Owner vs. Assembler

Once upon a time a cobbler toiled away in his workshop to build a pair of shoes. He owned the process from start to finish, from picking the leather to lacing the grommets.

Then Henry Ford came along and messed everything up. He showed the world that if you divvy up the tasks and train workers to be specialized, you end up with a much more efficient system--a system we know as the assembly line.

Assembly lines are much more productive than cobblers.

And shoes were never made the same way again.

That’s too bad, we might think, for the cobbler was a craftsman, an artist. He owned his work in a way that an assembler could never do.

And you would be right, except for the fact that the cobbler is a lie. He may exist that way in our minds, but the reality is such a cobbler never existed.

You see, cobblers need others too. The cobbler likely did not make the leather he used for his shoes; he bought it from a tannery. He likely did not make the string he used for the laces or the rubber he used for the soles. It’s much more likely that he purchased these raw materials from others. But let’s just say he didn’t buy them; he made everything from the ground up. Well, did he make the ground too?

My point is that we are always and have always been collaborators. And we need not lose the romance of the cobbler simply because we find ourselves as members of a team, members whose own jobs may seem like very small parts of the process as a whole.

We may not feel very much like that old, creative cobbler at all.

But we can. We can own the part of the process that is ours. We can do our piece of the work creatively, as if we are offering a gift to the world. We need not view ourselves as cogs in the machine, for our part in the process, while limited (how could it be otherwise?), is at least potentially beautiful and valuable.

Own your work like a true craftsman today.

Write with Urgency

You've had it happen too, I'm sure. You're reading along when you hear this high-pitched voice in the back of your head that becomes louder and louder, “Booooring!”

One way to reduce boredom among your readers is to write with a sense of urgency. After all, if what you’re saying is not important, why write it?

As I read your words, I want to sense that you really want my attention. I want your writing to be like hands on my shoulders as you look me in the eyes and say what you have to say.

It’s about taking my time seriously. It’s about believing what you say matters.

Are All People Basically Evil?

If you think all people are basically evil, think Wikipedia. Nine years ago Jimmy Wales and some friends wondered: What if we created an online encyclopedia where anybody could contribute content and anybody could access and edit it?

I’m sure a bunch of people around him (I may well have been such a person who) said, “Aw, you’re crazy. People won’t take it seriously. You’ll end up with a massive chaotic jumble of third-rate information.”

Four years ago Nature did a study to determine the error rate of Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britannica. On average, Wikipedia entries contained four errors, and EB contained three. (Did you hear that? On average, Encyclopedia Britannica articles contain THREE errors!)

It turns out, if you rely on the good will of people to create something amazing, they will. They won’t sabotage it or otherwise destroy it, at least not in any significant way. They will, in fact, create something truly beautiful.

This gives me great hope for humanity.

Should I Sign with a Literary Agent?

Authors regularly ask me some version of this question: “Do you think I should get an agent?” Assuming I’m speaking with an author who has a chance at signing with an agent (most agents I work with are reticent to sign first-time authors with no platform), my answer is often “It depends.” That usually does not satisfy, so I go into a longer explanation.

It depends on what you’re looking for, and it depends on what any given agent is committed to giving you.

Let me illustrate it this way. Someone I know is unfortunately going through a divorce right now. He realized fairly soon in the process he needed an attorney, so he retained one. He and his attorney had a few meetings, a few phone conversations, and then it came to custody issues (my friend has two kids). The attorney looked up at him and said, “I’m a divorce attorney. I don’t deal with custody issues. But I’d be happy to give you a referral when you’ve paid my fee.”

What’s true in this case is also true in the case of signing with an agent. It’s important to decide what you want or need ahead of time, so you know what questions to ask before signing.

There are a lot of different possibilities. I want an agent to:

- negotiate deals for me
- give me editorial input
- help me plan out my writing career
- give me advice about what my “brand” is or should be
- help me position and promote my book
- be my friend in this wicked world of publishing
- write or edit my proposals
- do all of the above

Naturally any given agent will be better at some functions than others.

While many authors find agents helpful, others are content to take care of all the above functions themselves. It’s simply a matter of preference and weighing all the pros and cons of either option.

Sally Stuart’s Christian Writers Market Guide is the best book to consult if you want to learn about all the agents in the CBA industry, what genres they represent, etc.

I hope this is helpful!