The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - So You Want to Be a Writer or Speaker?

Episode Date: June 9, 2017

Do you ever feel like God might be calling you to become a Catholic speaker or writer? Learn from Jeff how to take the first steps towards answering that call: Discover your passion, study it in depth, identify your audience, and use wisdom to apply that topic to your audience's lives.

You're listening to the Jeff Kaven Show, episode 19. So you want to be a writer or a speaker. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavans. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven Show.

Welcome to the show, my friend. glad you have chosen to join me one more time here as we talk about the faith, talk about life and everything that is going on. I sure appreciate all of the feedback. Wow, have we received a lot of feedback. A lot of ideas for future shows. In fact, today really comes out of a plethora of questions coming from people not only as a result of this show, but when I'm on the road at churches or email that I'm.

I happen to receive. I get some fairly consistent questions from people, and today's show is certainly one of those. And it kind of goes like this. Jeff, I'm getting ready to graduate from college, or I'm sensing a career change in my life, or I want to get involved in the church, or I have a book in me, and I want to write. What's your suggestion? How can I do this? I remember years ago when I was just beginning to write and get my ideas down and speak, I sure could have used a mentor, you know? And that's what I'd like to help you with. I don't have all the answers, of course, but I've written, been involved with close to 10, 11 books now. And it's an art. It's hard at times. And I want to share some of that with you, as well as some ideas on speaking,

that might be helpful to you. Once again, most of the things that I'm saying on the show today, if there are any references and that type of thing, they'll be in the show notes. So if you're in the car, you don't have to worry about writing everything down. You can just go to the show notes. There's going to be some software packages,

for example, later on that I'm going to really recommend to you and some ideas on how to gather your thoughts. So you can go to Ascensionpresents.com forward slash podcasts, and you can click on my show. All the show notes will be there. By the way, go to iTunes. I appreciate you rating the show, giving some comments on the show. It's also a way for you to share the show with other people. Maybe you know of a budding writer in your life.

Maybe you know of somebody in your church who has some gifts in the area of speaking, and they would like to do it, but they just don't know how to get started in it. And I want to help you with that today. So the letter goes like this. This is the typical email. Jeff, I'm getting ready to graduate from college and I want to do what you're doing. I want to be a writer and I want to be a speaker. So I want to start by encouraging you that you, my friend, are a unique individual. You are a unique individual and you are a gift in the kingdom of God. And nobody, do exactly what you do. Now, I've got a lot of friends who are speakers. You know, Patrick Madrid and a good friend of mine, I'll never be Patrick Madrid and he will never be me. We are two

different people who are in the church and we are sharing things and writing about things that we are very excited about. So I respond to people typically in a number of ways. I want to share those with you here today. When people say I want to do what you're doing, I typically will ask them some questions and they'll say, well, I want to write. And my response is, well, what do you want to write about? And almost inevitably, the answer is, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Or they'll say, I want to be a speaker. I'll say, well, what do you want to speak about? And the answer again is, Well, I'm not exactly sure. I just know that I'm really called to be a speaker or I'm called to be a writer.

But what I find sometimes, and maybe you know, you're not guilty of this, but some people are, is that they're kind of more in love with the idea of being a writer. You know what I mean? They see themselves in that cabin in the woods, that log cabin with the fire burning and the coffee and the tea and the snow outside and the deer walking through the back. and they're writing the ultimate novel, you know, that, who wouldn't want to do that? You know, I mean, so I think sometimes we're more in love with the idea of being a writer or being a speaker.

But I've got to tell you, it's hard work. It's really, really hard work. And I'm going to tell you a little bit later on of how I go about it, because I go about it a little unconventionally, but it is hard work. And being a speaker can be very hard because you're actually overcoming one of the greatest fears that people have, which is lolliaophobia, the fear of speaking in front of people. And don't I know about that? I'll tell you what, when I was younger, honestly, three out of the first five times that I spoke in front of a group, I passed out. Cold. One of them was in a cab, it was in a resort in northern Minnesota.

