Jerry B. Jenkins's Blog, page 28
January 27, 2015
Going Viral: Lessons From a New Nonfiction Bestseller
Forty years into my writing career, and with more than 185 published books behind me, you can imagine how rare it is for me to get excited about a new idea.
But I’m happy to say that The Matheny Manifesto became a delightful, surprising labor of love for me to write. In this blog, I want to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how the book came to be, suggest what might have made it catch fire and debut on the New York Times bestseller list, and how this could apply to your own writing.
The Origin of the ‘Manifesto’
Early last year I got an email from Mike Matheny, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. I knew of him because I’m a rabid baseball fan, and he was aware of me because he happened to be a Left Behind reader and knew I also wrote sports books (with people like Hank Aaron, Walter Payton, Orel Hershiser, and Nolan Ryan).
He told me of a letter he had written a few years ago to some fellow parents, in response to their asking him to coach their youth league baseball team. In it he basically told them that parents were what was wrong with youth sports—among other things. He also outlined the old-school approach to coaching he would employ if they really wanted him to take the job.
Despite his blunt, unconventional approach, they reluctantly agreed to give him a try—on his conditions. Someone leaked his letter to the Internet, it went 
viral, and someone started calling it a manifesto. Soon Matheny and Manifesto seemed to go together, and the letter had its own moniker and took on a life of its own.
The Matheny Manifesto started showing up on bulletin boards in locker rooms and dugouts all over the country, and Mike was even interviewed on the TV broadcast of the Little League World Series.
Despite his youth (Matheny is one of the youngest major league managers at 44), he takes an old-school approach to sports and to life.
Mike’s contention is that it’s only at the highest levels of sport—the pros—where players and coaches must be so single-minded about winning. He reminds readers that at every other level, especially the early stages, only a minuscule fraction of the players will ever become scholarship athletes, let alone professionals.
Yet parents and youth league coaches treat it like life and death.
Matheny says, “In the few short decades since my childhood, I’d seen such a shocking shift in the values and actions of parents and coaches that I believed it was nearly impossible for the youth of today to love the game the way I do. If I was right, youth sports was long overdue for an overhaul of business as usual.”
Interviewing Mike at length during spring training in Florida and before games in Milwaukee, New York, Denver, St. Louis, and Chicago led to one of the richest nonfiction writing experiences I’ve ever had—something wholly unexpected at this stage of my career.
In the book, Mike shares his old-school views on what’s wrong with youth sports, what we can all do better, and what real success looks like on and off the field. Anyone who’s ever had a problem with youth sports is, by default, a potential fan of The Matheny Manifesto.
The Engine Behind Matheny’s Explosive Message
Mike said from the outset that his main goals as a leader of young people were to:
Teach them how to play the right way
Make a positive impact on them
Do this with class
Matheny wasn’t certain the parents who had asked him to coach their youth baseball team would still want him after they heard his response. He wrote a five-page letter that gave them every opportunity to withdraw their invitation. He began, “I’ve always said I would coach only a team of orphans. Why? Because the biggest problem in youth sports is the parents.”
How’s that for an opener?
The tough-love philosophy in that letter contained his throwback beliefs that authority should be respected, discipline and hard work rewarded, spiritual faith cultivated, family kept a priority, and humility considered a virtue.
In The Matheny Manifesto, Mike builds on his original letter by diagnosing the problem—besides parents, it’s also coaches—then offering a hopeful way forward. He uses stories from his small-town childhood, as well as from his career as a player and now a manager, to explore eight keys to success: leadership, confidence, teamwork, faith, class, character, toughness, and humility.
Matheny’s old-school advice might not always be politically correct, but it works. What I found most refreshing was that just when I expected a cliché or a 
typical approach to a common problem, Mike surprised me. He recounted a solution that sounded revolutionary, but which he had tried and found effective—and you will too.
I was impressed when the Cardinals knocked the favored Dodgers out of the 2014 postseason, and during the post game celebration Mike Matheny took the time to tip his cap to the disappointed Los Angeles team. That’s class.
But I was even more impressed several days later when the shoe was on the other foot and the Cardinals were eliminated by San Francisco. Mike stayed in his own dugout long enough to catch the eye of his counterpart, Giants manager Bruce Bochy, and tipped his cap to the winner. That’s character.
How a book hits the New York Times bestseller list
What made Mike Matheny’s letter to youth league baseball parents go viral?
