I'm actually embarrassed by the idea of writing songs about myself - I imagine someone hearing them and thinking This guy is a bit self-obsessed. I don't know if I really have a persona, in that respect. I want to just make the music and hide away.
All my books come out of sermons, and I'm really a pastor who writes rather than a writer who pastors.
I don't have any desire to retire in the sense of not doing anything. As long as the Lord gives me strength I want to keep writing and keep preaching.
How my relationship with my parents influenced my writing, really not at all. My dad was a mechanic, my mom a nurse.
I didn't want to just write stories that were entertaining. Nor did I want to be so scholarly that people couldn't digest it.
I really enjoyed reading the writings of Fredrick Buechner, I havent read anything by him in probably a decade but about 20 years ago I read four or five books of his and it helped me.
I was never really lead by [my parents] and didnt sense any leading from the Lord to go into writing.
Listen carefully to the feedback your readers give you. Dont write unless people want you to write, a lot of people write just because they want to write.
I never told anybody I wanted to write, I kind of fell into it backwards.
I noticed people would read these short articles I was assigned to write for our church bulletin and they would say, Boy, thats good stuff. I got letters from people around the country saying, Thats really good. And I thought, Is it really?
I think that the Holy Spirit works through the pastors of the church. It helps me avoid the trap of writing to the reading market. It helps me stay a pastor first, because they have no agenda; they are not thinking: "This would this be a good book someday." They're thinking: "How this will help Bob and Suzy who are going through a tough marriage? What series can encourage them?" And so I really bow to their preference.
If you get a lot of good feedback from people, thats a sign that you have a strength or gift in writing, if not ... try singing.
My parents, they were good, godly people, but they never said, You need to write.
I think you could say every pastor is writing this book [ Max on Life]; for many it just never gets published.
I think that I speak a lot like I write.
I think you could say every pastor is writing this book, Max on Life; for many it just never gets published. All I did was collect a few of the questions I've been asked through the years, write up a brief response and put them in this publication.
We get a lot of unsolicited manuscripts here. Im not even a publisher, but we get several a week. I dont read them, but I do glance through some of them, and some people dont need to be writing, they have something else.
Through the years, I have always enjoyed anything Chuck Swindoll has written. When I first got into writing Chuck's books really modeled a style of writing that I thought was accessible to people and yet still biblical. I wanted to do that.
I remember enjoying writing those, theres two clues of a gift: you enjoy doing it and people enjoy you doing it.
Every story I write is different. Some are hard. Some aren't. 'Chronicle' was tremendously easy. I have a hard time comparing my process on different things, but I will say this: The more you write, the better you get at it. That's one of the few things that's markedly true.
When I am fishing, I think quite a lot about the fish, but I also think about the book I'm writing.
You cannot write down how people are good; you just know it, and cannot get away from it.
I literally have over a thousand emails in my inbox that need to be returned. I'm sure all of my friends and certain family members are like, 'Oh, look who got nominated for an Emmy and doesn't want to write me an email back!' I need a good few hours to just sit and get on the phone.
I wrote 'The Zombie Survival Guide' because I wanted to read it, and nobody else was writing it. All I've been doing with everything I've written is answering questions that I had.
If I knew anything about what people wanted and was popular, I'd still be writing for 'Saturday Night Live'. I can only write what I want, and hopefully people will like it.