And I was in Butternut Cabin in Summer Camp. I was in junior high. Butternut Cabin. Cathedral of the Pines was the name of the summer camp. And the guys in my cabin thought it would be pretty funny to nominate me as the one who would have to read the reading for the church service that morning in camp. Oh, was I nervous? I got up there that day and I turned around, grabbed the edges of that podium, looked at the kids out there, and I was out cold. And I woke up in the nurse's quarters with drinking a glass of orange juice. That's how scared I was. I was absolutely petrified when I had to speak in front of a group of people. And so sometimes we have to get over those over those fears. Now, if you've got the idea that down inside, you really would like to write,

that just might be God, you know, putting those ideas and those gifts into your heart and mind. If you've got this desire to speak and to share and communicate the faith through speaking, yay, that is great. That is really, really good. Because there's a lot of ways to communicate to faith. Writing and speaking are only two, only two of them. them. And relatively few people are going to actually sit down and start writing, and relatively few people are going to actually start talking in public settings about the faith, at least at the level of speaking and writing. And the fact that you're interested in it does say something, and it's very, very positive. So let's kind of go through this. I want to start off

by giving you the advice that I give people at conferences who come up and ask me this all the time. And that is this. Number one, there are three elements of a good teacher, three elements of a good communicator. And you've got to be disciplined in these areas. Good writing, good speaking does not happen by accident. It is the result of a disciplined life in learning how to communicate and learning what to communicate and to who you're going to be communicating. So number one, what's really important is no matter what your topic is going to be. And I'm going to talk about that in just a few minutes. Whatever it's going to be, you've got to know your subject.

You've got to know your subject. And you've got to dedicate a good portion of your time that is dedicated towards writing and speaking. You've got to dedicate it towards knowing your subject. So I look at it as the rule of thirds almost. A third of my time, for example, in my life, is spent. studying the subjects that I am interested in communicating, okay? So I spend about a third of my time studying the Bible, the catechism, church teaching. I spend my time studying some of the early church fathers and some, you know, a number of really good modern authors that I kind

of become students of. I'm always interested in what they're what they're writing about. I adhere to that rule that I have mentioned prior to this podcast, and that is that you don't want to go a mile wide and an inch deep. Because if you go a mile wide and an inch deep on the subject that you're interested in or subjects that you're interested in, you're probably not going to have a lot of depth to, you know, to draw from. Let me give you an example. When I was a young man in my early 20s,

And somebody gave me, I think it was 23 years old, somebody gave me the responsibility of giving a talk at a local church. Well, I didn't have a lot of experience and I didn't have a great well to, you know, to drop that bucket into and grab a lot of really cool stuff to share because I was young. And I needed to learn more, you know, about the subject of the Bible and the faith. So in the beginning steps, I found it very difficult. And if I gave one talk, I kind of gave everything I had, you know. And you got to be patient with yourself in this area because as you mature and as you grow, you'll gain more knowledge about the subject that you're interested in. But you need to know your subject.

And that is really, really important because that's the well that you're going to be dipping into to communicate with people. And when you're learning that subject, you've got to keep in mind the second rule of thirds here in good communication. And that is, you've got to know your audience. And you've got to know your audience really well. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, I'll give you an example. I am interested in teaching the Bible, and I'm interested in teaching the faith,

and there are certain areas of the Bible and the faith that I have a particular passion for. and I'll get to that in just just a moment. But if I'm going to communicate, well, I'll give you one of them, if I'm going to communicate all about suffering in the faith, which is one of my passions, is the topic of suffering. How do we deal with suffering? Okay. I have to know my audience.

I have to know what they're going through. I have to know what a woman, 40 to 55, is going through emotionally, physiologically, in her family, professionally? What about men that are 55 to 65? What do they go through in their life? How about a single mother? About a single mother? What does she go through? Or a young divorced couple? What are they experiencing in their life? Or the children of an alcoholic? What was life like for them growing up? And what type of repercussions have they experienced as a result of having parents who are alcoholics. You see, this is knowing your audience. So about a third of my time is spent learning about people. Learning about people.