In short—his letter rallied like-minded people behind a worthy cause, the very definition of what it takes for anything to go viral these days. The resulting book was built on and benefited from that very platform, and readers shared their passion online and with each other and bought copies everywhere, making it an instant bestseller.
What’s your cause?
It helps if your subject has class and character. And if his or her cause has a pre-existing platform—particularly one that has already gone viral, you could be on your way to a bestseller.
The post Going Viral: Lessons From a New Nonfiction Bestseller appeared first on Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild.
The Matheny Manifesto—Part 1
Forty years into my writing career, and with more than 185 published books behind me, you can imagine how rare it is for me to get excited about a new idea. One that appeals to me may not benefit enough …
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January 2, 2015
My Best Writing Tip for the New Year
Get a handle on avoiding this common malady, and you’ll distance yourself from 99% of the competition.
For decades I’ve told writers there is no shortcut, no secret sauce, no magic bean that will turn you into an overnight success, …
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Are You Making This #1 Amateur Writing Mistake?
Are you looking for the secret sauce that will turn you into a bestselling author? After 21 New York Times bestsellers, I can tell you there is no shortcut.
But writers still often ask me for that Yodaesque bit of wisdom “you’d give me if you could tell me only one thing…”
So here it is: Avoid on-the-nose writing.
It’s no magic bean but if you get a handle on this common writing pitfall, you will instantly outpace 99% of your competition.
Though it might sound like something positive, on-the-nose is a term coined by Hollywood scriptwriters for prose that mirrors real life without advancing your story. This is one of the most common mistakes I see in otherwise good writing.
No one chooses to write this way, but even pros fall into it unaware. It has nothing to do with one’s ability to put together a sentence, a paragraph, or even a scene. The writer may even have a great idea, know how to build tension, and have an ear for dialogue.
On-the-nose writing reads like this:
Paige’s phone chirped, telling her she had a call. She slid her bag off her shoulder, opened it, pulled out her cell, hit the Accept Call button, and put it to her ear.
“This is Paige,” she said.
“Hey, Paige.”
She recognized her fiancé’s voice. “Jim, darling! Hello!”
“Where are you, Babe?”
“Just got to the parking garage.”
“No more problems with the car then?”
“Oh, the guy at the gas station said he thinks it needs a wheel alignment.”
“Good. We still on for tonight?”
“Looking forward to it, Sweetie.”
“Did you hear about Alyson?”
“No, what about her?”
“Cancer.”
“What?”
Here’s how that scene should be rendered:
Paige’s phone chirped. It was her fiancé, Jim, and he told her something about one of their best friends that made her forget where she was.
“Cancer?” she whispered, barely able to speak. “I didn’t even know Alyson was sick. Did you?”
Trust me, not one reader is going to wonder how she knew the caller was Jim. We don’t need to be told that the chirp told her she had a call (duh), that her phone is in her purse, that her purse is over her shoulder, that she has to open it to get her phone, push a button to take the call, put the phone to her ear to hear and to speak, identify herself to the caller, be informed who it is…you get the point.
If you’ve fallen into on-the-nose writing (and we all have), don’t beat yourself up. It shows you have the ability to mirror, real life.
That’s nice. Now quit it.
Leave that to the amateurs.
Separate yourself from the competition by noticing the important stuff. Dig deep. Go past the surface. Mine your emotions, your mind and heart and soul, and remember what it felt like when you got news like that about someone you deeply cared about.
Don’t distract with minutia. Give the readers the adventure they signed up for when they chose to read your story. Take the reader with Paige when she says:
“I need to call her, Jim. I’ve got to cancel my meeting. And I don’t know about tonight…”
Now that’s a story I’d keep reading. Wouldn’t you?
The post Are You Making This #1 Amateur Writing Mistake? appeared first on Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild.
July 23, 2014
Serendipity
A Serendipitous God Moment
I don’t make a habit of reading email during church, but as I was following the biblical text on my phone one Sunday last July, I was alerted to a message from Eva Marie Everson, a novelist from Florida. Okay, I peeked.
She told me she and her daughter overheard a man in a store say, “I don’t believe in all this mumbo-jumbo but I really need to find these books.” He told a clerk, “The first one is called Left Behind and then I don’t know how many come after that.”
The store didn’t carry them, so Eva Marie said she turned around and told him how many there were in the series and added that there was a movie coming out this fall starring Nic Cage.
