4 Things You Must Do if You Want to Write a Book

Ever since my book came out people have been asking me for advice. There’s a lot of little things I learned along the way but they’re probably not going to be effective for everyone. It’s just what worked for me.

There are, however, 4 nonnegotiable things you must do if you want to write a book. In my mind, these are universal. No exception.

You want to write a book? Here’s what you have to do.

1. Read

You need to have time to read a lot. You can’t be a writer without being a reader. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write. Read a wide variety of books. Don’t just read one author or one genre or you’ll end up sounding just like them. Spend time reading outside your comfort zone. Who knows what you can learn from books outside thee field you’re hoping to write in.

You know the old sayings. Leaders are readers. Writers are readers. Breeders are readers. Feeders are eaters.

Just go read.

2. Write Everyday

EVERYDAY. 1000 words a day. At least. If not, you’ll get rusty. You’ll lose your groove, your rhythm. You’ve got to build that muscle by working out every day.

3. Set Deadlines

Real deadlines. Reasonable deadlines but ones that still kind of scare you. That was the biggest help for me. Before I sat down to write I decided when I wanted my book to come out and then I worked backwards, setting all my deadlines. If I wanted it out on Sept 16, that meant I needed to have the text finished by this date. That means I’d need to finish my 4th draft by this date. That means I’d have to start my 4th draft by _______. You need to have clear and specific deadlines. Without them it’s so much easier to lose focus and give up.

4. Tell People!

You can’t keep it a secret. Tell people you’re working on a book because that way there’s some accountability. People will check up on you. They’ll encourage you. Hearing “I’m excited to read your book” is an incredible motivator.

Books that make you laugh out loud

Today I picked up John Hodgman’s new book of comedic essays, Medallion Status and now I’ve spent most of my night enjoying it. Most. Other parts of my night have been dedicated to the bathroom because, well, Chipotle.

I’m 50 pages in and I’ve already laughed out loud at least a dozen times. That’s crazy. Making someone laugh with just the words on a page is one of the most impressive things someone can pull off. As a writer you’re stripped of all these tools comedians can use to trick a laugh out of an audience. They can’t hear your delivery, inflection, funny voice. They don’t see your face, expressions, or what you do with your eyes. Zero physicality is possible. It’s jus the words. And somehow there are writers that can still surprise a laugh out of me. Not a quiet thoughtful exhale. Not an intellectual, “oh that’s funny,” with no actual noise. Laugh out loud.

According to Stephen King writing is a telepathy. You are transferring thoughts and images from your brain to the brain of the reader. I love the way he talks about it in On Writing. Especially this passage.

If writing is telepathy then the best comedic writing (the kind that makes you laugh out loud) is only possible by those with the most powerful psychic abilities.

Can you think of a book that has made you laugh? There aren’t that many for me. John Hodgman and Simon Rich are the only two authors who have been able to do it consistently.

What an incredible skill to have. I wish I could convince more people to read funny books. The biggest roadblock is that I think for most people humor books never end up on the list of books they feel they need to read if they’re to be respectable. With a lot of pastors it’s hard to convince them to read anything besides leadership books (not even a theology book but..you know..we don’t have to get into that). I think everyone has in their heads those books they’re “supposed” to read, but, like I’ve said in a previous post, that’s a dumb way to live your life.

Read outside your comfort zone!

If you’ve never found a book that’s made you laugh out loud, you are missing out. It’s one of the most amazing magic tricks the written word can pull off. It’s harder than you think. Don’t believe me? Go read most of Twitter and you’ll see what I mean.

Are you ACTUALLY "easily distracted?"

From Steinbergdrawscartoons

I wish I lived on paper so I could crumble up all my distractions. My living room would be littered with crumbled up balls of paper. And I would be alone, in silence…still not wanting to work. Looking for something else, some new way to keep me from my To Do List.

I’m not “easily distracted.” I secretly want to be distracted because I don’t want to work so I’ll look for anything that can distract. That’s my secret.

Your Vocation

How do you discover your calling in life?

Frederick Buechner gives this insight:

Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.

