A long time ago in a gallery far, far away, some guy produced these mashups of Pixar and Star Wars characters.
Author: Nathan Campbell
Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.
Bare boned cartoons
These cartoon skeletons follow a similar vein (or lack of veins) to the Pacman one from last week. They’re from designer Hyung Koo Lee.
Here’s Bugs Bunny.
And an anatomic drawing of his head.
Roadrunner:
Huey, Duey and Louie.
More here.
CS Lewis on writing
Craig linked to this list of 8 writing tips from CS Lewis. There are eight of them…
- Turn off the radio.
- Read good books and avoid most magazines.
- Write with the ear, not the eye. Make every sentence sound good.
- Write only about things that interest you. If you have no interests, you won’t ever be a writer.
- Be clear. Remember that readers can’t know your mind. Don’t forget to tell them exactly what they need to know to understand you.
- Save odds and ends of writing attempts, because you may be able to use them later.
- You need a well-trained sense of word-rhythm, and the noise of a typewriter will interfere.
- Know the meaning of every word you use.
AACC Liveblog: Getting Published – Ross McKenzie
Ross is a physics professor at UQ. He also has a blog which you should read. His interests are quantum physics and the intersection between theology and science.
Publication is important for the church
- Historically, evangelicals have ceded the academy to liberals and atheists.
- Publication is the key to the intellectual world. It is the currency of respectability in the academy. You have to be published to be taken seriously.
- Publishing leads to engagement with the broader culture. It is apologia and kategoria. If we want to be engaging in the crucible of ideas and knowledge you need to be getting published.
Publication is important for your college and denomination
- It maintains intellectual vitality.
- It keeps teaching content and research supervision abilities up to date.
- It raises the profile of a college and help in recruiting new staff and students.
- The process reduces isolationism and forces faculty to engage with other thinkers.
- It’s becoming increasingly important for government funding and accreditation of the Australian College of Theology.
Publication is important for you
- It maintains your own vitality.
- It puts your ideas out there for critique
- It helps maintain your employment (if you’re an academic).
Ross’s Guide to Peer Reviewed Publications
- Write a draft.
- Choose a suitable journal. If many references in your paper come from one journal then that’s probably a suitable publication. Electronically available journals are preferable, especially journals available in tertiary institutions. Narrow journals with small audiences aren’t ideal. The Australian Research Council ranks journals.
- Put the article in the format of the journal.
- Ask a colleague who has published in that journal, or a similar one, to give feedback. Take that feedback on board.
- Submit it.
- The most likely responses are: rejection, or a request to resubmit.
- If you’re rejected make the changes and submit it elsewhere. Keep repeating steps 2-6. If changes are requested make them. Swallow your pride.
- Don’t give up.
Peer review may help reduce self delusion and sloppy thinking – Richard Dawkins hasn’t published a peer reviewed paper for 30 years.
AACC Liveblog: Getting Published – From Concept to Publication with Michael Bird
Apart from running one of Christendom’s most popular blogs, Michael Bird is a widely published author. His presentation this morning is a piece of self reflection on his process from student to scholar, and the process from idea to publication. Though “A Bird’s Eye View on Paul” was not his chosen title.
Motivations for Publishing
- To disseminate research
- If you end up in an academic career publication is linked to funding. This is especially the case in the UK where universities depend on world class, brilliant, erudite publications for grants. Lots of institutions expect their faculty to be research active in their fields.
- To contribute to scholarly discussions and academic knowledge.
- To contribute resources for the wider church, to be a bridge between the academy and the church.
Bad reasons to publish
- Fame and fortune – most publishers would only be expecting to sell 300 copies of PhD dissertations. Most monograph series don’t pay royalties.
Getting Started
The initiative more often than not comes from the writer, not the publisher (unless you’re famous).
Origen: “A biblical scholar is like a hunter walking through a forest when a flash of movement catches their eye.”
