Drew Dyck is the author of multiple books, including Your Future Self Will Thank You: Secrets To Self Control From The Bible And Brain Science (2019), and the book he joins me to talk about today, Just Show Up: How Small Acts of Faithfulness Change Everything (2023).
Drew is an editor at Moody Publishers and the former managing editor of Leadership Journal. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Christianity Today, Relevant Magazine, The Gospel Coalition, and CNN.com.
Drew grew up in Canada and now lives in the Portland area with his wife, Grace, and their three children.
Drew Dyck is the author of multiple books, including Your Future Self Will Thank You: Secrets To Self Control From The Bible And Brain Science (2019), and the book he joins me to talk about today, Just Show Up: How Small Acts of Faithfulness Change Everything (2023).
Drew is an editor at Moody Publishers and the former managing editor of Leadership Journal. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Christianity Today, Relevant Magazine, The Gospel Coalition, and CNN.com.
Drew grew up in Canada and now lives in the Portland area with his wife, Grace, and their three children.
You're listening to episode 215 of the Pastor Writer podcast conversations on reading writing in the Christian life. I'm your host, chase rep, local. Well, I'm excited to have drew dick back on the podcast. If you've been listening to the Pastor Writer podcast for any time, you'll know he's a familiar name. I've had the privilege of hosting him on the show before to talk about his work and his writing, and he also happened to be the Editor that worked with me on the five masculine instincts at Moody. So it's been great getting to know him and I have a lot of respect for his work.
Speaker 1:He joins me today to talk about his newest book, just show up, what it means for us to show up when we sometimes feel exhausted or disillusioned, and particularly as we see trends Towards people showing up less to church, less to previous commitments. It's a really interesting conversation. We also talk a little bit about what it means to show up as a writer, how plotting is really one of the secrets to accomplishing any writing. Drew is a great interview, always a great guest. I know you'll enjoy this conversation. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm joined on the podcast today by drew dick. He's the author of multiple books, including the future, your future self. Well, thank you. Secrets to self-control from the Bible and brain science, and the book that he joins me today to talk about. Just show up how small acts of faithfulness change everything. Drew's an editor at Moody publishers and the former managing editor of leadership journal. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Christianity Today, relevant magazine, the Gospel Coalition and CNN. Drew grew up in Canada, but now lives in Portland with his wife, grace, as well as their three children, which I've actually had the pleasure of visiting him in Portland. Drew is a friend of the podcast if you've listened, been on before and so drew. It's a Privilege and an honor to have you back on again.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a great to be here and thank you for for sneaking in my Canadian Identity. I like that.
Speaker 1:Well, that often comes up, I notice, on social media. People seem to rub you about it, but I decided to leave it alone. I just lay the facts out.
Speaker 2:Well and in fairness, I've been gone from Canada for what? 22 years, and so when I go back home I'm very suspect. Up there they say I sound like a southern politician.
Speaker 1:So yeah, you probably get it from both sides. In the US You're Canadian and in Canada they think you're the. You're American, so sold out.
Speaker 1:Well, I I got a chance to read, just show up, and as soon as I saw the book coming out, I thought man, this is exactly the the kind of thing that we need. It's something. As a pastor, I find myself returning to the topic, partly because as you articulate, I think, well in the book, the challenge that we're currently having and I want to be careful not to make it just pastors looking at congregations that aren't showing up, although we may talk about that some, but, personally, that's where you open this book that, as Christians, many of us are just feeling Exhausted. That's the place this book begins, and maybe you could speak to a little bit of that, that sense of exhaustion so many Christians are experiencing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, everyone I talked to it feels like still from the pandemic maybe, or I don't know what's going on. But a lot of people are just at capacity and they feel exhausted. And what I was hoping to do in a small way with this book is lower the bar a bit and and just encourage people to think of like, okay, listen, you don't have to be the best at everything, you don't have to do you know everything on your, your resolution list. If you're just showing up for the most important things in your life, that God's called you to your family, your church, community, your neighborhood, if you're doing that, man, that's huge and God can do amazing things. When we just show up for people around us, and sometimes that's physically. I have a whole chapter on there about the importance of physical presence, which I think is sort of a lost art in our digital age. But, yeah, don't be too hard on yourself if you're doing those, those things, they, they are really important.
