How would I become a author of Catholic books?

[TraderTif]

I’m just asking in theory, as I’ve often thought of becoming a writer. (I’m still in college, majoring in Computers and English.) After being told by several teachers that my strength lies in non-fiction, I began wondering what I could write about. And I thought about how much I enjoy reading books that explain Catholic teaching, even though I think that so many of them are incredibly hard to understand. (They remind me of my economics textbooks! Bleh!!) I keep reading and thinking “I could have made this much clearer.”

I know I would need more education (especially in Catholic theology, etc.) before I could think about becoming an author. But how would I go about investigating this possibility? Does anyone have any advice?
Tif

 

[mercygate]

1. Become a good writer.
2. Find an “angle” – a subject and an approach to it that would be unique to your knowledge and experience.
3. Identify your medium – periodicals? books? catechetical materials?
4. If you’re aiming at a periodical, see what they want – how many words, scope . . . .
5. Write something – an article or a book chapter.
6. Ask someone to look at it and critique it.
7. Work from there.

 

[Wolseley]

A couple tips from one who’s been there, if you’re planning on going with a Catholic publisher:

—Make sure that what you’re writing is a book, or a book-sized project; my particular work was more along the lines of a large pamphlet, and nobody would touch it. I tried practically every Catholic publisher in America, and still nobody would touch it.

—Bear in mind that the Catholic publishing industry is really, really small, as compared to “mainstream” publishers; whereas a publisher like Simon & Schuster buys manuscripts every day, the Catholic press usually is already booked three to five years in advance as to what they’re going to publish. (I didn’t make that figure up—several of the Catholic publishers I talked to when I was trying to publish told me that.) So, if you’re looking to see your book in print within a year or two, think again.

I finally gave up on trying to get my tome published. It was an apologetic work which I wrote to help Catholics on the Internet when encountering anti-Catholics using the “Boettner List”; and since I wrote it primarily for that purpose, I figured that getting the information out there for people to use was more important than “getting published”, so I simply posted it on a couple of Christian message boards and said whoever needed to use it, use it, for free, as long as I got credit as author. (shrug) I’m past being bitter about it, but I will freely admit that I did not have a good experience with the Catholic publishing establishment.

 

[mercygate]

If you’re going with a book, be sure you have an outline of chapters and a clear focus and audience.

THEN: query various publishers about whether they are interested before writing the whole book. Send a sample chapter along with the chapter list.

Throwing a full book “over the transom” as they say in the industry is almost guaranteed to get you a non-response or a clear negative.

 

[otjm]

I’m just asking in theory, as I’ve often thought of becoming a writer. (I’m still in college, majoring in Computers and English.) After being told by several teachers that my strength lies in non-fiction, I began wondering what I could write about. And I thought about how much I enjoy reading books that explain Catholic teaching, even though I think that so many of them are incredibly hard to understand. (They remind me of my economics textbooks! Bleh!!) I keep reading and thinking “I could have made this much clearer.”

I know I would need more education (especially in Catholic theology, etc.) before I could think about becoming an author. But how would I go about investigating this possibility? Does anyone have any advice?

Tif

1. Get a day job that will support your habit.
2. Marry someone rich who will support your habit.
3. Win the lottery - then you can support your habit and someone else’s too!

Seriously, there are many times we think we can do it better than someone else; and sometimes we are right. But there was at least one, if not several reasons that person got published… If you truly want to write about the Church, I would suggest that you have a minor in editing and some serious course work in English (not necessarily a major), and in all seriousness, find a day job that will keep a roof over your head. One of my daughters followed that path, got hired by a software firm (she applied for a technical writing job: “Do you have a background in technical writing?” answer: “Technically, no.”) as an online customer assistant, offered and was given permission to re-write the manual for the customer assistants, and was moved to a technical writers’ position as soon as they saw her skill. Tghat took all of about one month.

She thinks technical writing is about as exciting as watching paint dry. But hey, it pays the bills. A friend of a friend of mine writes roamntic novels, and we were talking; she said that she has met many writers who “have a day job” and spend their lunch hour writing; it is a disciplined time, you have it each day, it doesn’t take away from after work “I’m tired, maybe tomorrow” routine, and is a means of breaking in.

As to how others get to be writers of theological issues, contact the authors and/or find other ways of researching their background. I would focus much less on getting a theological degree at this point than I would about getting a real job.

And as a thought, if you truly are interested in theology, more than just writing, consider getting a minimum of a Masters, and possibly a Ph.D. and teaching, as that is how a number of writers ended up publishing - their book was their research, or the fruit of their research.

 

[Malcolm_McLean]

I’m just asking in theory, as I’ve often thought of becoming a writer.
I know I would need more education (especially in Catholic theology, etc.) before I could think about becoming an author. But how would I go about investigating this possibility? Does anyone have any advice?

It depends what you want to write. If you want to write about a saint then obviously you need to become an expert on the biographical details of that saint’s life, if you want to write about Latin liturgy you probably need to speak Latin, if you want to write about, say, the Church in China from a documentary angle, you need to know some Chinese Catholics.

For some subjects there are no experts. For instance if you want to write about “prayer” then your prayers are just as valid as anyone else’s.

In my case I had to mug up on a few subjects, like Mithraism, to write 12 Common Atheist Arguments (refuted). The book is also a distillation of a lot of real exchanges with atheists. I doubt it could have been written purely as an abstract exercise.

If you are a student in college then you are an authority on campus culture and chaplaincies, at the very minimum. Don’t underestimate what you can already write about.

 

[drafdog]

Begin by reading Catholic authors like Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner and James Joyce. Do some research on other Catholic authors and read what is out there…With a lot of reading of Catholic authors as a basis, you can then better discern where you want to go in the field of literature.
But the only way to become a Catholic author is to pick up paper and pen and start writing.

Matthew

 

[Fr.Joe]

Along with what everybody else has said, write about something you’re passionate about and present it in an original manner. There are millions of writers out there, so if you want to catch the attention of publishers, make your work stand out.

God Bless.

Fr. Joe