My (Unpublished!

) Interview with Writer’s Digest

About three months after my book Penguins, Pain and the Whole
Shebang came out, Writer’s Digest magazine contacted me for an
interview. By way of planning for a special “Spirituality” issue of the
magazine, they had asked their readers to recommend a book on the
topic. A lot of people apparently named Penguins, and that’s why they
contacted me.

They interviewed me via email. The interview was never published,

because at the last minute Writer’s Digest decided to kill its special
“Spirituality” issue. But here’s that interview as it almost appeared in
WD:

Q: Your first book, Comma Sense, was a guide to punctuation. How

did you make the leap from punctuation to spiritual writing?

A: Well, the key to a successful writing career is to build your own

niche audience, right? And one day it came to me: Pastors who
punctuate! Who’s writing for the comma-loving clergy? So at first I
wrote a single book, all about God and punctuation—but somewhere in
there (between the chapters “Paul: Could He Use Any More Commas?”
and “The Apostrophe Apostasy”) I realized that what I had on my
hands wasn’t so much a single book as it was a single, deeply stupid
book. So I trashed that effort, started again, and ended up with two
books so unlike each other that very often, if they’re in the same
room, one of the two of them will spontaneously combust.
Q: You’re kidding, right?

A: Yes. Sorry. In actuality, my leap went the other way; I finished

Penguins about three months before starting Comma Sense. It’s just
that Comma Sense was released first; it came out in August of 2005,
and Penguins came waddling along about two months later—which, in
the glacial timeframe of book publishing, is, like, four seconds apart.
Book-wise, they’re fraternal twins. Which is why they always fight.
But, that’s just books. Whaddaya gonna do?

Q. How is Penguins different than other spiritual books out there?

A: Well, it’s humongously funny, for one. (Um … is there any way to
make something seem less funny than to say it’s funny? Is there any
word in the English language more boring than “humorist”?) And the
book’s also really quite dramatically short. And (save for the
afterword) all of its text, from the cover flap copy to the dedication
and on, is written in the voice of God. And it very directly and very
succinctly addresses the eight or nine reasons non-Christians typically
give for why they’d rather have a thistle jammed up their nose than
even consider becoming Christian. So: short; funny; voice of God;
rationally and completely answers the huge, primary objections to
Christianity. That’s the book.

Q: Sound interesting!

A: Well, I was definitely confident that no publisher would say they’d

seen a book like it before.

Q. What did you learn about the publishing world/spiritual writing

market in the process of having the book published?

A: Um … everything, I think. Penguins had a long, weirdly intense path

to publication, so just through that process I learned a lot. It was first
represented to the CBA (Christian Bookseller’s Association) market by
a Christian-market literary agent. He showed it to all the Christian
publishers, who all responded to it in the exact same way: “Fantastic
book! It’s got everything! It’s hilarious! We love it! It’s too secular.” So
then I sent the book to Super Mainstream Market Agent, Deborah
Schneider, who, miraculously enough, almost immediately agreed to
represent it. (“I have to,” she said. “My 15-year-old son Charlie loves
it.”) She showed it to her friends who run every publishing company in
New York—and they all responded to it in the exact same way:
“Fantastic book! It’s got everything! It’s hilarious! We love it! It’s too
Christian.” So the first big thing I learned is that publishers of any sort
are really disinclined to react favorably to any book that’s unlike all the
other books they publish. They want something they can absolutely
depend upon to sell—which means they’re pretty exclusively interested
in things as close as possible to something else they have that’s ever
sold. It’s kind of a crazy business like that. Publishers are truly stuck
between “We crave creative, new stuff!” and “Creative, new stuff
freaks us out because we don’t know how to market it!” Editors kept
loving Penguins; their marketing people kept balking at it. What I
learned is that the book business is all about marketing. And I also, of
course, learned that Christian and “mainstream” publishing are entirely
separate businesses. There’s almost zero relationship between them.
Different people, different market, different process.

Q: What are your writing habits, and where do your ideas come from?

A: Sadly, the only “habit” I have is avoiding work. Unless I really have
work—like, say, a deadline. Then I work like a mule team. Basically,
my day goes about like this: Wake up around 4 a.m. Swear to stop
drinking coffee so I can get more sleep. Turn on computer. Make
coffee. Be grateful wife is such a sound sleeper, since I’m crashing
around in kitchen like Frankenstein on Vicodin. Sit at computer. Be
bummed that I have no e-mails. Sip coffee. Check to see how
Penguins is doing on Amazon. Feel either elated or suicidal. Poke
around online version of New York Times online. Feel “Can Write Now”
part of brain kick in. Open whatever document I’m currently working
on. Write until wife wakes up at six. Be loving, happy couple until she
leaves for work. Slump into loneliness. Try to work some more. Fail.
Take nap. As to where my ideas come from—where do anyone’s ideas
come from? You go through life; you process and collect; you sense
gaps; something suddenly defines and fills one of those gaps—and
bang, there’s your idea. Then you’ve got something new on your
hands. If you’re a writer, then the question is whether or not that idea
is new generally, or just to you? If you see it’s a new idea, period,
then you just had yourself one good day.