Speaker 1:There is something of that, that idea of expectation that we have for ourselves, have for one another, and you write about this feeling that many people are experiencing right now where Life has not lived up to the expectations they had for it. Perhaps they're not where they thought they would be at this point in life, or life just doesn't feel like they expected it to be. What is that experience of sort of a loss of the expected life, and where do you think that that's coming from? What's generating that? Even for us as believers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I can speak of my experience. You know I grew up in I'm grateful for the the childhood I had in the church. Pastors kid, and so I got to see the, the beautiful and hard parts of church life, kind of peering behind the curtain. But one kind of message and I don't know if it was always explicit, but it was there is that like if you, if you're really dedicated to Christ, if you are serious about your faith, god will reward you by giving you kind of a huge sphere of influence. Right, you're gonna be a voice to the nations or you're gonna do something amazing for God if you can avoid certain sins and be really dedicated. And I think I imbibe a lot of that message, maybe unconsciously.
Speaker 2:And I talk about in the book how, when I was in seminary, my wife Grace and I we were very idealistic and we had these big, grandiose plans about what we were gonna do for God and and we thought, okay, it's. You know, we're probably gonna go overseas, we're gonna do something completely radical. We're not gonna settle for your average, you know, american dream. I remember saying to her like I don't want the American dream, I don't want the, the 2.5 children and the white picket fence. We're gonna do something different and chase, as you know, because you know me and you know my life here I am, I'm in the suburbs with not 2.5 kids but three, and you know, a mortgage and a minivan. I don't have a white picket fence, but, you know, maybe someday. And then the question becomes okay, god, did I miss the boat? Like, if I'm living this and don't get me wrong, I'm really grateful for my life, it's turned out great. But sometimes there's this feeling of like, wow, okay, I'm not doing something as radical or as big as I anticipated. So what does faithfulness look like now?
Speaker 2:And you know, I remember talking to Grace too and saying, like she said, who are the people you most admire? And as I listed the people that I most admired, I Realized not one of them was some kind of big world changer. You know. One was a small church pastor who kept leading after being diagnosed with a really debilitating illness. Another was a woman who started a soup kitchen and kept going even after her husband died. And I realized these are people I admired because they persevered, they just they were dedicated to what God wanted them to do. No one will remember them too long after they're gone and I thought, man, that's what I want. So, yeah, that was kind of the genesis of the book, is kind of going. Okay, you know, it's something I say when I'm tired or or a little disillusioned with my life. It's like drew, just show up, just do the next thing that God's placed in front of you. You.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because you would think that, as our life was failing to meet certain expectations, the the impulse and I think this does happen Sometimes you have the impulse. Well, I'm gonna solve this problem, I'm gonna roll up my sleeves and do something different or change my life, or but just as often, if not more often, that sort of Missed expectation actually can lead to disillusionment or a kind of malaise. We actually retreat from life. It can keep us from even taking small steps in a surprising way, and I think that's what you articulate that a lot of people are feeling. My life hasn't lived up to what I expected. Therefore, I'm just gonna sort of check out from all the things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think there you can, you know, to at least two responses to that sort of experience of disillusionment. Either you can, yeah, do what you said, and that is, kind of check out and go whatever, throw your hands up and Then start like abandoning important relationships and commitments. Or you can kind of go into this frenetic mode where you go, that's it, I'm gonna be a big deal, I'm gonna make my life count and, and you see, this, I mean I think it's even Uniquely bad in our generation, because you get, you know, you look on social media and you see people blowing up overnight and you think, wow, did I miss something here? Why isn't that happening for me? And and so you can kind of get lost and striving after Making a big impact and and the the cruel irony of that is often, I believe, when you do that, when you're so focused on the kind of bigger picture and and and making your life Count in a sort of big and dramatic way, you often miss the opportunities that you have for impact that are right in front of you. You know that the, the people in your neighborhood who needs you, your children pouring into their lives, you know, mentoring someone in your church, those kind of opportunities that God's putting, putting right in front of you. You can actually miss that because you're you're focused on doing something bigger. So, yeah, there's some real dangers there, and you know part of this too.
