When the writer changes, sometimes the writing has to change with him.
Years ago, I wrote a book. Recently, I decided to revise it.
That turned out to be a terrible idea.
Not because the book was terrible. I was rather fond of it, actually. But somewhere between writing those first chapters and reopening the manuscript, something unexpected had happened.
The author had changed.
And as I worked my way through those old pages, I discovered something every writer eventually has to reckon with: Sometimes the hardest part of revising your writing isn’t changing the words. It’s realizing you no longer see the world quite the way you did when you wrote them.
The Fellow Who Wrote That Book
The book was Big Buts of the Bible: A Revealing Look at Jesus Christ, published in 2013. But its beginnings go back considerably further.
I started writing the material around 2000, while serving in pastoral ministry. Some of the chapters began as sermons or Bible studies. Others found their way onto my old Interactive Sermon blog, back in the glory days of blogging, when we were all convinced the internet was going to be one enormous, wonderful conversation.
Those words had been part of my life for years before they became a book. They were familiar to people in my congregations, readers of my blog, and others who had followed my writing.
And they sounded like me.
Well, they sounded like the me who wrote them.
That’s an important distinction.
In our Storysmithing Table workshops, we’ve talked about something we call Then Me / Now Me. It’s particularly useful when writing memoir, where the person who experienced an event isn’t quite the same person who is telling the story years later.
Then Me lived the experience with the knowledge, emotions, assumptions, and perspective available at the time. Now Melooks back with the benefit—and sometimes the burden—of everything that has happened since.
The challenge is to honor both perspectives without allowing one to erase the other.
I hadn’t expected to encounter that same challenge while revising a Bible study.
But there it was.
When the Editor Meets the Author
As a professional writer and editor, I’ve spent years working with other people’s words. Much of my collaborative writing involves listening carefully to an author’s speaking voice, understanding how that person thinks, and translating those qualities into written language.
The goal isn’t to make everyone sound like me. It’s to help the author sound like the clearest, most compelling version of themselves.
That requires attention to more than grammar and sentence structure. Voice, style, and tone matter enormously.
Voice is the recognizable personality behind the words. Style is the collection of choices that gives those words their particular shape and rhythm. Tone is the attitude readers hear as the writer speaks to them.
And editorial care means understanding the difference between improving those qualities and inadvertently replacing them.
I tell writers that their voices are worth protecting. Then I opened my own manuscript and discovered that I was having trouble protecting mine.
Or, more precisely, I was having trouble deciding which mine I was supposed to protect.
The younger writer had a particular way of approaching Scripture. He loved explanations, arguments, and carefully constructed conclusions. He was enthusiastic about what he had discovered and eager to share it.
I still recognize that fellow. I even like him. But I don’t always sound like him anymore.
My sentences have changed. My humor has changed. The questions I ask have changed. And perhaps most significantly, the way I imagine the person reading my words has changed.
I could polish the old manuscript. I could tighten its paragraphs, improve its transitions, and replace a few dated illustrations. But no amount of editorial polish could resolve the underlying problem.
The writing still sounded like someone I used to be.
A Little More Life. A Little Less Certainty.
There’s a reason for that.
I’ve lived a fair amount of life since those early chapters first appeared. Some of it has been wonderful. Some has been painful. I’ve experienced disappointments, uncertainty, and seasons when answers weren’t nearly as clear as I wanted them to be.
I’ve also listened to countless stories from people navigating their own complicated circumstances. Over the past decade, much of my writing has involved working alongside mental health professionals and helping communicate hope to people facing emotional pain, addiction, recovery, and other difficult experiences.
Some of those struggles I’ve witnessed. Some I’ve experienced. And some I’ve walked through alongside people I love.
All of that changes a person.
I’ve become more comfortable acknowledging questions I can’t answer. More aware of how easily good intentions can become unhelpful words. More attentive to the difference between explaining something accurately and communicating it compassionately.
And I’ve become increasingly captivated by the Jesus I encounter in the Gospels.
In years past, I often approached those accounts primarily through his teachings, declarations, and confrontations. Those things still matter to me. But now I find myself noticing the conversations, the listening, the unexpected affirmations, and the tenderness with which Jesus often approached people whose lives were anything but tidy.
It’s as though I’d spent years studying a black-and-white photograph, only to discover that the original scene was in Technicolor.
That realization didn’t simply give me new material to add to the manuscript. It changed the way I wanted to tell the story.
Revision Has Its Limits
One of the lessons I emphasize when working with writers is that good editing begins with understanding what the writing is trying to accomplish.
Before changing sentences, we need to understand the story, its intended readers, and the experience we want those readers to have.
A beautifully polished paragraph can still be the wrong paragraph. And sometimes an entire manuscript can be well written without being the book its author now wants to write.
That’s where I found myself.
My original plan was straightforward: revise the old book, update a few references, perhaps add some new material, and prepare it for a fresh edition.
But as I worked, I kept finding myself doing something different. I wasn’t merely correcting the old words. I was reconsidering what I wanted to say, why I wanted to say it, and who I hoped would be reading.
The process became less about editing sentences and more about discovering the book I wanted to write now. Eventually, I had to acknowledge the obvious.
I wasn’t revising a book anymore. I was rewriting one. And once I accepted that, the work became considerably more interesting.
Giving Then Me His Due
There’s something important I don’t want to lose in all this.
I don’t regret writing the original book.
The younger version of me was doing the best he could with what he knew, what he believed, and what he’d experienced. His enthusiasm was genuine. His discoveries mattered to him. And the words he wrote served people in that season of life.
I don’t need to dismiss that work to recognize that I’ve grown.
That’s an important distinction for anyone revisiting old writing, especially memoirists and writers whose work draws heavily from personal experience.
We can look back at our earlier selves with curiosity rather than embarrassment. We can recognize their limitations without denying their sincerity. We can even appreciate what they got right while acknowledging that we’d approach some things differently today.
In Storysmithing, we often talk about the writer owning the story and the reader owning the reading experience. I’d add something to that when we’re revisiting our own work: The writer also owns the right to grow.
And sometimes that growth deserves more than a revised paragraph. Sometimes it deserves a new book.
There’s a New BUT in Town
So that’s what happened.
The original Big Buts of the Bible has been retired, and its successor has officially arrived.
The new book is called Big Buts of the Bible: Where Broken Stories Meet God’s Grace. Like the original, it explores the remarkable little word but throughout Matthew’s Gospel and the surprising turns that follow it.
But this isn’t simply a refreshed version of the old manuscript. It’s a different book, written by a somewhat different writer.
The younger writer was fascinated by what Scripture could teach us about Jesus. The older writer remains fascinated by that, but he’s increasingly interested in what the encounters with Jesus reveal about God’s heart toward imperfect people.
People with questions. People with regrets. People whose stories haven’t unfolded the way they expected.
People like us.
I’m grateful for the version of me who began this project back in 2000. Without him, there wouldn’t be a book to revisit. But I’m also grateful that I didn’t stop growing when he finished writing.
And perhaps that’s the larger lesson I’ve taken from this experience, one I’d offer to any fellow writer returning to an old manuscript:
Don’t be so committed to preserving the words you once wrote that you overlook the story you’re now ready to tell.
Sometimes revision is exactly what a manuscript needs. And sometimes the most important discovery is that the author has changed.
— Darin Michael Shaw
My completely rewritten book, Big Buts of the Bible: Where Broken Stories Meet God’s Grace, is now available in paperback and Kindle editions on Amazon. You can also read more about the new book—and the perspective behind it—at Big Buts of the Bible.
