014 | The Small Word That Stops Big Books

Thrilled to announce the latest episode of Christian Author 2.0 is now live and ready for your earbuds. In this installment, we’re diving deep into a topic every GospelWise author faces: FEAR. That tiny, four-letter word that tries to sidetrack our calling, block our writing, and put doubts in our creative hearts.

Curious what’s inside this episode? Here’s what you’ll learn...

🎯 5 Keys You’ll Discover in This Episode

1. How fear sneaks into every step of the author journey—from starting a book all the way to connecting it with others (Jeremy gets personal at 01:08).
2. Why constant over-editing might be holding you back—and how to tell the difference between healthy revision and fear-driven perfectionism (Jeremy at 08:11).
3. The rock tumbler analogy and what it teaches about preserving your unique voice, instead of “sanding” away what makes your book YOU (Jeremy at 09:17).
4. How sharing your book is exposing—and why that’s okay—plus tips for not letting fear stop you from pressing “publish” or sharing with the world (Jeremy at 16:14).
5. What to do with bad reviews and criticism—including Jeremy’s own bumpy experience launching a book that stirred up controversy! (18:42)

🌟 Fun Fact

Did you know Jeremy once accidentally upset a whole group of readers on his email list when he released a book critical of Mormonism? The flood of 1-star reviews almost made him want to quit writing, but he persevered—and the book now has a stellar rating! Talk about facing fear head-on (20:53).

🚀 Wrapping Up

If you’ve ever let fear—or doubt—keep you from writing, refining, publishing, or sharing your story, you’ll find both empathy and practical encouragement in this episode. Jeremy reminds us: “Let the love of Christ compel you forward”—don’t let fear call the shots (23:41).

👉 Listen Now & Join the Journey

Ready to conquer your creative fears? Hit play on Episode 14 of Christian Author 2.0 and let’s move forward together.

Hey, Creative Christian, Jeremy here with another episode of Christian Author 2.0, offering you some hopefully helpful insight, guidance, practical advice for the long road ahead, giving you momentum to keep you going in your calling as a gospel-wise author. And in this installment, I want to focus on sort of a small word that I have myself felt and been burdened by and have been impacted by in my own author career over the last 20 years or so. Uh, it's a small word but a big word. I would imagine it's a word that you yourself have experienced and have been burdened by and thwarted by even. And probably impacted by at all levels of your GospelWise author journey as a creator, caretaker, and connector. But I would imagine that for many of us, this little tiny word that's a big word by and large impacts the post-creator side of our responsibilities as a GospelWise author, primarily the caretaker side leading into the connector side. And I want to drill down into sort of the, the word that impacts the mindset that we take into our journey as authors and our ongoing engagement with our responsibilities to write the book, But also publish the book and then connect the book with the world around us. I've been a bit coy about that tiny little word.

That's a big word. And so what am I talking about? The little word, F-E-A-R. Fear. Yeah, 4-letter word, tiny word, big word. And I would imagine fear has impacted us in a number of different ways in our life. We've felt that twinge of fear when we get that doctor's report, the health diagnosis. I myself experienced that when I got the phone call saying that I had cancer. Thyroid cancer.

The good kind of cancer, quote unquote. But still cancer nonetheless. And I understood very deeply that moment of, like, fearing the road ahead, the future. Or when I was let go from a job, and then another job after that, for a variety of reasons pertaining to my own early young adult story. The fear of unemployment and the fear of making rent or buying food or buying gas, paying for my car payment, whatever that is, We've experienced that fear of job loss or any sort of loss, a relationship, a person. We get what that little word does to us when fear meets us squarely in the face because of life circumstances. Life shifts often because of the things that come at us that then Stoke fear. And it's no different with the author life as well.