I'll give you an example. About six years ago, six or seven years ago, I spent six months of my life studying several topics that I was interested in as far as people. I knew that I wanted to talk about suffering. I want to talk about the Bible. I want to talk about discipleship, those types of things. But I want to know about my audience. And I spent about six months studying women and menopause. Now, right away, even though you're not with me here, I can still hear you chuckle a little bit. You're thinking, why would you do that? Well, here's why I would do that? Because every woman that I communicate with, whether it's in writing or speaking, a live conference, a podcast, or a radio interview, or an article or a book, or I'm part of a larger

book. I have to know what they're going through so that I can do the third rule of thirds here. The first being know your subject, the second, know your audience. The third, know how to bridge the gap between the faith and their lives. Understand how to communicate with them to bring the joy of the gospel, to bring the truth of the gospel, the wisdom of the gospel, to the reality of their life. And that, my friend, is the art of communication. It's one thing to want to be a writer. It's one thing to want to be a speaker, but you're going to have to figure out how to communicate your subject to your audience. And that's where you roll up the sleeves, and the work really begins, and it's hard. So those are the three things that I want to

start off with. Know your subject, know your audience, and know how to bridge the gap between the faith in their lives. Now, I'm going to take a break. And when I come back, I want to talk about your passion. And I want to talk about how you begin to build a platform in your life for teaching and speaking in the church. Okay? So don't go away. We'll be right back. important part of our Catholic faith, but it's not always easy to understand. There are 73 separate books and so many names, places, and events that sometimes we just stop trying to figure out how it all fits together. The good news is the Great Adventure Bible studies make it easy for you to understand the Bible. By focusing on the story that ties all of Scripture together,

the Great Adventure Bible studies give you the big picture of the Bible, and once you see the big picture of salvation history. The Mass will make more sense. The Catholic faith will make more sense, and you will see how God has a loving plan for your life. The Great Adventure Bible studies have helped hundreds of thousands of people to understand the Bible and grow closer to Christ. There's no other Catholic Bible study series like it, and you can get started on the great adventure today by creating your free account at ascensionpress.com. Welcome back to the Jeff Kaven Show. I'm Jeff, and today we're talking about,

so you'll want to be a writer, you'll want to be a speaker. That's great, and there's a lot of people to do, but we've got to really begin to focus on your subject, your audience, and how to communicate. So I want to start on this side of the break with this. Find your passion. When people come up to me and they say, I want to be a writer, and I say, what do you want to write about?

And they say, I don't know. Then I'll say, well, how do you know you want to be a writer? I say, well, I do. I just want to be a writer. So I always tell them this. Number one, identify your passion. Identify what you really are interested in communicating. But let me give you just a little bit of that history.

And this is on an earlier podcast about how I began the great adventure Bible study. it sprung from a passion in my own life where I really wanted to know the overarching story of salvation history. It was a, it was really a passion of mine. And when I started to discover how to teach the Bible in chronological order so that you could understand the whole, the whole story, I was so jazzed. I was so on fire for what I had discovered there for my own life, And I never even thought that anyone else would be that interested in it, but when I started to share it with other people, they caught fire and they wanted it too.

And so my point is that if you're passionate about something, most likely there's other people who are passionate about it as well. And here's my suggestion. There are a lot of areas in the church that need attention. I can name several right now that if somebody were to become passionate about that topic and do what I'm about to tell you in the next few minutes, you'd have an impact. You would have some level of impact. I don't know how much, but I know you would have an impact if you could focus on that area.