Mike’s story: In the late 90s he read through Jesus and the Victory of God got him thinking “how did Christianity move from a fringe Jewish movement into a movement, within 50 years, that a Gentile emperor was making policy about.” Looking to explore that question became his PhD thesis.
Looking at what’s around on a topic and thinking about how to contribute to a conversation is a good start. Don’t think of your book as the definitive word on a subject. It’s a conversation that will continue after your contribution. That is how you should think about it.
How do you get this idea to the market?
Who is your audience? Academics? Students? Lay people? Once you’ve picked your audience find a publisher who will meet your audience.
If you’ve killed your academic audience through publishing journal articles then look at other audiences (possibly more lucrative too).
Bird says, on the question of when to start writing, sooner or later you’re going to have to start, so it might as well be sooner.
Preparing Your Submission
Step 1. Get ready for rejection. If you can’t handle rejection do not try to publish books.
Step 2. Write a proposal. Don’t bother with unsolicited manuscripts.
Writing a Proposal
Proposals look a little something like this:
- Title
- Short bio of yourself
- Summary
- Audience
- Need
- Competing volumes
- Potential endorsers
- Word Length
- Submission Date
- Sample Chapter
Getting the Proposal heard
- Meet an editor – network like crazy, meet people, schmooze. You’re incredibly unlikely to be published via an unsolicited manuscript. Your chances dramatically increase if you know the publisher. The editor has to believe in your project over and above the other projects on the table. They have to sell it to their editorial colleagues and the publishing company.
- Consider the market, ethos, values and theology of the publisher.
- Be willing to make changes. Negotiate on the size, the scope, the content, the audience… everything is on the table.
- Be prepared for it to be a long process filled with corrections, proof-reading, endorsers, indices…
Be Prepared for…
Some more things to be ready for in the process:
- A long delay waiting for a response, it’s ok to make enquiries about the status of your proposal a few months later
- Rejection
- Work and family commitments, your circumstances can change which will effect delivery dates.
- Editors can be brutal, there’s a difference between an academic supervisor and an editor. Supervisors want you to produce defendable work, editors want you to produce marketable work.
- Copy editors can be incompetent
- Publishers can change stuff
- Criticism in reviews
In the writing of books there is much sorrow, mainly for the authors. Bird writes because he learns the most in the publication process. Autonomous learning is the goal of any Christian scholarship. The first beneficiary of the process is yourself, but it’s good to see others. Writing is an avenue for participating in the debate, being part of the conversation, it’s fun.
How the blog interplays with books
Starting a blog was one of the best things he ever did. In the year after submitting his PhD he got several knockbacks. The blog opened doors with publishers (they even took him out to lunch). Some posts now prompt emails from publishers.
The blog has been great for bouncing ideas off people. and nutting out ideas.
AACC liveblog: Getting Published: Bruce Winter: Advice from a Veteran
Bruce says “always contribute to the body of knowledge”…
Argument should take place in the main body of the thesis, not in the footnotes. Some have used footnotes to disown arguments.
In the metamorphous from student to scholar we need to move on from attributing every notion or idea in footnotes and be prepared to argue things out in the text.
What does it mean to be a Christian and an Academic?
Bruce resolved never to engage, in his writings, with trashing other scholars. He believes that evidence should be argued out in the pages without playing the man.
A non-Christian friend made the comment that one of Bruce’s books “wasn’t an easy read.” He came to the realisation that the first paragraph has to be engaging if we are to grab the attention of a reader. Bruce’s rules of thumb:
- The heading must entice.
- The first sentence must grab the attention.
- The second sentence must inform.
This, in my opinion, a good rule of thumb for writing anything. Basically you’ve got to think about how you yourself approach a text – how many academic books have you read right through?
Bruce resolved to agonise most over headings and sub-titles, and introductions. They are important.
Chapter headings need sub-headings. They need to be well thought out structures. We must write with purpose.
