When asked about the title of his book, Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller is taken aback, “What? Is it offensive?” He is surprised that someone wouldn’t get the meaning. As he explains in the book, jazz “is a free-form expression. It comes from the soul, and it is true.”

This is the perfect analogy for Blue Like Jazz, written in a “stream of consciousness” style, with an authenticity that can only come from the soul.

Miller said people are surprised when they find out that he’s a very private person. People ask, “What are you talking about? You’re all over this book.”

“There’s a line of what we’re willing to share with other people,” he explains. My line is a little closer so that people can know a lot, but it’s also a bigger, taller wall. So there’s nothing in the book that I’m embarrassed about or wouldn’t talk about.”

Miller says he learned this from David Wilcox, a folk singer. “The more vulnerable he is, the more he’s telling the audience they can be friends. He’s saying ‘I’m going to give you something you can use against me. And if I’m going to give you something you can use against me, then I trust you.’”

One of the very early stories in this book sets the stage for his willingness to share. He said the decision to tell people that he wet the bed until he was 10 was the ultimate test.

“I put it in the book and took it out five or six times. But once I decided that was going in the book, everything else was easy. It wasn’t like it was anything to be ashamed of. It was when I was 10 years old. What’s it matter? But when I was writing it, it was like I was back there telling my 5^th grade class that I’m a bed wetter.” After overcoming that mental block, everything else was downhill.

Miller also adds that it was easy to be vulnerable when he didn’t expect anyone to ever read the book.

“My last book was a dead bomb, there was nothing that said that this book was going to get published. I think God just set that up.”