One of the mistakes that people make when they want to be a writer or speaker is that they haven't found their passion yet and they become generalists. You know what I mean by a generalist? They're a mile wide and inch deep. They know a little bit about a lot of things, but not enough to make a difference in people's lives. And so I think the best communicators and the best writers, the best speakers out there are people who have drilled down deep into an area that other people need to know about. Okay. So you've got you got people that focus on Bible. you got people that focus on church history, you got people to focus on philosophy, you got people to focus on the church fathers. But I would really discourage you from being a generalist because

people aren't out there looking for generalists. They're looking for answers. They're looking for somebody who really understands what they're going through, you know, the topic that they're dealing with in their life. So find your passion. And one thing you could do is look for a need in church life. Okay. I'll give you an example. Widows. People who have, you know, people who have lost a spouse. We are entering a time, my friend, where we're going to see the demographics change so much so that there's going to be a lot of widows and widowers in the next 25 years. Who's talking to them? Is that something that is on your heart? Are you passionate about that? drill down. Find your passion. Look for a need in the church. And then once you do that,

here's my next suggestion. And this is what I tell people who come to me with these questions all the time. Start to study. Number one, start to study. Start to learn everything you can about this topic. If the topic is going to be, and I'm just going to make something up, if I'm just going to make something up here. If the topic is, widows and widowers. It's people who have lost their spouse. They need help. They really do. You start studying that topic. You study that topic sociologically from a scriptural perspective. You go to the catechism. You begin to study this topic of people who have lost a spouse, widows, and widowers. So you start to study it. And you begin to really learn.

about this and this will this new knowledge that you gain will mix with the passion that is in your heart and what will come out of that is a unique perspective that only you my friend can give and go to those websites blogs and podcasts where people are talking about that subject that you're interested in and start to acquaint yourself with what they're saying and you get involved start posting start writing tell them a little bit about yourself and some of the insights that you're beginning to see. Start contributing. And that's something to really think about is what is your unique contribution to this topic, whatever it might be? Grow that well of information and wisdom around this topic. Now, on that point, remember three things. It's not enough to just gain a bunch of knowledge, okay?

Because knowledge just sits in buckets. that's just a bunch of knowledge. You can go to the internet and find all the knowledge you want to find about being a widow. It's all there, but it's the taking of that knowledge and the godly application of knowledge that is geared towards fulfilling his will. That's called wisdom. So whatever you do, you've got to go beyond knowledge. You've got to incorporate wisdom. And when people apply wisdom, then they have understanding as the result. They gain an understanding, right? So I would encourage you to not only start gathering knowledge,

but thinking about ways to apply this and knowing your audience, all right? So you might want to begin a blog. You might want to begin something as simple as a blog, and if you do, remain faithful. There's nothing worse than starting a blog or a podcast and saying, I'll be here every week and you're not. You only get one chance, you know, to be faithful in this arena, I guess you would say, and make it a priority.

You know, if you're going to start a modest blog to talk about XYZ, whatever that topic is you're interested in, then make sure that that becomes a priority because you are making, in a sense, an agreement with your audience that's going to grow and you don't want to let them down. That's true with a podcast, too. you start to see kind of a start and a sputtering that goes on in in in in in podcasts you be the faithful one if you're going to say if you say you're going to do it do it

okay now what about actually collecting your information what about collecting your information that is a really important point all right and what you want to do do to collect your information is you've got to have a plan and I'll tell you what mine is all right my plan for collecting information is that I use my smartphone I've got an iPhone I think it's a seven it's a newer one but I have an iPhone and I have some software in there that acts as my vessel for capturing ideas around my my topics that I'm interested in So on my smartphone, I use applications that automatically sync with my computer. I have a Mac computer because I don't want two platforms and I don't want to have to cut and paste all the time.

