Welcome back to Writing for Ministry. This is Lesson 11: Publishing and  Promoting Your Work. I'm Adam Navis. So far, we've explored how to take your  idea or less than an idea and flesh it out to a fully formed, edited, critiqued piece of writing. If you aren't at that place now, you may want to go back a step, back  to step one, and start over. But just to make sure you really got it, let me review  the steps quickly, just as a list.  

Step one: identify and know your audience.  

Step two: know the wider conversation.  

Step three: know the forms and choose them wisely.  

Step four: raise the stakes.  

Step five: free writing and letting go of control.  

Step six: build your structure.  

Step seven: get feedback and embrace vulnerability.  

Step eight: edit, cut, cut, and cut some more.  

But now that you're done, you're not quite done. You still need to get your writing in front of your audience. For while there is a lot of value in writing things for  yourself, in fact, maybe the most value in just doing the hard work of getting the  thing out of you, there is still a need to share your work with the world. After all,  that's kind of the point.  

Now, you may not feel worthy. You might still be suffering from a sense of  inferiority or insecurity. Hopefully, the process of getting that managed feedback  from people who love you and whom you trust has helped to mitigate some of  that, but most likely you're still going to feel at least a little nervous about  publishing your work. In fact, I would be a little more nervous for you if you were  totally 100% confident about putting your writing out into the world. I would  rather work with writers who are insecure than overconfident. Believe me, it's a  lot easier to tell writers they are better than they think they are than it is to tell  someone they're not as good as they think they are.  

Okay, when it comes to publication, there are three things I want you to  remember. First, and this is the sad truth, not many people are going to read  what you write. The world is flooded with information. There is so much stuff,  good stuff, that doesn't get read. Now, this can be freeing earlier in the process  when you're worried about what people will think, but it can feel a little crummy  when you put something out into the world and it doesn't get much of a  response.  

Second, you're always going to upset someone. It just means that you're doing  something right. I consider it successful if a piece is 80% positive. If 80% of the 

people like it, that's good. That means one out of every five people is not going  to like what I say or how I said it. I would even take 60% Between 60 and 80%  Okay, I'd rather have 80% but I'll take 60% three or four stars out of five. But if  

you're looking to please everyone, it just isn't going to happen, and you need to  accept that as part of the deal. That's true with life.  

Thirdly, Jesus is Lord. He's Lord of all, and we're not called to be right, perfect,  or amazing-we're called to be faithful. Remember that God is God, and you are  not. We are called not called to be successful. We are called to be faithful to the  word that we have received in our heart. We are not called to win awards or sell  copies or get lots of page views. We are called to attune ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit.  

But let's shift into more practical matters. Imagine that you've written something  that could be realistically published in several different places, both online and in print. There are some questions you need to ask yourself.  

First, who is my audience? When you're ready for publication, you need to go  back to your audience. Pull out that sheet where we put down who we were  trying to reach. Now you need to think through the best way to reach this group  of people. More than likely, at some point in this process, you've already thought about this. There's been a place that you've kind of had an inkling that you might want. If not, that's okay too. We can think about it now. Maybe you have a blog  or a ready-made outlet for your work. If so, great. Publish it there. That's  wonderful. Don't feel bad about that. Or if you don't, send it off to an editor that  you know. Or maybe. You have you don't know an editor, so just send it off to  some place where you think it could go.  

On that note, where are they? Where what is your audience reading? If you  don't have a particular thing in mind, you can start with where what publications  are your audiences reading. If you're trying to reach church leaders, you might  want a leadership magazine. If you're trying to reach parents, then you're going  to have to aim at parenting blogs.  

Next, what publication is the best fit? That's at the intersection of your audience,  their magazine, and your topic. You've now started to narrow down the best fit  for where you want to pitch your work. At that point, you may have two or three  possibilities. Go to their websites and look for something called submission  guidelines. This is where you'll find who to email, whether they want a query or  the whole piece, and how long you can expect before someone will get back to  you with a response. 

Next, do they pay? Some people argue that if you are not a professional writer,  you need to start with unpaid publications and build up a portfolio before  submitting to paid publications. And there's some merit to this, but I say aim  high. Shooting a well-crafted email pitch only costs you your time, so you might  as well see what happens. At the same time, you shouldn't dismiss the non paying publication as not the best place for your work. If they can reach the  people you want to reach, it might be worth it. However, eventually, after you  have enough experience, you will want to start getting paid for your work.  

Here's your assignment, and it's a doozy. Ready? Submit your writing for  publication. I know you may not think your work is ready, and maybe it's not. But the worst thing that can happen is that an editor will say, "No thanks, not for us.  Most editors do this quite politely, and besides, you're not going to. You're you  are going to need to get used to rejection. It's all part of the game of being a  writer. It will help you build a thick skin. It doesn't mean your piece is bad. It only  means, and there really are 100 reasons for this, that it's not for that publication  at that time, try it somewhere else, or file it away for a while and come back to it. But most importantly, start writing something else. Let's write. 



آخر تعديل: الاثنين، 19 أكتوبر 2026، 8:32 AM