Speaker 2:I'm in my mid 40s now and so it's like a bit of a midlife crisis. I'm sure that I experienced, um, but I think the healthy way to deal with it and that's what I'm trying to do is kind of going God, you know what I'm gonna. I'm gonna be faithful and redefine success as faithfulness, not by some crazy metric, and that I'm gonna abandon the outcomes of my life to you. And I'm not saying God can do awesome things through your life or, you know, you can end up having a larger influence, but that's not the focus. Your focus is to be faithful and then, when you do that, god will do his job, and and it may be that you become a big deal, it may be that you just have quite influence and the people around you, but but either way, that's great.
Speaker 1:The words you use in the book is plotting, plotting, along which I I love this word, and you might at first think that you're talking about pace. That maybe what we need in this frenetics Time that we're living in, where there's constant news alerts and notifications and Emails popping in, that what we need is to slow our pace down or just live in a slower pace. You get this a lot like minimalizing or, you know, cleaning, purging out all the clutter of your house, but that sort of simplification is not quite what I think you're getting at when you talk about plotting. What is, what is this word? Plotting word? How is that a word for you that actually taken on the spiritual significance?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's. You know, it is that a little bit, you know, kind of the pace of your life, because when you're plotting you're not sprinting and because if you sprint you you got to stop right. So I think there's some wisdom in that and just kind of going at a doable pace. But it's also about just perseverance and because, yeah, when you're plotting it's like you don't stop. That's the, that's the key.
Speaker 2:And of course I go to the, the story about William Kerry, the father of modern missions, right, and I love that quote from him. He says I have no special talent but I can plot. And and it's true, you look at his life. I mean the dude was like incredibly Determined and stubborn and you know he, he preached in India for I don't know how many years, like six or seven years, before he had one convert and and people marvel at what he accomplished in his life or what God accomplished through him.
Speaker 2:And yet, if you could zoom in on anyone, give a day of his life, I think you'd see a plotter, someone who's just kind of getting up and doing the same thing over and over again, and so that, yeah, that's, that's again in our time where you know, you see those polls where, especially the young people there, they interview them and I don't know, something like 30% of them think they're gonna be famous by the time they're 25 and you're going wow, okay, the truth is, if you do have an impact with your life, it's gonna be usually through that slow, steady faithfulness of just getting getting back up and and pushing ahead. And there's a spiritual dimension to this too, because it involves having to trust God, like the reason you can plot and just keep going. I think you know Hebrews the the Hall of Heroes passage. You have faith that God is going to use your efforts, no matter how small, for his glory and for the good of others, and so it really demands having that deep faith and a commitment Just to keep going you.
Speaker 1:One of the challenges that seems to interrupt that faithfulness, that plotting, is the feelings that we experience. You write in the book about the objection I just don't feel like it that we so often experience that breaks that faithfulness, that just showing up, that plotting that exists. I think you see more and more of that today people sort of making decisions by feelings, feelings as an arbiter of morality what's right, what's wrong. How is it, in this process of plotting, you come to reckon with the days that you don't feel like showing up the feelings that so often do drive behavior?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and I think and we're not above that, as Christians or in the church, a lot of people, especially in their spiritual life, it's sort of like they're just trying to ride waves of inspirational feelings. And maybe it's like, okay, I go to church and I sing the songs and I get all jacked up and I'm like I'm going to live the Christian life this week. But we know how this goes it doesn't last. Maybe it lasts a few hours, maybe a few days. And so if you are reliant upon feelings to be faithful and I'm not saying feelings don't have their place, right, it's great when you're feeling inspired to do what you need to do. But if you're reliant upon those, man that's, you're in a vulnerable position because as soon as those feelings are gone and of course they will be and you'll have days where you feel dry and uninspired, discouraged, even depressed, then you throw in the towel. But if you do have that kind of plodding approach, you just go. Man, today I'm not feeling it, but I'm going to get up and I'm going to be faithful anyway. That's huge, and I love what Eugene Peterson has to say about this.
