Interview with author Paul Vieira

For one of my creative writing assignments I interviewed author Paul Vieira. He wrote the book, “Jesus has left the building”. This book is basically about finding spiritual truth outside the walls of a church. My questions were about his writing process, as well as the challenges that he faced and what he might do differently next time. You will find his answers posted below in mostly point form.

Writing process:
- inspiration for the book came out of presentations that I did at conferences (from public speaking career)
- went over my presentation notes and thoughts about the subject and created on outline for the book. laid out the themes of each chapter. I made point form notes on what each chapter would contain. I would add, subtract or edit these notes along the way.
- began writing each chapter in detail. I would write first, edit after. I didn't want to get bogged down with editing...didn't want to lose the momentum of my thoughts.
- I read over every chapter several times to edit, clarify and tweak what I wrote.

Blocks:
It was difficult to write on an ongoing basis. The process was 4 years, but concentrated writing happened in intense short periods of time. On 3 separate occasions I spent one week writing full-time at a friend's home in the U.S. (I would write 8-10 hours a day and knock off about 50-60 pages each time)

Editing:
I put the book through a lot of editing myself. I wanted to send publishers a perfect manuscript. I had 4 people edit the book from different angles - flow of thought, typos, consistency, etc. The publisher's editor didn't have to do very much. The publisher suggested that we eliminate 5000 words. I had 80,000 and they wanted 75,000. I had no trouble cutting out an entire chapter and other parts of the book. i wanted the book to readable and reader-friendly.

The temptation was to rush the process, but I had to remind myself to slow down. Editing lasted for about a year.

I went with a smaller publisher and this gave me a lot of control over the process. i chose the title of the book, the book image, wrote the back description. I also put a lot of time into marketing the book online. I learned a lot. We've sold about 3000 copies to date.

I put out podcast readings of the book...the first 10 chapters (all free)

What would I do differently? I would try to shop the manuscript out a little more - the publisher that I went with was really the first one to show interest. A bigger publisher might have made the book go further.