When Viktor Frankl talked about finding meaning/purpose in your life, he never wanted to discuss the Big Picture MEANING of your whole life, instead he wanted to focus on the now. What is life putting in front of in this very moment, in this season of life? If you try to zoom too far out to see the whole scope of your life, you’ll get overwhelmed. You not see the Big Picture MEANING until you’re lying on your death bed looking back at the whole thing. So put that off until then. As for now, what can you do now?

This is what can be frustrating about college students who feel called to ministry. A lot of the time they act as if they have to wait until they’re on staff at a church getting paid full time to start ministering. No! There’s ministry to be done now! There’s discipleship and evangelism.

Can you give it 40 hours of focus every week right now while you’re in college? No. Will it pay the bills right now? No. Will you have a large reach and influence right off the bat? No. But there might one person in your church you can pull closer and walk with. Maybe right now life is has put this in your path and it’s how you can fulfill your calling in this season.

You don’t have to wait until it’s perfect. You don’t have to wait until you have all the answers.

Where is your joy?

Where is the need?

What does the meeting of those two look like right now, in this season of life?

Assemblies in Louisiana

In less than a week I’ve spent roughly 27 hours in a car. Spoke Sunday in Tomball, TX. Monday night in Houston. Wednesday I did assemblies in Louisiana. Now I’m in Wichita, KS for a service on Sunday.

We were in a tiny tiny town in Louisiana.

I think those are some of my favorite assemblies to do. You visit schools where there are only 200 students in the whole building and they’re so excited to hear you because they’ve never had a good assembly before. Not many high quality assembly programs are seeking out these tiny schools so we get to go in and absolutely blow them away. “People care enough about you to meet you in the middle of nowhere.” That’s the message we get to bring simply by showing up.

I love it.

If Loving God Was a Competition

The following is an excerpt from a guest blog I wrote for my friend Cameron Combs.

If you wanted to sum up Jesus’ central message to the Pharisees it would be “Loving God is not a competition, and even if it were, you’d all be losing.”

When a sinful woman barges into a pharisee’s house to anoint Jesus’ feet with expensive oil from her alabaster jar, the religious leaders look down on her ridiculous act. If she really loved God, she wouldn’t be so sinful, and she wouldn’t have wasted that oil. She would have sold it and given the money to the poor. Duh. Obviously.

Jesus then shows them that they’re judging this competition all wrong. In pharisee’s eyes, the one who is the purest, cleanest, most right standing is the winner. They’re the ones who love God most. But that’s not how Jesus sees it. It’s actually the one who is the most sinful, yet turns to God. It’s the one needing the most forgiveness who would love God most because they would be the one who fully understands how incredible His love is.

It’s almost like Jesus is being sarcastic.

Those poor Pharisees. If only they weren’t so perfect. If only they were open about the sin in their hearts, then maybe they could love God as much as this woman with the alabaster jar. But alas, from how they speak about themselves, you can tell they’re far too good. If it really were a competition for who loved God most, they’d all be losing.

This is from a post in a series of reflections on Flannery O’Connor’s short story, Parker’s Back. It’s a great short story. You can read it here. Then read the rest of my post (here) to see how this ties to O’Connor’s story.

4 things to enjoy this Halloween season

1. Watch American Movie. Hilarious documentary about a small town filmmaker struggling to make the perfect horror movie. It's one of those documentaries that feels too perfect to be real. How could this not be scripted? It's amazing. Watch the trailer

2. Read The Shining. I'm on a real Stephen King kick right now. I think The Shining is one of my favorite books now. I just want someone to read it so I can talk to them about it.

3. Watch E.T. Not a traditional Halloween film, but it scared the crap out of me as a kid. Oh man, that little freak gave me nightmares. Are you kidding me? Horrifying. When they find his pale lifeless body by the river? NOPE. No ma'am. That was not cool for kids. Now that I'm older and wiser and braver, I can see the beautiful message of empathy in this wonderful coming of age story but that little monster can still freak me out.

4. Read In the Altogether. Opening up and being vulnerable can be scary, right? Right?! So this could be a spooky book to enjoy. Why not get yourself a copy?

Confession: I Never Follow Through with Goals

I just want you to know that I started using Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner again at the beginning of October. A year ago I used one for three months and it legitimately changed my life. I need the help it offers with setting goals, staying on track, and prioritizing tasks.