Speaker 2:I'm going to probably butcher it, but he said if Christians only worshipped when they felt inspired or when they had the feelings to do it, there'd be precious little worship and it can feel even wrong. I get this sometimes when it comes to spiritual disciplines. Should I pray, should I read my Bible, when I'm not feeling it, when I'm just feeling like my prayers are bouncing off the ceiling and I don't even feel inspired to seek after God? Yes, absolutely, because the way it works, often the feelings may not be there, but more often, when you're faithful, when you're obedient to God, the feelings come, not always, but often. And again, I think, as Eugene Peterson who said, you can worship your way into feelings quicker than you can feel your way into worship. And so, yeah, I think that's just a truism of life is that often the feelings come when we're obedient, when we're faithful, and so that's something, a message I wish I would have gotten earlier in life, that it's taken a while for me to figure out.
Speaker 1:Over the last year, many of the pastors I know have been talking I think you hear it in podcasts on YouTube and conversations Pastors have been exploring the challenge of changing church attendance patterns and I know you do a lot of work with pastors and resourcing with pastors and I wondered if, as you were working on this book, you're certainly aware of those challenges. People who normally came to church four times a month now are coming too, or people who came twice or now may be coming once a month. Congregations are not finding, post-covid, those attendance patterns coming back. Something certainly changed that feels like it's for good. I wonder if that came up in your writing, your thinking and how you've been thinking about that challenge pastors are facing as you've been working on this. Just show up theme.
Speaker 2:I was partly because I started writing this in the wake of the pandemic and was seeing those patterns and of course, it goes back even before the pandemic. A generation ago the average church attender like faithful church attender was someone who went like 3.2 times per month, whereas today it's something like 1.8. And that's still considered someone who's involved in church. And there are a lot of culprits, from Sunday soccer to secularization. But I am concerned by the trend. And then, of course, covid just accelerated this because we're creatures of habit and people got used to slapping the snooze and sleeping in on Sunday or going to the beach and then all of a sudden, okay, you guys can come back. Oh, wow, I got new patterns or maybe I left or fell off, and so, yeah, most people, most pastors that I talked to, are very concerned. They're at 60, 70% of attendance that they were before the pandemic and it's not just about okay, well, you just need more people in the pews.
Speaker 2:I think that the church is the last bastion of fellowship really in our culture, that we're increasingly connected just digitally and we're isolated, and you've seen the rates of loneliness and anxiety and isolation skyrocketing, and so it's so crucial that we do have that touch point at least once a week where we're gathering for corporate worship. And it's not just about worship primarily it is but then it's also about fellowshiping with each other, encouraging each other. And so, man, that's huge, and I try. In the book I have a whole chapter on the importance of showing up at church. I say, even if you're late, which I often am but and not in a sort of finger-wagging, guilt-inducing way, because I don't think that works but, man, just to encourage people, you need that. You know, you need to be with your brothers and sisters on a weekly basis. You need to worship God together. There's something that happens when you worship God together that doesn't happen in your own private devotional time, and so we really need that and I think that needs to be a huge emphasis going forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as a pastor, I'm actually pretty sympathetic to the trend because even in myself, I know, growing up we went to church three times a week. You know, there's Sunday morning, sunday night, wednesday night, and we were there, you know. And then oftentimes there was a Friday activity for youth, or I mean we were constantly showing up and even myself thinking about, oh man, if we had which our church does not have three services a week but if we did could I, you know, as the pastor, could I get myself to all three services and prepared. But something in life around us, the time that we're living in, seems to be pressing in on that possibility of showing up. And I'm also sympathetic to the fact that pastors are recognizing.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's, as you said, it's not just about the attendance. I don't think what pastors are experiencing is. I pastor a church of 200 and now most weeks it's 110 and that's some shot to my pride. Perhaps there's some of that, but it's. I think what most pastors are seeing is what you're describing in this book that the way people are living and practicing their faith is changing and it is becoming less frequent. It is sort of less faithful or consistent, not just in attendance, but in the way that I am showing up, even to faith, and part of the way that you describe that is well. You use a phrase I really like in the book in talking about physical presence, being with people as church a part of that. You use the phrase the ministry of attendance. Most people think you know, I'm a minister preaching and doing the ministry, but this idea of showing up in and of itself attending as a kind of ministry, maybe you could describe that phrase. I found that to be really helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think I should give credit where it's due. I think I stole that from Matthew Smerther's, if I'm saying his name correctly, and yeah, I just that struck me as like. You don't think of attendance as being ministry, and yet it's so crucial because it's not just for your own soul or your own spiritual journey. When you show up for church and worship, you're also providing a service for other people, checking in on them, yeah, encouraging them, whatever it is. And some people think, well, I don't feel that they need to go to church, but there are people there that need you as well, and so it really is a ministry and it's really huge.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I think sometimes people do is they think like, okay, well, they get a little ahead of themselves and think, okay, what ministry should I have at that church? Should I lead a small group? Should I be an elder? Should I do all these things? Well, first of all, just show up. That's the first thing, just to be there. And then, as you are there on a regular basis, and I get it, you'll. I mean, we all miss Sundays, unless you're the pastor, even sometimes.
