’m alert to this stuff, when I hear to them say something then it’s like, that’s the book, right there, that one sentence, that’s the book. You know, parenting. A lot of people want to write about parenting, they want to write about marriage.
Problem is, there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of books on marriage, broadly speaking, that try to cover the water front of marriage and there’s too much competition and it’s not going to work. You got to focus in and pick one slice of that big broad topic that’s everything and get down to just one little piece of it which you may say is – which may feel too small or insignificant. But it’s what you know.
[0:13:38.0] JR: Give an example, on the parenting and marriage topic, give an example of what a one sentence slice might look like. Maybe for a book that you’ve edited.
[0:13:47.7] ALP: You know, maybe like how to have a great family vacation. That could be a book. It could be a magazine article, it might not be big enough for a book and that’s okay but it might be a magazine article and then maybe it could become a book, you know? You try that first and see what happens. But that’s an example of a little slice, not the whole of marriage or the whole of family life.
[0:14:08.8] JR: Yeah, in Write Better, you make the point that originality isn’t really a thing in a writing. At least I think that’s the point you’re trying to make, we’re always building upon the work of others. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[0:14:22.5] ALP: Yeah, I think people have this kind of mystical idea of what’s creativity or what does it mean to come up with a new idea and that is kind of magical and suddenly appears and now you’ve got something that’s brand new, that no one has ever thought of before. I hesitate to say always but because that’s dangerous to say always or never about anything.
I have yet to really come across something that was entirely original. What happens is, creativity is actually the combination of two things that already exist that haven’t been combined in quite that way before. Or maybe, never before. You know, when Mr. Reese decided that he wanted to combine chocolate and peanut butter, that was new.
Nobody had done that before, at least in the way he'd done it and so he you know, created this bestselling candy bar. And then somebody else said, well, "Maybe we could combine chocolate and peanut butter ice cream," you know? Now that’s different, it’s not quite as creative, it’s the first time chocolate and peanut butter were combined but it’s still creative. Because in a new mode. And then somebody comes along and says, maybe we could have a chocolate peanut butter stout, what do you think about that? You know? Would that work? Sometimes you know, it works, sometimes it doesn’t, I’ve had some of each but it’s a creative idea to do something like that.
The idea in creativity for me, the key, if you want to be creative is, you’ve got to have a whole bunch of stuff swimming in your head. You got to be exposed to all kinds of experiences, all kinds of knowledge, all kinds of languages, situations, people. And the more you’ve got to draw on, the more possibility that there are going to be two things that will come together in your head that haven’t come together in anybody else’s head before and that’s creativity.
[0:16:10.7] JR: I think Steve Jobs, I’m not going to get the quote exactly right but Steve Jobs once defined creativity as connecting ideas, right? I think that’s what you’re saying. Disconnected things, bringing them together in a new way, it’s what we do as human beings and modeling the creator God, right? God gave us these raw materials in the world and called us to rearrange them in different ways to bring about new things. Do you know Scott Kaufman by the way?
[0:16:33.1] ALP: No.
[0:16:33.1] JR: Former editor for Tim Keller and Tim’s books. I sat down, I copy of Scott once, right before my book Called to Create was being released. Which is really a manifesto for Christian culture creators and entrepreneurs and Scott was like, "I’m really excited about this book, what’s new about it?"
[0:16:48.4] JR: I was like, "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I am saying, what Tim said in Every Good Endeavour good endeavor. I’m saying what Andy Crouch said in Culture Making, a book that I know you helped edit. I’m saying the exact same thing, I was saying it in different ways, right? I’m saying it through a different lens and different experiences and that is bringing something new into the world. But I think there’s a lot — we can add value by saying things from a different perspective in a different way, in a different tone and in a different voice.
A lot of wisdom of what you just said. In my newest book, Master of One, I talk about this principle of rapid feedback and how crucial that is to mastering any vocation. I find that to be particularly true in writing. So I’m really curious, what does it look like practically for you to get feedback on your writing? In the writer’s chair, not the editor’s chair, how do you go about getting feedback on what you’re writing, how frequently do you do it, what does that look like for you?
[0:17:43.7] ALP: Well, for me, it involves getting professional friends, not just friends but professional friends to be willing to chime in and tell me what they think. Sometimes I will – when I was writing the book Write Better. Sometimes I would just send a one chapter, to a particular friend who I knew had expertise in that area and said, “Tell me what you think. Give me some input here.”
And we got a strong enough relationship that I know they are going to be honest with me. They are not going to soft pedal what they have to say. For others, I wanted for some people to see the whole book. So I would wait until that was basically drafted and then they were very generous in the time that they gave me and gave me a lot of wonderful feedback.
