I steward Productive Pastor, a podcast and community of ministry leaders focused on how productivity and strategic ministry in the average church. I write about practical approaches to ministry productivity. I also write emails about church stability/development and my own theological musics in our current social moment.
How I got over my fears about grammar and writing | Self-Publishing with Chad
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Hey Friend - Are you thinking about writing? Do you want to get your ideas out into the world? In the welcome sequence for this list, I shared how writing is an idea machine. I had one big fear in undertaking this massive self-publishing project without spending TONS of money. The biggest benefit to traditional publishing is a first time author having access to an editor. I know I need editing. I wrote a Master's Thesis in seminary. My wife and a few good friends were generous with their time and read a 100 page paper several times to help me clean it up. It took some serious work. With the speed of this project and the experiment in doing it as cheaply as possible, I knew hiring an editor for $1,000 or so was out of the scope. Thankfully, the last couple years of writing online helped develop a better approach to sentence structure and writing. Using the Hemingway App, an AI developed editor, taught me a handful of things to consistently revise. I learned to shorten sentences, work on flow, and a few other things. Amazon is strict on AI use in the KDP system, so I want to rely on AI as little as possible. Luckily, I always save first drafts AND final drafts of everything. I dropped a few of both (from shorter articles) into Chat GPT and asked it to give me a list of typical grammatical issues I struggle with in first drafts and the difference in the final draft. I then asked it to build out a suggested list of rules to consider in table format. I printed it out and kept it with my manuscript when I started editing. I took my first rough draft of a section, revised it myself according to rules I learned, and imported both into Chat GPT. I managed to resolve 95% of the issues on my own. The AI gave me a few suggestions. After doing this 4 or 5 times, I asked it to update the table of suggested rules. I started keeping both with my manuscript. I'll still spot check sections after my edit. I'm at the point where I am fixing 98% of things myself the first time. I'd love to get to the point where this training results in better 1st drafts, but I will take what I can get. Thanks for reading this little peek under the hood of this writing project. Chad PS - Remember you can hit reply to any email to ask a question! |
Hey. I'm Chad Brooks.
I steward Productive Pastor, a podcast and community of ministry leaders focused on how productivity and strategic ministry in the average church. I write about practical approaches to ministry productivity. I also write emails about church stability/development and my own theological musics in our current social moment.
For the past year, I’ve been on a personal tear about the church and social media. For the gist of it, here’s a video about one of the biggest mistakes I see churches make. The TLDR is that many pastors and other leaders in normal-size churches don’t understand how the algorithm drives Facebook, to really get traction, you have to pay to play, and the realization that many churches' posting strategies are actually HURTING their ability to reach people on Social Media. What’s the biggest...
A decade ago, when I was church planting, I was in a season where I wasn’t “at” a local on Sunday mornings. I spent some of that time preaching for colleagues when they needed a Sunday off. I also led worship at another United Methodist Church frequently. But on the Sundays when I didn’t have some assignment at a local church, I decided to skip church. I think you need to do it every now and then as well. Does this sound a bit off? Well, I realized this past week how the idea is actually...
Let’s wrap up these conversations on “calling on the name of the Lord” as a primary spiritual act. I’ve got a few articles* you can read if you want to catch up, but let’s get right into it. You might know I’ve got a really intense system of Bible notes and list-making. One of my commenters on YouTube remarked last year, it seems like what you might find in the Thompson Chain Reference. I’ll call that a compliment! This feeds into today. It isn’t about a specific mention of “calling on the...