Speaker 1:We miss them too.
Speaker 2:You miss some too, right. So I'm not saying it's like okay, you got to be there 100% of the time, but when you're there consistently, things happen naturally. You get more involved, you make friends, you get plugged in and so. But it does start with that commitment to show up, and that's a challenge for me. I mean, I live 30 minutes from our church. I got three kids.
Speaker 2:Sunday morning is a nightmare For a while. I have, you know, our youngest just would not go down to the children's church and it was like super hard because she would make too much noise in the big church and she wouldn't go to the little church and so one of us would have to like walk around in our tiny little foyer. Anyway. So I get it. It's hard, but every time I do make it to church, at the end of it I'm like man, I'm glad I came, I needed this. I didn't even know how much I needed it and then. But then you're worshiping and you're being reminded the God's word and it's just, it's refreshing and it's just something we really need, especially as we're all more disconnected from each other.
Speaker 1:I love that picture of your family, cause I see that as well too. I mean, I certainly have young kids, and you know it's. Those are compounded because I'm preaching, so my wife's the one walking around with the kids, I know all things together.
Speaker 1:So I know all too well but I read these statistics too that the number one indicator of a child persevering and faith that they were raised in is the genuineness of the faith of their parents, that they see their parents actually living out this faith.
Speaker 1:It's not just sort of a mental belief, and so I often look at the particularly young families, knowing the complexities around getting up and being there and those challenges, but how important it is that this faith is something we are actually expressing and living out. Or even the fussing kid who doesn't wanna go to kid's church and is just in the lobby. It's still such an important experience even just to be in the lobby, to be to show up to something that's not the normal routine. I think that's a great picture, and you actually describe this in the book. You, towards the end of the book, you talk about this goal of being a common Christian, which I think what we're describing now is incredibly common. Right, this isn't on a stage, this isn't achieving some great thing. We're talking about trying to get your kids dressed and fed into church on time. It feels very common, but you actually find there's something significant in just embracing that calling to be a common sort of everyday, ordinary Christian.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And so you know, I talk about calling in the book a little bit, and, and one thing that helped me kind of demystify the whole thing was focusing on common calling. The allergens will talk about. You know two kinds of callings common calling and particular calling. Right, so the common calling is just what every Christian is is called to do.
Speaker 2:So you can't be a Christian and be like you know what I don't feel. You know, called to love my neighbor, it's like no, sorry, if you're a follower of Jesus, that's part of the deal. Or to love the, to love God. Those are things we're all called to. And then there's a particular calling which is like okay, what are you supposed to do with your life, you know, career-wise, are you supposed to get married? Are you supposed to live here or there, and that kind of ladder thing.
Speaker 2:The particular calling is what we get weird about. I think. Right, we kind of go look for signs in the sky or flip open our Bible and hope that we like land on a passage that's going to direct us to a particular decision. But what I've found is that when you are living out your common calling obeying God, following Jesus as best you can of course, none of us do it perfectly.
