Q & A With Master Storyteller Jerry B. Jenkins

Jerry B. Jenkins’ professional writing career spans over 50 years. He has authored over 200 books, including the Left Behind series and The Chosen novels, which have collectively sold over 73 million copies. Jenkins Entertainment, a filmmaking company, is owned by Jerry and run by his son Dallas. He publishes The Christian Writer’s Market Guide and teaches writing to aspiring authors through blogs, webinars, self-study courses, and podcasts at www.JerryJenkins.com. He also offers a contest for previously unpublished authors, known as Operation First Novel. To sum it all up, he is one of the most successful and prolific writers of all time.

Q: Did you have a childhood hero?
A: My late father was a man’s man, a former Marine and a career law enforcement officer (who went from walking a beat to becoming a police chief). He was a model of consistency and discipline, selflessness and chivalry.

He was an outspoken Christian, a churchman, a romantic, a poet, unabashedly in love with my mother, whom he referred to as his “lifetime valentine,” and he was a convicting example of one who was never too macho to scrub a floor, change a diaper, or do the dishes.

He and Mom raised four sons, of whom I was the third, and not one of us rebelled. All of us became active churchgoing Christians, the first two career cops, I a writer, and the youngest a missionary.

Q: How did your growing-up years influence your writing?
A: Besides Dad being a poet and crossword puzzle worker, Mom was a brilliant linguist and lover of words and word games like anagrams and Scrabble. She taught me to read before I went to kindergarten, and I immediately began reading the sports pages every day.

Q: How do you prioritize writing with your other responsibilities?
A: God’s a given, naturally, and permeates everything. Then family is first. I’ve always considered myself mono-gifted. I don’t sing or dance or preach; writing is what I do. And writing is not my calling; full-time Christian work is what I have been called to, so the point has never been sales or reviews or royalties. Success to me is defined as obedience to that call. The rest I have no control over anyway, and it has all been icing on the cake.

Dianna and I established a policy even before we had children that once they came along, I would do no work from the office and no writing from the time I got home from work till the time the kids went to bed. (Of course, sometimes we put them to bed at 4:30 p.m.)

I maintained that policy religiously from the time our three sons were infants until they left home. I never wrote while they were at home and awake, so when I did write, it was always without guilt, which I believe made me much more productive. It also proved to the boys that I meant it when I said they came first. Kids hear what you say, but they believe what you do. I refused to sacrifice my family on the altar of my work.

Q: You’ve written a lot of biographies of famous people, and you’ve been quoted, “I’ve written enough books about real celebrities, such as Walter Payton, Hank Aaron, and Billy Graham, to know that fame only looks good to those who don’t have it.” Tell us more about fame and what it means to be a celebrity.
A: I get recognized just enough to make it fun and not so much that it becomes a nuisance. But anyone who has ever felt invisible (read unpublished) knows the feeling of wondering what it would be like to be a household name or widely admired.

I was exposed to it by working with truly famous people like those mentioned above, and many others. You recognize quickly that fame is a prison. Along with whatever gratification comes from feeling loved is the knowledge that your time and privacy will no longer ever again be your own. You can’t throw on a pair of sweats and a ball cap and run unshaven or un-showered to the grocer’s for a gallon of milk. Everyone will recognize you and want just a few seconds for a greeting, a smile, an acknowledgment, an autograph, or a selfie. And the last thing you want is their being able to say, “He didn’t have 20 seconds for me,” or “He clearly hadn’t bathed,” or “He was unshaven.”

Q: Do you have another project ready to start?

Q: Why do you write? Are there different reasons for different kinds of writing?
A: I turned to sportswritng when I was injured playing sports as a freshman in high school and realized immediately I had found my niche. I wasn’t good at it at first (I had a quarter million clichés to get out of my system), but I had a knack for it after having read the sports pages all my life.

I talked my way into a job stringing for the local daily paper two years before I was old enough to drive (my parents had to cart me around), and I covered high school sports. So, I’ve been a professional writer for more than 50 years.

I felt a call to full-time Christian work a couple of years later and assumed I would have to give up the writing and train for the pastorate or missionary work. But a wise counselor told me that sometimes God equips a person before he calls them, and that writing may be the vehicle I could use to answer the call.

Q: What do you read? How much time do you have for reading? Favorite authors?
A: I read widely, fiction and nonfiction, at least an hour a day, believing that writers must be readers. I believe the greatest living writer in America is Rick Bragg whose masterpiece is his memoir, All Over but the Shoutin’. I’m currently reading his The Prince of Frogtown.

Q: Do you have a dream cast for a film for any of your books?
A: I fantasized about Harrison Ford playing Rayford Steele in Left Behind, and while I didn’t think of it, I was thrilled to see Nicolas Cage get the role and thought he did a great job.

Q: Tell us about how you have helped (and continue to help) other writers. Where should writers go for more information?
A: An author I admired was kind to me as a teenager, and I vowed that if I ever succeeded as a writer, I would pay that forward. When I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, I was thrilled to be able to do that in spades. I’ve been doing that since 2001 when I bought the Christian Writers Guild. The current iteration is the Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild at www.JerryJenkins.com

Q: Have you ever been to the South Carolina Lowcountry and, if so, what do remember about it?
A: The closest I got was when I wrote Commitment to Love, the story of Deanna McClary, who loved her husband, Clebe McClary, back to health when he returned after having been nearly blown to bits in Viet Nam. They live in Pawley’s Island SC.
My favorite novel is Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides, set in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Q: I like the way you respond to criticism. Have you always been so calm and sensible?
A: I think I got that from my father, who said, “Remember who you are and who you’re not.” Also, Billy Graham said he had learned to respond to critics by not defending himself but merely thanking them for being forthright and asking them to pray for him.

Q: Are there any topics you don’t like to discuss?
A: No, I don’t think any subjects should be off limits to a writer.

Q: When you procrastinate about writing, does that mean you are still working on your story while you do other things? How does that work?
A: You must trust that your subconscious is working.

Q: How does your faith of today compare with your faith walk as a young man?
A: More urgent, less strident. More compassionate, less opinionated. More inclusive and understanding, less rigid and judgmental. I quit drawing lines in the sand when I realized how few of us were left on the beach. But I do still believe in John 14:6.

Tamela Maxim is thrilled to write for the Bluffton Sun and Hilton Head Sun. She was previously the assistant publisher of Realtor Listings magazine, editor of Bluffton Breeze and Premier Lowcountry magazines, and occasional contributor to local newspapers and magazine. She plays the role of the assistant art instructor on the YouTube channel Art Posse, a local reality TV show that has just completed its 2nd season. www.artposseproductions.com She recently edited and published two books, Et Cetera Y’all, Volume 1 by Annelore Harrell, and From Jellybeans to a Nobel Prize Nomination by Arthur V. Martin, Ph.D.