I’m lost without it.

I can’t handle all that on my own. I’m not naturally disciplined. At all. Left to my own devices, I’m a giant baby. All I want to do is eat pizza, never shower, and stare at my phone.

I say in my stand-up “I’m terrible at setting goals. I have a lot of things I would like to happen but I’m not doing anything about it to make it happen.” That’s so true. Big dreams with no follow through. That’s why I’ll never have abs.

This planner forces me to set goals and helps me actually stick to them. I would have never been able to write In the Altogether without it.

And now I’m back with a brand new planner. Who knows what I’ll do next!

The Origin of Most Bad Writing According to Stephen King

From Stephen King’s On Writing:

“I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.”

I get this. One of my greatest fears is being misunderstood. I don’t want anything I say to misinterpreted in some unflattering way. This fear manifests when I’m speaking or performing. It’ll cause me to ramble or repeat myself a million times over if I’m not confident that I got my point across.

For other comedians the fear manifests differently. You ever hear a comedian end every other sentence with “you know?” or “right?” That’s my biggest pet peeve with comedy. The comedian is insecure in their ability to set up their premise, right? And so they have to constantly check in, right? Stop it. Cut that word. If you’re so concerned with getting the point across, put more work into the material.

If you’re not confident with your first draft (no one is) view the rewriting process as a confidence building exercise. Don’t let fear take over. Don’t let it stop you from taking risks. Don’t let it force you to over explain.

Don’t let fear win. Fear gives thee worst advice.

Right?

With Apologies to Dave Ramsey

The following is an excerpt from my new book, In the Altogether: Trusting God with All We Hide From the World. This is a story I tell in the chapter on the importance of opening up about what’s going on. You can’t deal with a problem unless you’re willing to talk about it.

It's important to remember that there's not a clear cut list of subjects that everyone is always uncomfortable talking about. Some people are ok with opening up about their love lives while others get really nervous. Some are willing to totally own mistakes from their past, others try to pretend they never happened. Some people have no fear at all talking about financial troubles while others, LIKE ME, chicken out.

I'm terrible with money, and I hate talking about it. Dave Ramsey, if you're reading this, get ready to rip someone else's hair out at this story. I'm so sorry.

Ever since I started traveling and speaking full time, I've had to deal with all of the responsibilities that come with being self-employed. I'm my own boss, which is a problem because I'm a terrible boss. A real pushover. It's so easy to convince my boss to let me have the day off for no reason.

I have to be the one who pushes me to work hard. I'm the one in charge of keeping things organized. I have to stay on top of my finances. Or at least try to.

My primary financial strategy is what I like to call "Out of Sight–Out of Mind." Here's what you do: never check your bank account. Ever. Assume you're completely broke and silently freak out every day as you try to spend as little money as possible. At the end of the month, you're allowed to check your account balance once.

Hopefully, the strategy worked, and you'll actually have a lot more money in there than you thought.

Awesome.

Congratulations.

Reward yourself by taking all that extra cash you didn't know you had and spend it recklessly on any dumb thing you want. You'll probably spend too much, and then you'll be too scared to check your bank account to see what you have left. That's perfect. Now you're ready to start the cycle over for the next month.

Is it a perfect system? Of course not. It's so stupid. It rarely works out in my favor. Sometimes you'll check your bank account and realize you weren't worried enough and you have even less money than you thought. In those moments the best thing to do is, take a second, breathe in, and freak out harder than you ever have before because you're in so much trouble!

Having no money is actually a really great motivation to work harder. Sometimes (I'm about to sound like the biggest idiot so get ready, Mr. Ramsey) I'll feel like I need to kick my butt out of being lazy so I'll go buy some big expensive thing I don't really need for the sole purpose of making me a little poorer.

Let's see you work your way out of this one, Taylor, I think as I spend $200 on a microphone for my camera that doesn't really sound much better than the $70 microphone I've been using.

I know these are all terrible financial strategies. The main reason I haven't tried anything else is that I know it would require having to ask someone for help. That's so embarrassing. I've been my own boss for almost a decade. You'd think I'd have it figured out by now.