And I ended up rewriting and rearranging a whole bunch of stuff in the book based on the input I got from people because I wanted to take their input seriously and they were right, 90% of the time. So why not do what they say? So yeah and then of course the publisher have their own review process and they got anonymous reviews, which are also helpful because then there is not a relational factor that’s going to make the thing weird and people can just say what they think and they don’t have to have a relational repercussion potentially messing things up.
[0:19:00.0] JR: I find one of the hardest things about getting constructive feedback, especially from people you know is really having a state of the relationship to where they feel comfortable really critiquing the work. And I find like asking the right questions even some more specific questions is really helpful to get a feedback.
Do you have some questions you really like to ask when seeking out feedback on your work, on your writing?
[0:19:22.9] ALP: Well, I like to ask is anything missing that maybe should be covered? Are there any weaknesses in the argument that you see? You know, just have I gotten anything wrong here? And is there anything that could be cut out? Which is a very painful question to ask because sometimes they say, “Yes, you could cut this out.” And you don’t want to do that. That’s hard for any writer. And so those are a few of the questions that I find helpful.
[0:19:49.0] JR: I like the question of cutting out. I don’t think to do that, I don’t think to ask that question but that’s a good question like what is superfluous? What is not essential? In a way. That’s good.
What are the routines and habits that have made the biggest impact on your productivity and your effectiveness as a writer and editor over these 40 years? What are the habits that you look back and be like, “Yeah, I’m glad I did every single day for 30 years, 20 years," whatever it is?
[0:20:14.1] ALP: Yeah, well one thing I did before I retired when I was in a “40 hour a week job," was I would take my vacation in a block as much as I could. I would take three or four weeks at a time and just get away. We had a lake that we would go off to in Michigan for most of those times or we would go to Colorado. But usually I was not just traveling around, which can be exhausting. We would just sit or just stay I should say, stay in one location for a week or two or three at a time.
And I would tell my staff. I would say, "Do not contact me unless the earth is about to crash into the sun, then you could give me a call and let me know –"
[0:21:01.5] JR: Give me a heads up.
[0:21:03.3] ALP: Yeah, "Give me a heads up on that but otherwise, you guys are competent, you’re well trained. You got years of experience, you know what you are doing just make your best decision. I don’t want to know about it if at all possible." So it gave me – I heard somebody say once that you need a week to decompress, a week to relax and then a week to prepare to re-enter. So his recommendation was three weeks when you are on a high pressure job and I found that over the years that allowed me to really go at high speed the other 11 months of the year.
[0:21:39.8] JR: I love that advice. I have been hearing that from a few people recently. John Mark Comer who just wrote a book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry talks a lot about this, right? Like extended Sabbaths, three, four week periods of rest. So I got to try that out I don’t know how that would work with little kids but maybe over the summer, take a few weeks off.
[0:21:58.0] ALP: Yeah, we did it with little kids you know. So when our kids were young and again we were by a lake and so they could just go jump in the water anytime they wanted and have a blast and we could just see them from the porch and so we didn’t have to run somewhere to supervise them and that did work pretty well.
[0:22:14.4] JR: Yeah, I love that. I got to try that. So I really loved the third part of your book in particular, the spirituality of writing. I want to park there for a little bit. So can you talk about how the Christian faith gives us the courage to create, how the gospel specifically maybe gives us the courage to create, which you talk about in the book?
[0:22:36.1] ALP: Yeah, I think writing is a courageous act. I think it is something that takes some strength and some fortitude. Because you can get criticism on the other end or you could just face absolutely no response whatsoever, which could be worse, potentially. It’s like nobody even cared enough to criticize me, you know? Nobody read the thing and that could be a fearful prospect. So there is a lot of potential for fear I think in writing of any kind.
But you know I think knowing that we are in Christ is critical and that my identity is not tied to what I write. What I write is not who I am. It is a reflection or it is a product of who God has made me and the experiences that I have accumulated over the years. But it is not my identity and I think that we can helpfully separate ourselves from the results of what we do, separate ourselves from our writing. And so that we could look at it objectively and know that whether it succeeds or whether it fails those results are in God’s hands.
Our job is to be faithful, our job is not to succeed. Our job is to be faithful to what the Lord has given us in terms of experiences and the work that we have done in the past and perhaps some innate abilities but it’s knowing that and being grounded in that, so that criticism is not the issue. It is, “Am I being faithful to the gifts that I have been given to me?”