Whatever comes into my phone, I want that going into my computer so that when I sit down and start writing, I have access to this new data very, very quickly. Let me tell you about a couple of the programs that I use. to capture data out there, whether I'm at a newsstand or I'm in a Walmart or I'm at the airport, wherever I happen to be. When I see things that catch my attention

in the areas that I'm passionate about, I want to capture it at that moment. So I use a program called Evernote. Evernote. It'll be in the show notes for you. Evernote is made up of notes, folders, and keywords. And if I write something in my little app here under a new note about, let's say that you're really interested in prayer. And you just found a really cool quote from St. Benedict. You saw it at a church in the library. And you want to remember that. I do one

of two things. Either I write it in or speak it in to the Evernote program. And it automatically, when I speak it in, it automatically writes. And it's got about a 98%, 99% accuracy rate. And I've become accustomed to saying things into my phone that I want to keep. All right. And so start using your phone as a collecting mechanism for great ideas. So that is really, really, really important. Now, here's another program that I use to actually do my writing

in and if I'm writing articles or I'm writing a book or I'm preparing for this podcast I use a program called S-C-C-R-I-V-E-N-E-R. It's put out by literature and latte. That's the name of the company, kind of a cool name. These are all in the show notes, so don't feel like you have to stop now and go back and write that down, but it'll be in the show notes for you. But this program called Scrivener is used by more professional writers and researchers. I find that a lot of people are really put off by the structure of writing because they get a word processor, they got a document, and they start writing, and they just hit a block. Well, this program allows you, and I have no stock in this company, I think it's over in Europe,

this allows you to start writing in chunks, the things that are hot at that. moment. You can always arrange them later on. And I find this, I've written most of my books in this, in this format of Scrivener, at least in the initial stages of it. I'm looking at a couple of projects I'm working on right now. And I have tons of research, tons of quotes, and tons of website links that are along the lines of my next book. And I'm just glad I got it all in one place. So that's really, really important. It's getting a little long here. So perhaps in the future I'm going to talk a little bit more about public speaking and some tips on public speaking.

I think that that would be helpful. But suffice it to say that in this episode of the Jeff Kaven show, I wanted to just to share with you a little bit about writing and speaking that might get you going, you know, in the right direction. I want you to be encouraged. Don't be discouraged. A lot of people become discouraged when they want to write or speak. And I want to share with you something that Bob Dylan said one time, which I think is really good for future writers, speakers, and that is this.

Be really careful who you share your ideas with because your ideas are at an early, tender stage, and people can stomp on them and crush your creativity. Be careful. you share them with in the early stages and guard those things in your heart that you know that are special that God has given you, there'll be the appropriate time to let those out. But be careful about that because sometimes the steam is let out of the kettle and that creative energy is dissipated and it's gone and you need to keep that, all right? And I know that from personal experience.

I've had some ideas before, you know, I had several publishers told me that the Bible timeline would never work. Never. It'll never work. And I could have been discouraged, and I was a little bit, and I could have walked away and said, ah, I bit off more than I can chew. But they were wrong. You wanted to hear that story just as much as I did. Hey, before we end up cutting off this show for today, I want to remind you, we got some big pilgrimages coming up. Next year's pilgrimages, I'm going to be taking one to Israel in January, where we teach on location. I'm also going to be doing one in May of next year with Father Mike Schmitz. Okay, Father Michael Schmitz is going to join me in May.

All that information is on my website, jeffcavens.com. In April of next year, my wife and I are leading a pilgrimage to Ireland with Father Matt Guckin from Philadelphia. We're really excited about that. Go to jeffcavens.com up at the top. It says pilgrimages, all that information will be available. close this out let me pray for you i'd like to pray for you thank you by the way for taking the time to listen and i appreciate that i really do let's pray in the name of the father and the son and the

holy spirit amen lord i thank you for my brothers and i thank you for my sisters who are listening to the podcast today lord you have obviously put something in their heart they have found something that they want to talk about they want to write about help them lord to discover that passion that is uniquely them and how they can communicate you and your kingdom and your family, the church, to the world. Lord, may they never be discouraged by others, but always encouraged by you. And may they find fellowship in other brothers and sisters who are like-minded. As iron sharpens iron, we can help each other to really walk in our callings. I thank you for this in Jesus' name. Amen. Name of the Father's son and the Holy Spirit, my friend, you,

have a good week.