When we're writing the book, fear comes in, right? We wonder, do I know what I'm doing? What on earth am I doing? Why am I doing this? What is the point of writing this fiction story? Is it worthwhile? Is it worth it? Is it worth putting in the time? Is it worth putting These characters together and the plot points and, and all the different scenarios that go into telling the story, or the Bible study, or the devotional. Fear comes in, in the writing process, absolutely. And oftentimes it sidetracks us from finishing. And then even if we do finish, there is that editing side of the creating side, the, the refinement, which kind of edges into that caretaker side. Which I'll get to in just a minute. But here we go with the creator. We're writing, we are then having to edit what we have written, and then the fear starts creeping in. The grammar, the punctuation, the plot points.

Does the story hold together? Does that turn of phrase land right? Have I turned enough phrases? To make a compelling case for the argument that I'm making and the resource? Do I have the proper handle on the book of James or Pauline theology, or am I really drilling down into the personal stories that will carry someone along in this devotional that I've written about grief or joy or hope or suffering? Fear meets us on the page when we are creating, when we are writing. And fear stands in the way of us actually getting the work done and quite often finishing the work. If you have a problem finishing your story or finishing your book, the resource, the devotional, I would imagine that fear, that small little word, might be in the background. Keeping you from fully fulfilling your calling and being faithful to finish the book that Christ has put on your heart. But then there is the other side of it where we might have written the book, we've finished the book, then of course there is that refinement side where we wonder if we've refined it enough, if we've edited it enough. And fear, I have found, keeps me in that constant editing and re-editing, writing and rewriting, refining and re-refining cycle. Kind of like the rock tumbler that you just keep tumbling the story or the devotional over and over again to make sure that it is perfect, that it is just right, that there are no mistakes, that nobody will be able to find anything wrong. With the book that you have written.

I want to be honest with you here that, uh, there's a couple things that I have learned from my own experience with writing, but also that word fear, that, uh, I want to offer you here halfway through this episode. Okay? And that is, first of all, you're never going to write a perfect book. So disavow yourself of that notion right here that somehow you will get everything right when it comes to the story or the resource. There are no perfect books. You will never not have some sort of mistake inside the book, and you're going to publish it with mistakes. That's just going to happen. I've seen this even with like mainstream traditionally published authors, like a Stephen King or a John Grisham, where there's a punctuation mistake, there's a missing word, or a misspelling, or a miscapitalization, or even a plot point, a plot hole, a mistake. These are mainstream authors, and they themselves still experience the imperfection of creating art.

So it's gonna happen. And so we as authors and we as creators, creative people, need to just be okay with the fact that we're never going to write the perfect book and there will be mistakes in our work. So that's something on the one hand that I want you to keep in mind. On the other hand, there is a danger in continuing to refine and edit and revise endlessly that one, keeps us from actually publishing, putting the book out into the world and blessing our reading neighbor with the book, because of the fear that, that sort of holds us back and keeps us going back over the story, back over that one chapter in the resource to make sure that it is perfect, that it is just right. But I have found that as I go over and over and over my books, that I inevitably Revise and refine myself out of the story or that resource. I've used this analogy, I've referenced it just a minute ago, and I've used it elsewhere, but the rock tumbler analogy where we throw a bunch of rocks into the, the rock tumbler, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and then there's gravel and sand and some water, I think, and you, you set it on tumble and tumble those Bigger rocks with all of the very interesting characteristics and flaws even, and qualities that make the rock particular to what that rock is, the kind of rock it is, or the, the nature, the uniqueness of the rock. And in sending that rock into the tumbler, And all the rocks into the tumbler with the gravel and the sand and the water and tumbling it over and over again. The idea with the tumbler is that you do that to get all of those unique characteristics worn down to have a smooth, uh, sort of finish to the rock that you can then, I guess, display or pass off to somebody or gift or whatever.