Speaker 2:The particular calling has a way of working itself out. God will direct you and you're not going to make mistakes when you're obeying God and you're being faithful, and so that's something I encourage people, especially young people, although it's funny because, you know, when I was like 20, I thought you know, figuring out God's calling your life was a young person's sport. And here I am, middle age and the question never really goes away, like there's more of the pictures filled in but there's still blank spots where you're going okay, what am I supposed to do when I grow up? You need that continual guidance from God. But again it comes as you're just living out that life of ordinary faithfulness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I seem to be observing that this challenge of showing up this commonness it seems to be a challenge for young couples, young individuals, maybe in their 20s, where there's just so much else going on and so much you could be doing. But I also find it really in the kind of empty nest age group. So those who have put in, shown up, been there and now it's sort of my time. You know, now we've got more freedom, more flexibility, it's the parents who are desperate, trying to figure out how we raise kids in this world that seem to be more willing to show up at this moment. But yeah, I think you're right. Like it is easy to think about this idea of well, what does it mean to show up? What is it my calling, what is my place? It's easy to think that's just sort of a teenage free college conversation, but I actually think each phase of life reintroduces that question, sometimes in even more profound ways than before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in hard ways, like I talk to so many people that are in a stage of life where they feel like God's just put them on the shelf and they go wow, I thought and it's not that they want to be a big deal or something, but they thought that their life was going to go differently and maybe they lost a ministry or something went wrong and they're kind of going God, what happened here? And there's no easy answer. Answers when that happens and I've been there myself. But one of the stories I look at in the book is the story of Moses and he's going to be this great liberator of his people and then he winds up fleeing to the desert and spending 40 years there tending sheep. And I think that's kind of a helpful story to think about when you're in that place, someone who is totally sidetracked for a long period of time.
Speaker 2:And yet when you look at that story, I believe that God was using that time that Moses was in the desert to form him into the kind of leader that he was going to be in the next phase of his life, you know, humbling him for sure. And he's learning how to lead sheep before he can lead people, and so I want to encourage people Like if that's you, if you're in that space where you're going like man. This didn't turn out like I thought it would be the best I can do is I don't know what God's up to, but be faithful in this season, whatever it is. Keep doing the next thing in front of you, trusting that God is going to use this time in ways you might not even imagine right now. And that doesn't mean everything's going to be amazing or perfect in the future. But it's not an accident, I believe, when you're in that hard season of life, but you just have to be faithful.
Speaker 1:It certainly is a counter-cultural piece of advice show up even when you don't feel like it, even when it seems like there's other things, even when you're discouraged, and I think it's a really profound one.
Speaker 1:I think this book, this message, is something that we all desperately need to be reminded of, in all of its simplicity, that we're called to these common callings, and part of that is being present, showing up. I'm really grateful for it. I did wanna ask you a couple of questions as a writer too, because it struck me reading the book that and I think you've been actually kind of close talking about your experience a little bit with writing that some of these things apply to the task of the writer as well, too. What was your experience as a writer? How you began to apply even as you're sort of several books in now, you and I both know how hard it is sometimes to get these across the finish line, to put in the work when you do have young families and other job responsibilities. How working through this way of thinking and approaching life, spiritual life, may have impacted you as a writer as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you think it gets easier, but it doesn't. Somehow Writing books and this one was particularly difficult. I don't know what it was, maybe it's the phase of life or the topic, I'm not sure but it was a bit of a slog. And I remember coming back from Starbucks that's often where I write after three hours that yielded very few words and I didn't like any of the words and complaining to my wife, grace, and she said she turned the advice around on me and said, hey, just keep showing up. But, yeah, okay, that's right.
Speaker 2:That is certainly true in life and true in writing as well, because it's amazing what happens when you just commit to gluing your pants to a seat in front of a computer repeatedly. You might have some days when nothing happens, but then all of a sudden, lo and behold, the words start flowing. But it doesn't happen if you're not committed to sitting there and grinding it out. And so, yeah, it was kind of funny because it was a book I was writing and at the same time I was trying to internalize the message of the book, to finish the book. So it was a good lesson for me. But yeah, there's nothing like and everyone has their own process. You know, some people have to go on like a writing retreat, although I see, you know, online I'll see a single friend who says I'm going on a writing retreat and I'm like what do you mean? Your whole life is a writing retreat, just stay in your apartment in your house, not my writing.
Speaker 1:Retreat is the car pickup line, you know.
Speaker 2:When you've got 15 minutes in your notes app open.
Speaker 1:You're trying to work on something.
Speaker 2:That's right. You got to get pretty creative when you got kids, Anyway. But it's yeah, but whatever it is, whether it's like, okay, you're trying to write every morning or a chunk on Saturday, or whatever, it is just trying to be consistent when you have a project like that is huge.
