He just “stole” my book

May 30, 2012  David Murray   8 comments

How would you feel if you’d been working on a book for six months or so, researching, reading, writing some chapters, structuring others, gathering quotes, planning interviews, when you discover that someone else has beaten you to it! Happened to me last week.

There I was grazing through my blog subscriptions on Google Reader when I came as usual to The Blazing Center blog. There’s my book! Even my title!! Talk about blazing mad.

Who is this? Stephen Altrogge. How did he get inside my laptop? Has he been bugging my phone? All my work sucked away for an eBook! An eBook!! Not even a real book!!!

Launch date, May 29. Well, still time to sabotage this. But how? After a weekend of plotting came up with nothing, I was reduced to nervous hovering over the “Buy now with one click” button early yesterday.

Only 45 pages? How did he manage to compress all my work into 45 pages? He’s obviously butchered it to pieces.

But as I started to read, my temperature started falling and my blood pressure eased. Hmm, he didn’t copy too much after all. Actually he’s taken quite a different tack to me. It’s a brief gospel-centered romp through the biblical call to be creative. And it’s pretty good. In fact, don’t tell him, but it’s very good – good teaching, good application, great writing. And I love it most of all because it means I can get my work back out of the trash can. That’s surely worth an Amazon review.

My top ten takeaways from the book:

  1. Our Creator has equipped every single person with creative gifts and called us to be creative in the little corner of the creation He’s given to us.
  2. By being creative we show the world what God is like
  3. Creativity is not confined to artists but extends even to accountants [Not sure creative accountancy is a terribly good thing]
  4. As a Creator who loves creativity, God loves to see his creatures creating
  5. Fear (of failing, of not finishing, of looking stupid) is the great creativity killer
  6. Assurance of our acceptance in Christ makes us more creative, because His approval is enough.
  7. Don’t wait until you have a totally original idea or totally perfect idea
  8. Creativity is a muscle that gets stronger with use
  9. Creative work requires faithfulness, diligence, and persistence.
  10. Create for the glory of God and the good of others and you’ll be personally rewarded too.

You can read more about the book here.

  • http://www.theblazingcenter.com Stephen Altrogge

    Whew, I’m glad I didn’t steal your idea! I’m looking forward to reading your book!

    • http://headhearthand.org/blog/ David Murray

      Don’t hold your breath, Stephen!

  • http://about.me/JLLouthan J.L. Louthan

    I have the opposite problem.

    I have six manuscripts ready to go.

    Do you know how many of those manuscripts that R.C. Sproul has already written?

    That’s right, all six.

    When I was shopping my first, the published, “Oh, that’s awesome. Obviously you read R.C.’s version already? He did the chapters just like you.”

    Doh!

  • Les

    Ha, your fears remind me of me when I was writing my dissertation!

  • http://jtcochran.com Joey Cochran

    As I read this post, I couldn’t help but wonder who all’s RSS feed you subscribe too. Would you share your list of bloggers to be reading? I feel like I have a good handle on this, but no doubt your list might be a little more thorough than mine. You can just e-mail it to me if you wish and if it would not be too much trouble. I can google the names to find their site.

    • http://headhearthand.org/blog/ David Murray

      Joey, I don’t know how to easily do this. I’m not that keen on sitting down and typing them all out! Let me know if there’s a way of getting Google Reader to do this for me.

  • Pingback: Create: Stop Making Excuses and Start Making Stuff | Alex Chediak

  • http://johnbotkin.net John

    I’m glad your situation turned out better then mine! I’ve actually had been beaten out twice by unknowing competition. The first was a modern language version of Henry’s “Method for Prayer” and the other was a fiction work based on the account of David’s mighty men. Oh, well. Maybe I should work on the other 10 outlines sitting on my hard-drive?

    • http://headhearthand.org/blog/ David Murray

      One of those 10 may be the bestseller!