The man said, “You seem to know a lot about the books.”
“I know the writer. I consider him a friend.”
Eva Marie suggested several other stores, including a Christian bookstore, “but they won’t be open today.”
The man was amazed that a bookstore would not be open on a Sunday. He said he really needed to finish the first book. “I started reading it five years ago, but it belonged to a buddy of mine and I didn’t get to finish it.”
Eva Marie wished him the best in finding the books.
Minutes later he found her and her daughter in another department. “I had to come find you again,” he said in tears. “I’m in my early forties and I’ve been sick since I was 19. I’m pretty mad at God right now. I’ve had cancer for five years, first in my colon, then in my lungs, and now in my stomach. I’ve had more than fifty surgeries and more scheduled. The doctors tell me I have about six months to live and I feel like I have to read those books. I have to figure all this out.”
Eva Marie said, “Of course, my daughter and I talked to him about our bodies not being the end of life, that we—all of us—will spend eternity either with God or with the other guy. I told him I’d grown up in church my whole life but in my mid- to late 20s I was a mess. I asked Jesus to come into my heart and change me, and he did!”
The man told Eva Marie he needed to see to believe. She quoted the elf from The Santa Clause that “for adults seeing is believing, but for children believing is seeing.” Then she quoted from Matthew: “Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.’”
By then, Eva Marie was crying too.
She passed along to me his name and address and I emailed him that I was sending all 16 Left Behind titles. Meanwhile, he has accepted Eva Marie’s invitation to join her family at church Saturday evening. He wrote me that he’s looking forward to being there “& be able to ask god into my life & allow him into my life as being my lord & savior.”
I responded: I look forward to welcoming you into God’s family! That is a simple yet profound process that is made plain in the Left Behind books, but even before those arrive, Eva Marie can easily explain it all to you, and you can invite Christ into your life even before you attend her church.
He wrote back: I am getting excited just thinking about it.
Well, so am I.
The post A Serendipitous God Moment appeared first on Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild.
A Serendipitous God Appointment
I don’t make a habit of reading email during church, but as I was following the biblical text on my phone one Sunday last July, I was alerted to a message from Eva Marie Everson, a novelist from Florida. Okay, I peeked.
She told me she and her daughter overheard a man in a store say, “I don’t believe in all this mumbo-jumbo but I really need to find these books.” He told a clerk, “The first one is called Left Behind and then I don’t know how many come after that.”
The store didn’t carry them, so Eva Marie said she turned around and told him how many there were in the series and added that there was a movie coming out this fall starring Nic Cage.
The man said, “You seem to know a lot about the books.”
“I know the writer. I consider him a friend.”
Eva Marie suggested several other stores, including a Christian bookstore, “but they won’t be open today.”
The man was amazed that a bookstore would not be open on a Sunday. He said he really needed to finish the first book. “I started reading it five years ago, but it belonged to a buddy of mine and I didn’t get to finish it.”
Eva Marie wished him the best in finding the books.
Minutes later he found her and her daughter in another department. “I had to come find you again,” he said in tears. “I’m in my early forties and I’ve been sick since I was 19. I’m pretty mad at God right now. I’ve had cancer for five years, first in my colon, then in my lungs, and now in my stomach. I’ve had more than fifty surgeries and more scheduled. The doctors tell me I have about six months to live and I feel like I have to read those books. I have to figure all this out.”
Eva Marie said, “Of course, my daughter and I talked to him about our bodies not being the end of life, that we—all of us—will spend eternity either with God or with the other guy. I told him I’d grown up in church my whole life but in my mid- to late 20s I was a mess. I asked Jesus to come into my heart and change me, and he did!”
The man told Eva Marie he needed to see to believe. She quoted the elf from The Santa Clause that “for adults seeing is believing, but for children believing is seeing.” Then she quoted from Matthew: “Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.’”
By then, Eva Marie was crying too.
She passed along to me his name and address and I emailed him that I was sending all 16 Left Behind titles. Meanwhile, he has accepted Eva Marie’s invitation to join her family at church Saturday evening. He wrote me that he’s looking forward to being there “& be able to ask god into my life & allow him into my life as being my lord & savior.”
I responded: I look forward to welcoming you into God’s family! That is a simple yet profound process that is made plain in the Left Behind books, but even before those arrive, Eva Marie can easily explain it all to you, and you can invite Christ into your life even before you attend her church.