[0:24:09.9] JR: Amen, that is very well said. You also talked about the courage to stop creating and the ability to know when to walk away, when to stop writing the thing, when to rest. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[0:24:21.0] ALP: Right, so the courage to stop in the sense of I am not going to keep fusing with it indefinitely. I am actually going to send it out into the world. I am going to stop working on it and let someone else look at it, let other people read it and review it and again, that is a step that takes courage to do that because we can have results of failure or we can have results of people criticizing. But if we never do then we really aren’t fulfilling the role that God may be giving us as a writer.
[0:24:51.2] JR: Yeah it is one of the great advantages I think of traditional publishing over self-publishing, is traditional publishers give you a deadline, like you have to ship the thing, right? You have to say, “I’m done. I’ve got to send this in.” Whereas if it’s self-publishing you could be writing a book for 13 years. So you mentioned this phrase, I think it was in the chapter. I can’t recall I think it was in the chapter about self-publishing versus traditional publishing.
You mentioned this phrase 'the idol of individualism', which I found very interesting. So what do you mean by this phrase and a follow up question is what do Christians need to be mindful of to that end?
[0:25:29.2] ALP: I don’t think we appreciate this especially in North America, European and western society that we are as individualistic as we are that we think that it is all about us that every decision we make should be about us or may buy us individually and that there is a culture, there is a community, I should say, there is a community of people that are around us that we need to involve and it is not always about me. It is not always about me.
Sometimes it’s about the family, sometimes it’s about the church community, sometimes it is about my neighborhood and the question is, "How can I contribute to that? Rather than what is the right thing for me as an individual.
[0:26:07.7] JR: You know I have been thinking about this concept in a context of calling and vocation, right? This ever popular topic in the church especially amongst millennials. I think we forget that we are a part of a general call sometimes, that God has called his church to glorify him and to love neighbor as self, we all share that general call. And I think if we stop obsessing over the specific things that we are doing towards that maybe we can be more effective, right?
Like coming to the place where you realize that, "I can do a lot of different things vocationally that will glorify God and love neighbor as self." I think that gives you great freedom to just pick a lane and focus on getting really great at it, in service of that broad call. I think a lot of people roam around the world thinking that there is one magical thing buried in the earth that God has created and they do when in reality, he’s given us lots of gifs and lots of interest and lots of opportunity. It is our job to choose something at some point, commit to something as some point and get really great at it. Would you agree or disagree with that? Have a different take on it?
[0:27:08.0] ALP: No I agree. I think that is well said that we forget that yeah, we are called as a community and part of our role was to contribute to that, to participate in that, to recognize what it is and then make a difference in that and so sometimes yeah, for the sake of the group, my particular individuality takes second place and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact that can be a really good thing.
[0:27:31.2] JR: Yeah that is freeing in a lot of ways, right?
[0:27:33.8] ALP: Absolutely.
[0:27:34.3] JR: We mentioned this a few minutes ago, I feel like everybody wants to write a book, I know not everybody wants to write a book. But as a writer I come in contact with a lot of people who want to write a book. What do you think is the core of that? Is there a spiritual element to this deep seemingly never ending human desire to create things, in particular books that have the potential to last beyond us? Is that the draw, this idea that we can leave something behind that is physical but will outlive us? Have you thought about that at all?
[0:28:01.2] ALP: I think that’s part of it. I think part of it too is there is a very deep desire to be known. I think we all want to be known hopefully known and loved rather than known and rejected but that I think is really deep within us to have somebody really, really know who I am. Yes, even flaws as well as strengths and still appreciate it, still accept me and be willing to not say those flaws aren’t flaws, not pretend because that’s not helpful but somebody who can really appreciate and welcome me even as I am.
So I think that’s part of it and as I say in Write Better, somewhat tongue and cheek, all writing is autobiographical. Everything we write is about ourselves in one way or another. Even if we are writing a history of somebody else or a biography of somebody else, it is actually part of it is our journey to learn about that other person and so it does involve us and includes us and who we are. So everything we write, there is some self-revelation that’s going on. And I think there is nothing wrong with that. I think God has built that into us at a very deep and important level.
[0:29:21.9] JR: Yeah, he has designed us to be relational. He’s designed us for relationship, for intimacy, to be known and as Christians, obviously, we believe that that can only ultimately be satisfied in Christ but there is still this deep longing for intimacy with other human beings and I think books are an interesting way to express that. I’ve been thinking a little bit, maybe this is a topic for another book, another day, about our desire to make physical things in the world in our increasingly digital age.