Yeah. Usually these are like, you know, a kid's gift, and the kids love like the seeing the transformation of the rock. And my son had one of these, and he loved on the other side of the, the tumbling, seeing how, you know, physics did its thing. And he had this collection of very smooth, very same, very ordinary rocks. That's the danger that I'm getting at here with the analogy that I've used, is that When we let fear get into the way of what we've created, when we let fear seep into the creating process, and especially the post-creating process and that caretaking process when we are called to edit and refine and get it reader-ready— you want to do that for sure, but there is a danger of revising to the extent that we revise ourselves and our Uniquenesses, our unique perspectives and opinions and, and, uh, the uniqueness of the story we've written, the characters and the turns of phrases, uh, of that resource, and our own perspective on suffering, if that is the, the devotional you're writing, or the stories you've chosen to illustrate joy or hope, or even the illustrations you've used in your Bible study to Help the reader grasp the significance of the passage of Scripture. Doubt quickly follows fear when we are over-revising and over-refining. And so, on the one hand, you can't perfect ultimately, entirely, your book. So fear is going to keep us trying to perfect it, but fear is also going to make us doubt Ourself and doubt what we have put into the book that is of ourself.

And so I want to caution you about the constant revision during that caretaker process, the refining process. Are you doing it because you fear and doubt what you've written, or are there legitimate reasons for you to continue revising and refining? To make sure that there isn't stand— that there isn't something in the book itself that stands in the way of the reader benefiting and experiencing the story. Advice to you alongside that caution of that little teeny word fear and the doubt that comes in behind it when it comes to this part of caretaking, the revision, the refining, the editing. Uh, we want to get it reader-ready, make sure there's nothing standing in the way of the reader benefiting from our story or devotional. But there's a fine line between that and then the constant revision that is fueled by fear and doubt, that then makes the book same, ordinary, not us. And as I've said elsewhere, readers want us, our full self, When they come to the book that they have bought from us. They want to experience what we have written, not what somebody else has written, or what the, the rest of the world has written, in the sense of this book feeling like all the other books, right? So fear and doubt with writing, refining, caretaking, and then that caretaker and connector bridge. Where we then are called to pull the trigger, publish the book, put the book out into the world.

I will tell you that there is both the joy and the thrill of publishing, where you have said, yes, this is it! You've gotten the COVID right, the interior right, everything is ready to go, and you press publish. There is something incredibly thrilling and joyful and joy-filled With that moment of launching the book, especially if it's your first book. But right alongside that joy and, uh, happiness and thrill is the fear and the doubt that quickly chases both of those happy emotions. And then, uh, there is that shadow side of the thrill, the joy and the hope and the, the happiness of The book going out into the world, right? And the fear is, on the one hand, going to stop you from pulling that trigger and putting the book out into the world, but it's also going to stop you from connecting it to people. Um, because one, a book that nobody knows about is a book that nobody can critique, that nobody can reject, that nobody can read and give a bad review or send you an email or whatever. Right. Especially those reviews. That's, that's the other side of the fear, which I'll get to in just a minute.

But when we come into that caretaker side of things leading into the connecting side, fear is going to stop us from publishing, and fear is going to hold us back from offering it to readers by deliberately connecting it to them through the normal modes And normal means of connecting, marketing, selling. The ads, the content marketing, the posts on Facebook, maybe to your own friends and family, letting them know that, hey, you've written a book! It's out into the world! That invites one exposure, right? As creative people, we are exposing part of our own self when we offer this creative product to the world, this, this work of art that we've created, there's a piece of ourself, there's probably a large part of ourself in this book that we've written. So there's something very exposing about that, and it's very easy just to maybe quietly put it into the world and launch it while not fully broadcasting it, because then we are fully broadcasting ourself. So there's a danger of us not actually publishing the book because of that fear, but then there's also the danger of us not connecting it, marketing it, selling it, Because of the fear of what people will think about it, what people will say about it, how people will react to what we have written. And then there is that fear of the dreaded 1-star, 2-star review. I've had the personal experience of getting those kinds of reviews, and I tend not to look at my reviews any longer. I think there is actually sound advice that I've gotten from other, uh, more seasoned veterans to ignore reviews, not look at reviews, except once in a while. I think there is benefit from getting reader feedback, especially if you're an independent author who mostly just kind of self-edits, maybe proofreads with somebody else, but then publishes into the world.

