From blog to book by Lucy Rycroft
I started blogging in 2012 as a way of communicating the thoughts I was having about faith and early parenthood. I didn't considered myself a writer, yet over time I started to get more comments along the lines of "When's your book coming out?"
Of course I was touched, but I was also flummoxed by the suggestion that, just because I could put a coherent thought or two into a 1000-word article, I was automatically going to be able to write an 80,000 word thesis on a particular topic, not to mention find an interested publisher.
The problem is that blogs, by their nature, are stand-alone. The best blog posts - in my opinion - take a big thought, and communicate many different lines of argument which a reader may mull over for weeks and months to come, but which in themselves are expressed succinctly, without saying absolutely all which could be said on the matter. Readers are expected to add their own thoughts and ideas - this can grow into a helpful online debate.
Gathering, say, twelve blog posts and trying to make a book out of them would simply not work. You need continuity in a book, and blog posts are too disparate when drawn together. You also need the book itself to have a start, middle and end, whereas blog posts have this already built in.
In short, it would take a lot of work. I loved that people thought I could write a book one day, but had absolutely no idea how that might come about, or what I would write if it did.
And then, in December 2017, I blogged daily Advent devotionals for the first time. Taken from the everyday experiences I was having while preparing for Christmas, each devotional pulled a lesson from Scripture on which to reflect.
I got some lovely feedback from readers, and people started to ask whether the devotionals might become a book. At last, I could see that, with a bit of tweaking, here was something which might actually function well as a published book.
So here we are, approaching Advent 2019, and my book 'Redeeming Advent' is available for pre-orders!
But what about the journey from blog to book? Here's a snapshot of the work needed in order to make my blog posts book-ready:
* I had to re-order the devotions. I'd originally blogged by the day, so there was no overall theme, but going through them and jotting down each theme helped me to bring them into a more coherent order, so that they made more sense, and that the reader travelled more seamlessly from Day 1 to Day 24.
* I had to edit, add and re-write. When I wrote them back in 2017, I had just an hour or two to spend on each devotion, as they had to be written in the evening for the next day's blog post. So they were rather rough and ready! On re-reading, I discovered lots of 'mistakes', lots of times when I hadn't fully followed through a particular thought, lots of moments where more clarity was needed, lots of opportunities for further anecdote, humour or embellishment.
* I had to provide sections. Perhaps not essential, but devotional books don't have chapters, and 24 days is a long time! I felt that by dividing the book into four sections of six devotions, I could offer some helpful 'sign-posts' to readers, aiding them to make sense of their Advent journey. It also gave me the option of recommending the book to groups, for them to follow as an Advent series, along with some free group study material (which I'll be writing to accompany the book). The sections I came up with were Redeeming our Home, Redeeming our Christmas, Redeeming our Hearts and Redeeming our Communities.
* I had to keep the 'magic' that had drawn people to the devotions in the first place. In editing a series of blog posts for a book, the language and content become the priority. However, it was the style of my original writing which had drawn people towards the devotions, so in editing I had to make sure that the down-to-earth, realistic and honest approach in my writing was retained. Not an easy job!
* I had to come up with a new title. Originally I called the blogs 'Random Advent', because that expressed the sheer randomness of coming up with a new Advent thought each night, and the unrelated-ness of each devotion. But this wouldn't do for a book which people were going to have to spend their hard-earned money on! It took me ages, and I edited the whole book before finally coming up with the title 'Redeeming Advent'. This seemed to summarise what the book is about: redeeming the 'secular' celebrations of Advent, so that we neither worship them, nor throw them out, but use them to allow God to teach us more about His character, His Son, and how He wants us to live.
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