Bruce reads the preface, the chapter headings, the chapter introductions and the conclusions (including the links between chapters) before deciding whether to read the whole book. His approach to writing follows his approach to reading.
There must also be a Christian approach to criticism, and especially to the review process. Some journals offer authors the right of reply to reviews – how do you take this opportunity without trashing someone who has trashed your work? We want academic interactions to also be Christian interactions.
Bruce avoids fads in academic circles because they pass. Some publishers love fads and are always in search of the next new thing.
We are accountable to Christ – not to reviewers or audiences.
Questions to ask of your work.
- Have we added to the body of knowledge?
- Have we illuminated the text?
- Have we built people up?
- Who are we writing for?
- What we write is the application of our gifts for the benefit of others. So does it benefit others?
Publish or perish is not the motto of the Christian.
AACC liveblog: Getting Published: Eisenbraun’s guide to getting published
If you have a monograph you want published here are Jim Eisenbraun’s tips for getting there.
- Start with a well thought out proposal – including your idea, its genesis, how it compares to other works in the field or underway, what need it meets. Is there a market?
- The right time to submit a proposal is a bit of a Goldilocks question – you want to have the ability to provide more information upon request without too big a gap in time, but you don’t necessarily need an entire manuscript. Sometimes things come in the form of an expanded article. Which is fine, and a good basis for decision making. Writing a Phd dissertation with publication in mind is useful (if the adviser will permit that). There are dissertations that aren’t worth publishing as a monograph. They’re always so tuned in to the adviser’s goals and philosophy that they can become unmarketable.
- Publishers like to be asked what they want, and they are fine with dispensing advice on how to edit a work to make it publishable.
- Don’t send an entire manuscript right off the bat – give something that can be read in 15 minutes.
- Put effort into your proposal – a badly written proposal will go no further. Grammar matters. Write well. Publishers love good writing. If they have to do a lot of work to your prose it will give them pause. The biggest cost in publishing is human – it’s not the paper and ink. Time spent fixing a manuscript raises costs.
- Good English is plain English. Sometimes academics get stuck in the notion that esoteric or made up words sound stronger. That’s not the case. Avoid jargon that I can’t understand what they’re saying. If the publisher, who works in the field, can’t understand what’s being said then what chance does the market have. Unclear jargon is faux-academic.
- How to Edit Your Own Writing is a great book full of “aha” moments. The Chicago Manual For Style is the American publisher’s bible.
- Eisenbrauns will ask for a proposal, then a chapter, then check with others in the field to make sure the idea will fly. They’re always looking for manuscripts that will advance the discussion, unless it’s a textbook that summarises the state of knowledge.
- If it’s a monograph that’s presenting a new idea the question is “will this carry scholarship forward?”
- Academic publishers care. They are engaged in the process of developing scholarship.
- Eisenbrauns’ review process is double blind and shared – reviewers and writers are not named.
- After the review process Eisenbrauns have to make a market decision. There are valuable materials that might only have 50 readers. Print on demand is an option but it looses some of the aesthetic value of the hardback high quality tome.
- Eisenbrauns still copy edits. Unlike some other publishers. Authors look at two sets of proofs. They print using traditional offset printing.
- The decision to publish, and a contract, may be made at multiple steps in this process. Even from the proposal. Especially if it is someone with a reputation. For first timers a contract is likely to come after seeing some of the finished work. If you want to be published multiple times avoid entering contract limbo.
- Finding the right publisher is an issue for writers – find the publisher that markets to your audience. Anybody can publish a book, with a few dollars, the test of publishing is to market. Rejection may not be a question of the quality of the work, find a shoe that fits. Publish with a publisher who prices things in a way that mortals can afford them. $200 monographs are unaffordable.
AACC Live: Getting Published – Jim Eisenbraun
I’m at the Annual Australasian Christian Conference this week – so expect a bunch of posts reporting on theologs and their new and interesting ideas.
Today kicks off with “Getting Published” a guide to those looking to get published now, or in the future.