Q: Why did you write Penguins in the voice of God?

A: To cut out the middleman. There are a zillion books out there by
people talking about God; I just couldn’t write another one. For a
period of nearly five hundred years that ended only recently,
Christians universally considered Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of
Christ to be the great companion to the Bible: No Christian was
without it. The last two-thirds of that book consist of words put into
the mouth of Jesus by Mr. Kempis. So I figured, what the heck: time
for an update. Also, it was not a little unsettling, after the freakish
conversion experience I talk about in the afterword of Penguins, to be
stuck being the very kind of person—a Christian—that before then I’d
always held in such disdain. And I very much, then, needed some way
to show the non-Christians in my own life that, in converting, not only
had I not lost my mind, but that Christianity is, if nothing else
(surprise!) supremely rational. And I figured, why not let them hear it
right from the source? Basically, I wrote the book that I wish someone
had given me during all the years before God finally zinged me in a
supply closet at my job.

Q: As a humorist, did you worry that readers might be offended by the

irreverence in the book?

A: Worry? No. I mean, I didn’t want to offend people, of course—but

the only way not to offend anyone is to never do or say anything at all.
It’s a given that if you do anything even slightly new—much less
anything having to do with religion, of all things—you will offend
someone. It’s just the cost of doing business. But the bottom line is
that if you’re a Christian, and the Holy Spirit is telling you what to
write, it’s not like you’re going to start typing out handy-dandy tips for
sacrificing cats, or anything like that. You just start writing. I know
just about nothing about anything, but I’m positive God’s okay with
Penguins.

Q: How do you make humor come across in writing?

A: Well, I’ve found that the best way is to actually be funny. Har. No,
but you know what I mean: obviously, you’ve first got to have a joke,
or a funny way of saying something. After that, it’s all about the
timing. You miss one beat—you draw out or clip a phrase by one
heartbeat too long or short either way—and you just dropped that ball.
Humor is timing—just like all of writing is timing. Life is timing.

Q: How has Penguins been received thus far?

A: To tell you the truth, I’m almost freaked out by how well it’s been
received. It’s just been … phenomenal. And unless you live near an
Episcopal bookstore that happened to order the book in, you can’t
even buy the book except through online stores like Amazon or Barnes
and Noble. There’s no question but that word-of-mouth is the primary
means by which anyone has heard about the book at all. And
apparently people are talking about it, because, little by little, it
continues to sell. Which is great, of course. Mostly, though, what I
care about, and what about all this has most affected me, are the
stories that reach me of people’s lives being genuinely changed by the
Penguins. It’s such an impossible thing to even say. Every day, I can’t
believe it. I very recently heard from a guy who read the book, and
the following Sunday went to church and took his first communion
ever. I got a note from a woman who told me that after bitterly
turning her back on the faith for seven years, the book moved her to
turn around, and again embrace it. A woman who works with my wife
cried and told her that even though she’d been a Christian for forty-
two years, Penguins gave her the first clear understanding she’d ever
had of the Holy Spirit. I’ve actually, now, lost track of all those sorts of
stories: impossibly enough, there’s that many of them. It’s beyond
fathoming. I just this morning got a letter from a woman saying that a
friend had given her a copy of the book; after reading it, she wanted
to order ten copies to give to each of her grandchildren for Christmas.
It’s just astounding, and not a little humbling, to realize the effect that
printed words can still have on people.

Q: What are you working on right now?

A: Ah. Well, oddly enough, I’m afraid it’s all quite hush-hush, just
now. (It’s so weird, not being able to just say what you’re working on.
And fun, imagining that your upcoming book really is just that hot.)
[This was when everything was happening around the proposal I'd
written for the book that eventually turned into Midlife Manual for Men,
with Steve Arterburn.] But, as I say, I’ve got two books due this year,
and I’ll write the proposal for a third. So in about two years, I’m going
to either be wildly famous, or wildly wondering whether or not you
guys might need a freelance proofreader. I’m also thinking about
starting a blog.

Q: Any tips for spiritual writers who are just starting out?

A: Sure: be honest—and I mean, ugly honest—about who you really

are, and what you’re really doing. Because the moment you in any
way position yourself as a “spiritual writer” is the moment that
arrogance becomes the worst, craftiest, most charming enemy you
ever had. Beware the horrible onus of believing that you’re wise.
You’re not. I’m not. None of us is: Essentially we’re all just children out
here, trying to make sense of a system that only works if it remains
profoundly and eternally mysterious. Continuously sacrifice who you
want to be—and especially whom you want others to think you are—
for who you actually are, warts, insecurities and all. Always think of
your reader as your friend, not your student. And good luck.

You can read about how I recently reacquired all the rights and
remaining copies of Penguins in my recent post, “Penguins,” My
“Blasphemous” Christian Book, Finally Returns Home.

My ebook How to Make a Living Writing is available on Scribd.com

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