A Short July 2024 Update on My Book Project: From the Garden to the Cross

Early this year, I completed an important stage of the book — From the Garden to the Cross — I've been steadily working on; which is migrating my notes and quotes in Evernote, from all the research I did, into the manuscript of the book. This has been the hardest part of the project and now I'm done!

That put me at 80% finished!

I estimate there were around 800 of these notes and quotes that have been moved to the manuscript, which now sits at around 150k words, three times as long as my first book — Path of the Freelancer — and twice as long as my second book — The Jump. This massive monster will get trimmed down a lot and also includes many quotes, so not all of it is my writing.

Next Book Writing Milestone

My next milestone is to make the manuscript a coherent draft from beginning to end. Much of the book already is, but a large portion, particularly the latter parts, are not yet there. So, I'll hit 90% when that stage is finished.

Some of this will be worked out as subsequent blog posts here on my website. It's part of my motivation for the weekday blogging challenge that I'm participating in.

The final stage from 90-100% will be editing and removing content to get it into a sharp and focused form. This is my favorite step in the book-writing process! Some of the lost content may likely end up as blog posts too.

Diversions & Motivation

I’ve been diverted from working on my book as I’ve been writing on the topics of society and the current chaos of American politics. It’s stepping into the fray that has helped me grow more and provide valuable insight for this book.

As I've been working through that content and the books I want to publish, I’ve been thinking about my writing legacy. If there is only one piece of writing I get to finish before I depart this world, I've concluded it’d be this book on the passion of Christ. It’s what I want to leave behind for my kids, family, community, and the world. It is what's most important.

It has been tough to finish as it’s been a journey to ground my faith in the person of Jesus, through his rescue mission story, in a way that transcends the participation in evil by the church. That is something of which we American Christians are in desperate need.

Expect a handful of blog posts from this challenge to be parts of the book to come, as I work through parts of the manuscript that needed working.