This morning we’ve got Jim Eisenbraun, the CEO/owner of Eisenbrauns Publishing.
“The rate and volume of publication is expanding rapidly, and that is a challenge for everybody in the academic world.”
It’s no longer possible to read everything in your field – there’s so much out there in terms of the history and the stuff being written in our time, even last month.
The challenge is now to pick what to read.
The reality for publishers is that fewer copies of any work are selling. The rate of publication is increasing while the rate of purchasing is decreasing – you don’t have to be an economist to see a problem. This explains why academic books are so expensive.
Publishing in an esoteric area you’re looking to sell about 350 copies. Publishing is an economic exercise. Electronic publishing is becoming a factor.
You can charge for content, but people are unwilling to pay for content when it’s online. There’s a changing social component in the move from printed content to content online – are we willing to pay for something that we can’t physically carry away with us. There’s something psychological at play. There’s less of a reality in our minds.
Publishers are facing this difficulty. Publishers primarily provide a service, not a product. They take a manuscript and turn it into a reader friendly format. Print will stay with us for a while – but the future is electronic. Which creates piracy concerns.
Information wants to be free. Even as a publisher Eisenbraun agrees with that philosophy. But somebody needs to be paid for their efforts. This has an effect on the way publishers view their role and their product. Dealing with this clash between commercial imperatives and the public’s view that information should be free is the modern publisher’s job.
The Google Books program is kind of an uneasy marriage between Google and libraries, and Google and Publishers. Nobody is entirely happy with where it is going, but everybody sees the value of continuing.
There’s a view that the distribution mechanism for academic works is broken – and that the institution should own the copyright to works published by their staff. Harvard make any work produced by their academics freely available – which removes some incentive from academics to publish.
The manuscript review process is being scrutinised by academics and by those seeking to be published. There’s a perception that publication in the modern age does not signify quality. In the past, when a publisher had to put significant resources into publishing there was an understanding that the final product would be worthwhile. One solution is to let the market sort it out – buyers will decide what’s worthwhile and what’s not. Eisenbraun doesn’t think this works. I think The Shack is a case study in why this doesn’t work.
God and his AK-47
The manufacturer of this toy must have listened to Benny Hinn’s “Holy Ghost Machine Gun” sermon – here’s God, the action figure, replete with AK-47… umm. Fail. Still, he’s clearly a male, so the maker’s theology is better than K-Rudd’s… and Bonhoeffer probably would have used an AK on Hitler given the chance…
Rudd and Theology
Oh yeah… and while I’m on the subject of Rudd bowing out of the Prime Ministership… I’ve said before that Rudd likes hitching his wagon to whatever engine is driving past at the time… but who did he think he was pleasing when he paused for his moment of theologising when he tacked “or her” on the end of thanking God… it was looking so good up until that moment – a loser thanking God, which helpfully combats every winning sporting superstar who claims God gave them victory as though he’s in their sports bag… bowing out with grace… but “or her”? What? How can “or her” be referred to as “our father”? Bonhoeffer would be rolling in his grave. Maybe he was caught up in the moment – seeing Gillard’s siezing the throne as divine. Maybe when he said “theology” he meant “self reflection” and his God complex was catching up with his loss of power? I don’t know. But it was dumb.
Cook like a mafioso
At some point in my past, at a time when I was considering writing a mafia novel, I purchased a copy of “the Mafia Cookbook.” It was a series of recipes for traditional Italian meals (not anything more sinister than that). I read it, and a bunch of “true crime” testimonies of Mafioso turned state’s informer. I still might write it one day – though I see that the plotline I had mapped out in my head of two brothers taking very divergent career paths is now the basis of a Showtime Television series. One of the brothers in my story was going to be a man of the cloth… but I digress.
