New Book Announcement and How I Start a Project

What my new book is about (roughly)

Photo by Dan Dimmock on Unsplash

I’m excited and nervous to announce that I have signed a contract with InterVarsity Press for my fifth book, tentatively titled Shoring Up the Ruins. I’m excited because I believe in the project and the larger project (more on that in a minute) and I’m nervous because starting a new book project is terrifying. There’s so much to learn, so much to do, so much to write!

The book will be the completion (probably) of a larger project on contemporary, secular world which began with Disruptive Witness. As I’ve written about before, Disruptive Witness and You Are Not Your Own lay out the theological, sociological, and philosophical problems facing contemporary people, but they are admittedly thin on how to respond to those problems. They do offer responses. They aren’t hopeless books, but the main focus is on analysis and raising awareness. They are books of revelation more than action. But we need action. To Live Well is one half of my call to action. It’s primarily (though not exclusively) a personal call to virtue. Virtue is framed in community, but the focus is upon making the individual decision to act virtuously with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. I hope when people read To Live Well next year they find guidance, clarity, and some peace as they see that there are ways to navigate the contemporary world well.

But responding individually is insufficient. The problems facing our society affect us both individually and collectively. And they call for collective acts of virtue. So my fifth book will be about that. How do we navigate the contemporary world well collectively to resists the problems that I’ve outlined in Disruptive Witness and You Are Not Your Own? The answer, I’m going to argue, is to work through particular communities of belonging, responsibility, and restraint we call institutions. Just which institutions I believe are essential, what makes an institution, how we should participate, and why we should participate—all these questions you’ll have to wait for later. Because I have more research and writing to do. Plus I still have decisions to make. But that’s the general idea.

Of course, there’s nothing new about valuing institutions, particularly among conservatives, but I think what you’ll find is the way I’m framing the problem and our ability to participate in the solution will be refreshing and encouraging. I hope so at least.

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Now, recently someone asked me about how I begin a project, and I figured this would be a good a time as any to offer a peak behind the curtain to show my method, whatever method there may be.

It begins with a question or problem that I think needs to be solved. My overarching concern is with helping the church learn how to participate more faithfully in culture to the glory of God and the edification of our neighbors. Which is, admittedly, a broad mission. And under that mission I have been exploring this big question: What are the particular challenges facing Christians in the contemporary West and how can we respond to them? And from that question I’ve looked for narrower questions, because even that’s too broad. So for Shoring Up the Ruins, I’m asking, “How can we collectively respond to the problems of secularization, expressive individualism, and radical autonomy?”

Often, this narrow question that forms the seed of the book comes from writing articles and interacting with thoughtful readers or giving lectures and doing Q/A. Through these interactive processes I discover what questions people have, because my book writing is not primarily about what I find interesting (that’s more for Substack), it’s largely in responses to the felt needs and questions that people have. My favorite kind of book is the one which addresses questions which the reader doesn’t even know he or she has. Or at least, addresses questions which the reader couldn’t fully articulate before. That’s the kind I’d like to write. Which is one reason why this Substack and lecturing are so important to me. They allow me glimpses into the concerns that people have about our world.

Once I’ve narrowed down the question, I begin looking for resources to help answer it. Quite often this will happen as I’m forming the question. It used to be the case that Twitter was a helpful resource for finding sources. I would follow experts in a field I was interested in and watch their conversations and look for book or article recommendations from them. I still do this, but now that Twitter’s algorithm restricts links, it’s less useful for that. My best “discoveries” have happened through recommendations by scholars I respect. For To Live Well, a close scholar friend told me to read Josef Pieper’s essay on “Love,” and I did and it blew me away. When it came time for me to write a book about how to navigate the contemporary world as an individual, I couldn’t think of a better dialogue partner to use than Pieper. I can’t remember who turned me on to Ellul, but I think it happened in a similar way. I just stumbled upon him and it struck a chord. I don’t know who the main scholar(s) will be who I work with for Shoring Up the Ruins, but I’m confident God will send them my way.

Until I stumble across them, I’ll begin by doing the dusty research work of exploring the field of institutions, which I’ve already begun. I won’t master it, since I’m not writing an academic work on the subject, but a trade book. But I do want to know enough to converse and bring some insights from academia to bear. This is the stage I’m in now. Discovering, reading a lot of books and articles. Reading a lot of texts that end up being useless. Developing ideas of my own. Researching is like pulling a thread. You read one book which ends up being useless but it quotes another book which is useful so you read that book, and before you know it you have a massive pile of books.

In not too long, I’ll start writing. Not because I have the book perfectly planned out (although it is planned out), but because in my experience, waiting too long to start writing is a mistake. It’s better to write and delete than to wait to start a project until you’re “ready.” As I research, I’ll start by typing up quotes, reflecting on those quotes, freewriting, writing Substack articles on aspects of my findings that I know won’t make it into the book, etc. I’ll start by setting a low daily word count for myself to give me some momentum, maybe 200 words. If I can read and write 200 words a day reflecting on or writing about the topic, I’ll be making progress. At some point, the balance between researching and writing will shift, and I’ll up the word count to 1000 words a day or so and begin the main phase of the writing.

The other thing I’ll mention is this. Once you begin a project, you enter into a growing awareness of its implications. So, for example, as I studied the virtues, I became attuned to talk of virtues and vices and morality in our culture. I saw better how virtues could be a helpful corrective to some of our cultural problems. When I read articles or when news events happened, I saw connections. This awareness helps generate new ideas, examples, and sources for my projects. Things fall into place.

I’m afraid my method sounds a bit haphazard. Maybe it is. In many ways I let the main question and my thesis guide my research where it may and discover what I discover along the way. Not to over-spiritualize it, but I’d like to think I trust in God’s providence. In that spirit of openness to ideas, if you have suggestions for works on institutions, I’d love to hear your recommendations!

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On a related note, the book I am most proud of (that is currently published), You Are Not Your Own, is now out in paperback! Please order and share!