It’s been almost ten years – The Shack
I am often asked, “How did you come to write this story? What led you to put The Shack down on paper?”
I then tell them how I wrote The Shack as a gift for Christmas for our six children (13-26 at that time), at the encouragement of Kim, the woman to whom I am married. She had asked me, “Some day as a gift for our kids, would you please write something that puts in one place how you think, because you think outside the box.” Later, when the book was in print, she told me she had been thinking four to six pages. Oh, well.
I made fifteen copies at Office Depot, gave six plus one to Kim and the rest to friends. It never crossed my mind to publish and I went back to work.
Others, perhaps because of their own interest in writing, ask about the nuts and bolts of turning this
story into a book and a book into a published work.
The answers to many of these questions can be found in my “Author’s Note” in the current edition. There may be authors who can turn in letter perfect manuscripts to publishers without showing their work to a single other person, but that isn’t me. In my “Author’s Note”, I single out Wayne Jacobsen, Brad Cummings and Bobby Downes for special thanks. Without their initial collaboration and the assistance of many others, credited and uncredited, The Shack might never have made it into print — or onto the big screen.
This has been true for each of the books I have written. There have been editors who corrected my grammar, editors who helped me with content and story arc, artists who worked on cover and design, technicians who did layout, the printers and salespeople, the truckers and media folk who talk about it, and the readers who give me the honor of their time. So, while I am the sole author of The Shack per the book cover, the film credits and the U.S. Copyright Office, I am very conscious of — and deeply grateful for — everyone else who has been a part of this journey.
— WPY