Had I the intention of cooking like a mafioso I would totally use one of these…
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New PM
It would be somewhat remiss of me not to comment briefly on our new PM. Congratulations to Ms Gillard for making history and all that…
By my reckoning she’s the first “ranga” PM, the first female PM, the first challenger to oust a sitting PM in their first term, the stager of the fastest bloodless coup in history and the PM with the best hairstyle (which I put down to having a hair stylist for a partner).
Surely everybody saw this coming from the moment Rudd and Gillard formed an uneasy relationship as leader and deputy. K-Rudd’s love-hate relationship with the Australian public and the ALP respectively came to an end in a pretty abrupt moment. Labor has form for ousting elected political leaders in favour of party apparatchiks. It’s not uncommon for the party to foist premiers upon the unwilling denizens of our states – and Channel 10 are about to remind us that it’s all to typical of Labor at a Federal level as well – with its docu-drama Hawke. Labor does anything to hold on to power – even sacrificing one of its own, even if its own happens to be the most popular PM ever – who ousted the PM they loathed.
Rudd’s problem was his chalk and cheese relationship with those around him – the voters, who knew him not, loved him. His party, and any members of the opposition who knew him, reserved incredible disdain for the man. In my former role I dealt with pollies and political pundits, I shared a desk briefly with the PMs infamous chief of staff (as he phoned through some interview transcripts). Of all the people I’ve met, and of everything I’ve read, the impression I get is that Rudd operated with a veneer of courtesy which covered over a multitude of flaws and sins. His outbursts of rage – now common knowledge – were apparently typical of his treatment of those in his way. David Marr’s fascinating political obituary shows where he went wrong.
He had to do everything himself. He couldn’t trust and didn’t delegate. He worked his staff ruthlessly. His temper was formidable. The office operated in a strange atmosphere of rush and delay. Everything happened at the last minute, more often than not to suit the next media hit. This didn’t change when he became PM. While he rode high in the polls it hardly mattered. His party accepted Rudd’s demands for near absolute control. Cabinet was reduced to a shadow of itself.
Part of the problem was Rudd’s old ambition to find decent solutions to the nation’s problems. Decency is personal, intuitive, hard to delegate. Marry that to a sense of indispensability that is right off the Richter scale, and you had a recipe for ruin. Once again, Rudd had enemies everywhere.
Rudd is what happens when ruthless efficiency meets the intention to do good things. His motives were pure but his methods were not.
I couldn’t figure out where Abbott was for the first 24 hours of the coup. Had he come out strongly against Labor and the murky backroom operations of the factions and the unions Gillard’s political nose may have been bloodied from the opening moments of her ascension to power, instead, Labor get a bit of a bump in the polls.
The reaction amongst my Facebook friends was interesting – most seem unhappy with the manner in which Rudd was dismissed, happy to see the back of him, and split on the question of whether Gillard’s hair colour or gender was more historic. Having had the chance to see which way most of my friends swing politically in the last few days I’m struck by what a conservative batch they are. Maybe I’ll vote ALP just to be contrarian…
What I can’t understand is Gillard’s appeal. She seems merciless. She’s the most extremely left wing PM we’ve ever had. And she sounds like a character from Kath and Kim.
The Labor PR machine was impressive. Every Labor talking head, from union bosses to exiled former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie (speaking from Wyoming), had their talking points in order. They praised her as a “strong and decisive figure,” “a born leader,” “an excellent communicator,” and the person who would get Labor’s focus back on the big issues. And each person mentioned the same issues. This was all impressively “on message.”
Possibly my favourite part of the post-coup coverage was Crikey’s collection of photoshopped versions of Julia Gillard (henceforth J-Gill) in the situations she said were more likely than her challenging K-Rudd.
YouTube Tuesday: Fellowship of the bvvvrrrrrrr
This is the latest YouTube Tuesday ever… “bvvvrrrr” is the noise I reckon the Vuvuzela makes. It has no vowels. This video is funny.
Via Tim’s blog.
If the Sermon on the Mount was on YouTube
Sermon on the Mount gets the YouTube comment treatment.
Via here.
June 26, 2010