There's benefit of getting some sort of feedback, which you get from Reader responses and reviews and sales, of course. But on the other side, we cannot let the opinions of other people impact and dictate what we write or how we write. Quality for sure is important. Again, we want to ensure that nothing stands in the way of the experience of the reader with what we've written. But on the other side, there is still the danger of us being swayed and dissuaded from the opinions of others. And the reviews are what are gonna hold us back. The fear of getting the bad review, the 1-star review. I actually launched a book, this is probably 10 years or so ago, almost, maybe, yeah, almost about a decade ago now.

It was my, uh, 4th book in my Order of Thaddeus series called American God. And the first 3 books had actually done really well, had gotten a solid readership among both Christians, but also spiritually interested people, but maybe not so much religious people because of the sort of religious conspiracy nature of the books. that I was writing, that were very similar to Dan Brown, James Rollins, Steve Berry, some others, Clive Cussler, the kind of action-adventure thriller books that were super popular 10 years ago, somewhat even now. But I had done really well, was super excited for this next book, American God, which centered on actually a political conspiracy involving the church of Jesus Christ and the Latter-day Saints, or better known as Mormonism. And I deliberately took on the Mormon religion as a sort of, uh, foil to the actual historic Christian religion, the Christian faith, and pitted these, uh, antagonistic characters within Mormonism against those within this religious order preserving the Christian faith. And I launched to my email list and had no idea that there were a whole bunch of Mormons on that email list and who were not very happy with the book that I had written because I had taken on their faith and showed it to be a, uh, well, to be frank, a bastardization of actual Christianity. And historically and theologically, there are a whole lot of reasons why Mormonism is not Christian or Christianity, and how the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, and others did so with a deliberate intention to oppose historic Christianity. But anyway, so I launched and got all these 1-star reviews.

And the fear just rushed in. I was afraid and fearful that I was no longer gonna sell any more books, that this book itself would not sell, and began doubting whether or not I should continue writing fiction or writing the series. And— and I'll tell you that, one, all of those fears and doubts were unfounded because people continued to buy it and people continued to love the books I was writing, but also they love that story. And I think right now it sits at around 4.5 stars, 4.67 or so. Uh, so it actually has sold well, it's been received well by others, and I didn't allow that fear or that doubt to impact my writing road ahead. And that's what I would encourage you, brother, sister, to be very careful of and mindful of when you think about, uh, the future for yourself. Following that calling, being available and faithful to that calling, and not letting fear and doubt impact what you know Christ has called you to do for his glory and the gospel good of your neighbor. Doubt and fear are the weapons of the enemy.

Love drives out that fear, right? 1 John chapter 4 reminds us that there is no fear in love, and perfect love drives out fear. We can be very reassured that Christ has called you, has called me, has called us into this very special vocation To testify to the good news of God's grace in Christ Jesus through the special calling of being gospel-wise authors, of wielding the pen for the sake of the cross. And the enemy is going to want to do everything possible to dissuade you, to distract you, to place doubts, burrow those doubts in your heart, using the fuel of fear To prevent you from doing what Christ has called you to do. And so I would ask you and invite you instead to let love drive away the fear, but drive you forward into your calling, down the road, down this pathway that you have set out on, being available to that calling with the hope and expectation of being faithful to it, however that looks. In your particular season of life. Let the love of Christ compel you forward. Let the love of your neighbor keep you writing, help you publish what you have written, and then drive you to connect what you've written to your reading neighbor with the full intention of serving them with what you've written for their sake. And the glory of God.

So fear— small word, big word. I felt it. I've experienced it as a creative Christian, and I know you will as well. But may we instead let love compel us forward rather than letting fear hold us back. Blessings, GospelWise author, on your journey. See you down the road, wielding the pen for the sake of the cross.