Speaker 1:Well in your work as an editor too. I was struck by the idea of plotting also being one of the core competencies of a writer, that so often these projects just take kind of that same faithful determination of plotting along. How do you see that as an asset to writers and maybe how you're helping writers understand that, who are maybe at the beginning of a publishing opportunity or thinking about it in the future, how you've worked with writers through that as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've seen a lot of commentary on the writing process, especially when it comes to a book length project, and how there's kind of a burst of inspiration or excitement. At the beginning you got this great idea, you're convinced this is going to be an amazing book and then all of a sudden, somewhere in the middle or maybe like three quarters of the way through, you just hit this valley where it's like, oh man, I can't do this, I'm not a writer. All these doubts start to creep in and it's just hard or maybe it's not coming together in the way that you thought it would. And that's where it's super important to have that mentality that you're going to grind it out. And then, knowing that even when you come to the end and hopefully things kind of come together and you push through, it's not going to be perfect, it's probably not going to live up to the hopes that you had for it at the outset and I forget the quote but it's like something like a book's never finished, is just abandoned, right? Because at a certain point, especially if you're going through a conventional publisher, there's a deadline and you have to just go okay, that's going to have to be good enough.
Speaker 2:I can't sit there tweaking this thing for 10 years and then, as you know, chase, because you've been through the process, it's there's an editor that comes in and tears it apart and tells you that your beautiful baby that you just made is a little bit ugly and has to change. And that's hard too, just emotionally, and sticking with the process. And by the time at least for me when I'm on the author side of it, by the time the book is done, I'm sick of it, man. I'm like, oh man, I don't want to look at this thing for a long time because it's been such a grueling process and yet anything worth doing takes that kind of rigor, that kind of dedication. So again, it's a good lesson for really anything in life that's worth doing. It's gonna be hard, but just stick with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the mark of plotting. I think that's an important one to take away, both as a believer in the time that we live in, but also as writers, as I know many of the listeners are the importance of just showing up and plotting the book we're talking about. Just show up how small acts of faithfulness change everything. Drew, I keep seeing. The last time we talked, I think we talked about your book, your Future Self. We'll thank you, and I continue to see that book show up online, people mentioning it, particularly at being January. So congratulations. I think that that book is going to be perennial and that people are constantly trying to make improvements, constantly trying to hope their future self will thank them for the goals they're setting, and so I'd recommend both of those books If you're looking for something. It's January, we're recording this, maybe something to just reframe thinking for the new year. Both of those are great books, of course. Just show up as well.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yes, and I didn't plan it that way, I didn't think of it. I wrote a book about self-control, but then, yeah, every January it's amazing, it's a spike, and so I'm always grateful. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, in places, people could be able to follow your work. And I'm also curious anything new you're working on, anything that we should know about coming out, maybe in the future? You know what?
Speaker 2:I don't have anything right now, and I always tell authors don't be like me. I publish a book every five years and then everyone, except for your mom, forgets your writer. So I'm just I'm kind of chilling right now. But yeah, you can connect with me. I got a website just my name drewdickdyck it's my last name dot com. You can see some cheesy pictures of me and the fam. You can read a free chapter from the book. I spend too much time on Twitter or whatever they're calling it now X, and so you can find me there as well. Or, if you're in the Northwest, drop by and we'll go grab a coffee, like we did, chase.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I've always been a fan. Drew's been a good friend. I think this is at least your third time, maybe fourth time, on the podcast. So from the very beginning, a friend of the podcast. So I'm always grateful for your work. Even though you say there's nothing currently in the works, I'm sure there's a notes app somewhere, there's somewhere there's ideas piling up, so I'll be expecting.
Speaker 1:that's right yeah but one of those will eventually make its way out. It's all be looking forward to it and sure to have you back on again. You're always welcome.
Speaker 2:Great to have you Awesome. Thank you, it's been a blast.
Speaker 1:As always, you can find show notes for today's episode by going to pastorridercom. I'll have a link to Drew's book there if you're interested in picking it up and checking it out. Also, if you haven't subscribed, maybe take a moment to subscribe to the show and also consider leaving a review. You can click a star rating wherever you listen to podcasts or take a moment to type out a brief review. I always love giving that feedback. I'm looking forward to this new year. I'm looking forward to many great conversations together. I hope you're subscribed. We'll have a lot of fun in the conversations to come. Thanks for listening.