But that's just part of the reason I don't want to reach out to someone. The other part is what REALLY paralyzes me.

If I were to get help, there would come a moment where the other person says, "I'd be glad to help. Tell me about how you've been handling money so far." Then I'd have to look them in the eye and describe what I've just told you. And then I'll have to watch their reaction, whatever that may be. They could laugh in my face. They might yell at me and call me an idiot. They could look down on me for acting like a child and never take me seriously as an adult again. Picturing someone's reaction has always been the main reason I've kept it to myself.

That's also true for my taxes. Being self-employed means, I don't have The Man taking taxes out of every paycheck. Not only do I have to be my own boss but I have to be my own The Man. The last few years I've filed my taxes by myself and...I think I'm doing them, right? I have no idea. I'm winging it. Making it up as I go along with some BOLD guesses on the right way to do it.

My catchphrase as I submit my completed tax form to the government is, "Welp. Let's see if I'm going to jail!"

So far, so good.

Maybe I'm so poor I'm not even on the IRS' radar?

Oh no. I just had a thought. 

What if this book becomes a huge hit and I make millions off it? The IRS is going to read this and come after me! I can't have that. I need to make sure this book doesn't become a giant success. I have to do whatever it takes to make sure it isn't a #1 best seller (so if this book comes out and it isn't a smash hit, just know that my plan worked. It was on purpose).

After a while, my tax strategy of "Guess Until You Go to Jail" started affecting me. Whenever tax season would approach, my anxiety would intensify. My mom must have noticed because she recommended I visit a financial advisor who handles taxes for small businesses. I put off setting up an appointment for a long time. Again, I was terrified of what her reaction would be when I told her about my taxes. What if she yelled at me? What if I make her so mad she throws up? Is that possible?

I knew there was some hardcore vulnerability waiting for me at that appointment when I finally called and set it up. It was terrifying. I was already preparing myself for the meeting going badly. I thought if her reaction was too much to handle I'd just immediately leave, never file my taxes again, go off the grid, cut up my social security card, hitchhike to Alaska, and probably die by accidentally eating poison berries.

I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE WEAKNESSES!

I want to be perfect and have it all figured out! It's so frustrating that I'm not and I don't. I'm far from that. The IRS is going to find out and eat me alive!

When I sat down in the financial advisor's office, about to open up about my problem, I started by letting her know what I was thinking at that moment. 

"I have no idea how big of a mess my taxes are. I'm scared I've been doing them wrong, but I've also dreaded coming to you because I don't want you to get mad at me. Please don't freak out. Please be gentle."

She agreed and braced herself as she asked me questions.

"Did you do your taxes last year?"

"Yes."

"Did you owe money?"

"Yes."

"Did you pay it?"

"Yes."

"Did you do that the year before?"

"Yes."

"OK. Well, you're actually doing way better than a lot of the people who come into my office. I get people haven't paid their taxes in fourteen years, so don't worry."

I was blown away. Fourteen years?! That's wild.

That meeting lifted a few different burdens off of my shoulders. I found out my situation wasn't the worst this lady had ever seen. It was pretty small when you compare it to what it could have been. After that initial relief, she walked me through some simple next steps I needed to take to keep my taxes on track. I thought it was going to be so much more work. Nope, I left with a list of three things I needed to do. That's it.

She helped me shine a light on the monster that was hiding in the corner of my mind. When I got a good look at it for the first time, I realized I could actually take this thing on. That would have never happened if I didn't walk into that vulnerable moment of admitting why I needed help. Up until that meeting, I was desperately trying to become the man people already thought I was. I put on a good face and made everyone think I had it all together. But I was able to find the hope of change when I laid that aside.

When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we are saved from having to pretend. 

More about the book

Comedian Taylor Johnson has written a hilarious and honest book on one of the most uncomfortable topics for Christians: vulnerability.

This is not like any Christian book you’ve ever read. It’s weird. It’s funny. Some bizarre true stories and illustrations will catch you off guard. Taylor Johnson’s unique approach is all on purpose to help us get comfortable looking at our shame, our secrets, and our fears around opening up. Yes, it’s scary to share, but because of Jesus, it doesn’t have to be.

Available on Amazon