Hello, I'm John Eldridge, and welcome to the Ransomed Heart audio podcast.

For more information on Ransomed Heart Ministries, our resources and events, please visit

us online at W.W. Ransomed Heart.

John last time we were chatting

you threw it to me about my writing and gosh just what I have to the

joy and then the hard work of that and just my kind of being stuck and it just seems like a natural to turn to you and say

so how do you write? I mean what's this like for you how do you do it yeah

Craig like you I love it I love it and I think again that's such a key indication of calling. Yes there's hard work you

betcha and I'll describe a little bit about that but I think at core when we are close to that thing that we were made to do, it's a joy to do it.

Frederick Beekner has this great line where he says,

the place that God calls us is where our deep joy

and the world's deep hunger meet. You know that I love it. I love it so let me describe something of the process

of it because I think that would be helpful to people in any creative enterprise

but especially to the aspiring writers out there or the current writers.

There's sort of a three phase process I go through.

When I am thinking about a book, the first thing I do is I keep a journal with me. I try and keep it

with me constantly. And it's not my regular journal, it's my writing journal. My regular journal

is for processing life and God and all that's going on.

My writing journal is just to capture anything pertaining to the book.

And that writing journal, you know,

sometimes it looks like, yeah, a whole story.

You know, I'll walk away from a lunch and I'll go,

...