I think it speaks to this — and not to get too theological but I think it speaks to some desire for the new earth, the new heavens, the new earth. This desire, this deep seated feeling that we were meant to produce physical things that can last forever. The things that we create had the potential to live on as N.T. Wright says and surprised by hope, right? In the new heavens and the new earth. I know you have ended it N.T. Wright. So maybe we should have him on to talk about that and unpack those ideas.
All right Andy, I ask everyone who comes to The Call to Mastery three questions to wrap up. I am really interested to hear your take on this first one, which books do you recommend or gift the most to others? And I’m going to ask you for at least one that you’ve edited and one that you haven’t.
[0:30:30.6] ALP: Oh okay. Well one that I haven’t edited is which I mentioned in Write Better all the time is William Zinsser’s book on Write Better, which is just a fabulous book and I recommend that book to people all the time. It really is a great, great place to start as a writer. Yeah, I tell people read Zinsser and then do what he says, it is that simple. Read him and do what he says. A book that I have edited that I recommend to people a lot, well you mentioned Andy Crouch and his books, Playing God.
I make reference to that all the time. It is a substantive book and so it will be a challenging read for some people but that’s okay. You know I think he’s just got some very profound things to say there about idolatry and justice and what it means to be made in the image of God. Those things are just so important and so basic to our world and our life and the challenges that we are facing in a technological — increasingly hyper-technological world, yeah so.
[0:31:31.5] JR: Yeah, I recommend a lot of Crouch across the board, Playing God, Strong and Weak. Strong and Weak is one of my all-time favorite, Culture Making, it is a great, great, great book. What one person would you most like to hear talk about the intersection of their faith and their work, maybe on this podcast?
[0:31:46.9] ALP: I’ve got a friend who’s name is Steve Smith and he is the CEO, chairman of the board of a Fortune 500 company and I so admire him. He has an amazing take on what it means to be a Christian in a capitalist world. We may criticize capitalism or we may love it or we may have mixed feelings about it but he, I think, really has a really good sense of how do you permeate Christian values and Christian life not in an explicit way, obviously because it is not a Christian company in that sense. But how do you act and be a Christian in that kind of environment and he’s just very good.
[0:32:29.4] JR: Yeah, Steve is terrific. I have admired him from afar for a while. He’d be great. All right, last question, what one piece of advice would you leave somebody listening to this podcast about — somebody whose sitting there, they love Jesus, they’re passionately following after Christ. But they are also passionately trying to do their most masterful work maybe even as a writer. What advice would you leave that person?
[0:32:50.4] ALP: Well, whether you are a writer or whether you’re in sales or whether you are an accountant or whatever it might be, an entrepreneur of some kind, I think the one piece of advice I’d give is don’t compare. Don’t compare yourself to other people but that way lies the path to despair I think because there is always going to be something better. There is always going to be somebody better than we are.
What we should do is compare ourselves to ourselves. Am I getting better? Am I improving? Am I continuing to work at my craft? Am I continuing to be better at how I relate to people or how I design buildings or whatever? Am I getting better? Am I always learning? Am I growing? Am I working hard to improve? So that would be my piece of advice for someone who wants to master their craft or their field, don’t compare yourself to other people, just compare yourself to yourself.
[0:33:47.5] JR: That is one of my favorite answers we’ve heard to that question thus far, I love it. Hey Andy, I just want to commend you for writing such a terrific book in Write Better. Thank you for your commitment to The Call to Mastery in pursuing world-class excellence in your craft and serving your authors and your readers really, really well to the ministry of excellence. Your work matters, all of our work matters and I just thank you for doing it really well.
Hey guys, if you want to learn more from Andy, I highly recommend the book, Write Better: A Lifelong Editor on Craft, Art and Spirituality and Andy you blog too, pretty proficiently, right? Are you going to keep the blog up?
[0:34:20.5] ALP: I am. I have been blogging at Andy Unedited for 12, 15 years now and I keep putting something up about every week. So yeah, if people want to find me at Andy Unedited, just type that into your search window and hit enter you’ll find it right there.
[0:34:34.8] JR: I love it. Andy thanks so much for being with us today.
[0:34:37.4] ALP: Jordan, it’s been great.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:34:39.3] JR: What a great time I had with Andy. Hey, thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Call to Mastery. If you are enjoying the show, do me a favor. Subscribe to the show, so you never miss another episode in the future and if you are already subscribed, please go take 30 seconds and review the podcast.
As you guys go out this week and do your work, I pray that the words of encouragement from Andy and the show will inspire you to lean more ambitiously in the work that God has given you to doing the things that he has called you to create for his glory and the good of others.
Thanks for listening, talk to you guys next week.
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