"Let life enchant you again." - Fernando Gros
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Blog // Thoughts
September 27, 2005

Books That Never Were

Over this week my mind has been pondering the failed book proposals I have persued over recent years. Whilst I had a few ideas at theological college, these were tentative and didn’t get a very warm reception at all. In fact at theological college I made the same mistake I made in my first years […]

Over this week my mind has been pondering the failed book proposals I have persued over recent years. Whilst I had a few ideas at theological college, these were tentative and didn’t get a very warm reception at all. In fact at theological college I made the same mistake I made in my first years in London, which was to try and approach established writers with collaborative plans. A number of “guides” suggest this as a potential way into publishing (particularly as co-editors of collections), but I never managed to get this method anywhere near the proposal stage; actually most couldn’t even sustain a conversation long enough for a second cup of coffee.

My first solo proposal was a critical re-examination of Harvey Cox’s “The Secular City.” Reading this book was pivotal for me (and many others interested in Urban Ministry). My idea was to look again at the book, particularly in the light of globalisation and the development of the internet. At the time, it was questionable how big the market for such a book would be, which, in hindsight may have been a good call. Since a great deal of this work is already written and I had the chance to revise it when the Coffee, Theology and Culture reading group looked at Cox’s book, I am wondering whether to release a version of this as a self-published work. Well maybe…

The second proposal went a lot further. It was for a short “lifestyle” book on portable urban spirituality. I got a very good response, then the contact with the publisher just died. Yesterday, whilst rumaging through some old files (read clearing out piled up junk), I found the folder with materials for that book. It was very interesting, especially as today Jonny Baker picked up a very interesting Stephen Said blogpost on spirituality in a contemporary context. I am going to revist this, but I’m not sure in what form just yet; probably as a series of blogposts.

The third proposal was the one I thought would fly (and sustain me during my time in India). It was for a thorough-going treatment of Theology and Film (and alon with my PhD, a foundation for more work in theology, culture and globalisation). Consequently I was interested to see a new Regent’s Park Study Guide is coming out on this topic (thanks to Sean The Baptist a blog that well worth checking out!). My proposal looked very good for a while, but in the end died for reasons I am not entirely sure I understood at the time. Several chapters of this book are already written in full, having been initially presented as seminar papers and the proposal was very solid (thanks to the help of Richard Burridge and Andy Wright). My feeling is that I should try again with this book, but on some days I just wonder, is this a case of three strikes and you are out?

Either way, I have found the rebirth of this blog (which in its current form is coming up to one year of service) has inspired me to revist some dormant ideas and reconsider these failed publishing attempts. In whatever form my future writing takes, it has been good to be involved in blogging and to reflect upon the feedback this blog has received.

[tags] Film, Publishing, Theology and Culture [/tags]

Responses
Sean Winter 19 years ago

Hi Fernando

I found you via the Stats info on Blogspirit – good to come across your blog. I have Baptist connections in Oz (Melbourne though, not Sydney, although I do know Andrew and Rowena Curtis if those names mean anything to you) and know a few people at Kings (Richard Burridge; Andy Wright, or rather his parents and above all his sister Angie who also teaches at Kings in RE. and is one of my closest friends). Anyway, nice to come across you in Cyberspace _ I will pop in frfom time to time and see what you are up to

Sean

f 19 years ago

Welcome to the site! I studied urban ministry with Andrew and did a little bit of volunteering with them when they were in Sydney.

all the best,

f.

disaster recovery tennessee 19 years ago

Mint blog design I never installed blog software and need to for my theme on data notebook recovery.I am researching info on how to make a blog. Why did you use this blog and not blogger.com? . A Beginner, CYRIL

Fernando Gros 19 years ago

I chose wordpress because it was free and easy to use. I started with blogger, but always wanted to have the blog under my own domain name and found blogger very hard to customise.

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