He wrote back: I am getting excited just thinking about it.
Well, so am I.
The post A Serendipitous God Appointment appeared first on Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild.
Serendipity
I don’t make a habit of reading email during church, but as I was following the biblical text on my phone one Sunday last July, I was alerted to a message from Eva Marie Everson, a novelist from Florida. Okay, I peeked.
She told me she and her daughter overheard a man in a store say, “I don’t believe in all this mumbo-jumbo but I really need to find these books.” He told a clerk, “The first one is called Left Behind and then I don’t know how many come after that.”
The store didn’t carry them, so Eva Marie said she turned around and told him how many there were in the series and added that there was a movie coming out this fall starring Nic Cage.
The man said, “You seem to know a lot about the books.”
“I know the writer. I consider him a friend.”
Eva Marie suggested several other stores, including a Christian bookstore, “but they won’t be open today.”
The man was amazed that a bookstore would not be open on a Sunday. He said he really needed to finish the first book. “I started reading it five years ago, but it belonged to a buddy of mine and I didn’t get to finish it.”
Eva Marie wished him the best in finding the books.
Minutes later he found her and her daughter in another department. “I had to come find you again,” he said in tears. “I’m in my early forties and I’ve been sick since I was 19. I’m pretty mad at God right now. I’ve had cancer for five years, first in my colon, then in my lungs, and now in my stomach. I’ve had more than fifty surgeries and more scheduled. The doctors tell me I have about six months to live and I feel like I have to read those books. I have to figure all this out.”
Eva Marie said, “Of course, my daughter and I talked to him about our bodies not being the end of life, that we—all of us—will spend eternity either with God or with the other guy. I told him I’d grown up in church my whole life but in my mid- to late 20s I was a mess. I asked Jesus to come into my heart and change me, and he did!”
The man told Eva Marie he needed to see to believe. She quoted the elf from The Santa Clause that “for adults seeing is believing, but for children believing is seeing.” Then she quoted from Matthew: “Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.’”
By then, Eva Marie was crying too.
She passed along to me his name and address and I emailed him that I was sending all 16 Left Behind titles. Meanwhile, he has accepted Eva Marie’s invitation to join her family at church Saturday evening. He wrote me that he’s looking forward to being there “& be able to ask god into my life & allow him into my life as being my lord & savior.”
I responded: I look forward to welcoming you into God’s family! That is a simple yet profound process that is made plain in the Left Behind books, but even before those arrive, Eva Marie can easily explain it all to you, and you can invite Christ into your life even before you attend her church.
He wrote back: I am getting excited just thinking about it.
Well, so am I.
The post Serendipity appeared first on Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild.
June 18, 2014
Tony Gwynn: A Life Cut Short
April 23, 2014
Writer: Do You Really Know Your ‘Why’?
Often I have to pinch myself at some of the perks the writing life has afforded me.
Like last spring, writing my blog while enjoying a view of Manhattan from the 48th floor of a luxury hotel, I was struck by the privileges I enjoy at this point in my career, compared to where I started.
The next morning I interviewed the subject of my next nonfiction book, here where he was staying with the people under his charge. They comprised a big league baseball team, in town to face the Mets, and he is their manager. He also happens to be outspoken and passionate about kids, sports, and life.
I found myself in that position not because I ever set a goal to write bestselling novels or to write as-told-to-stories of famous people (Hank Aaron, Walter Payton, Nolan Ryan, Billy Graham, etc.). Rather, my sole intention was to follow a call to full-time Christian service.
When I sensed that call as a teenager, I was already a sportswriter and assumed I would have to shelve the writing and study to become a pastor or a missionary. How gratifying to discover that God had already begun equipping me with the tools He intended to use if I would follow the call.
Author and speaker Simon Sinek says: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy ‘why’ you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”
I was fortunate to understand my “why” early on.
My father had long counseled me to “be the best you can be at what you’ve been called to do, and you’ll be more of a success than the person who is the best in the world at it but is not working up to his potential.”
So my aim became to obey my calling by being the best writer I could be, and letting let the results take care of themselves. Many define success by royalty checks or bestseller lists. But I have no control over those.
My goal (my why) is not to succeed, but to obey.
What is your “why?”
The post Writer: Do You Really Know Your ‘Why’? appeared first on Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild.
