Writing Naked
January 28, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 58 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I took exactly one class in writing. It was about fifteen years ago at the community college and was taught by a real published author whose name I cannot recall. But she was published, and as far as I was concerned that was all the credentials she needed.
The first class turned out to be the most useful. That’s not to say the instruction given in the proceeding eleven weeks of the course wasn’t useful. It was. But that first night alone was worth the money.
The twenty or so people in the class formed a semi-circle around the professor, who stood in behind a wooden podium that was much more intimidating than she. We sat at attention, notebooks ready, eager to have our heads filled with the hidden secrets of literary success.
“Tell me,” she said, “what does one need to write?”
The more outgoing among the class were quick with suggestions:
“Time.”
“Perseverance.”
“Skill.”
“Connections.” (That one was met with a nervous chuckle from the rest of the class.)
“Practice.”
Each was met with an approving nod and so was written down by everyone, myself included. But that really wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
“Those are good suggestions,” she said, “but you’re leaving the most important aspect out. Anyone?”
No one.
“Courage,” she said.
I didn’t really understand that and snickered under my breath. Courage? Soldiers needed courage. Cops needed courage. EMTs and stunt men and bullfighters. But writers? Sitting on your butt and typing on a keyboard did not take courage.
“There are some who might disagree with that,” she said—and to this day I swear she looked at me when she said it—“and I understand. You disagree because you’re writing with your clothes on. By the time you leave here, you’ll be writing naked.”
I’ll admit I almost walked out then. I’d heard about kooky writing classes given by kooky professors who did some pretty strange things in the name of “art.” I was afraid if I stuck around I’d end up dressed in a blue tracksuit with a cup of Kool-Aid in my hand because a comet was passing by to take me to heaven.
I stayed in my seat on the whim she was speaking metaphorically.
“There is no greater fear than to face a blank page,” she said. “It mocks and threatens. It challenges you. Give it power, and it will eat you alive. Face it clothed, and you will fail. The only way to beat the blank page is to attack it naked.”
Twelve of the twenty students raised their hands.
“Wait, wait,” she said, moving her hands in a downward motion. “No, I’m not speaking literally. But I’m not joking, either. Let me ask you something else. Why do people write?”
More hands in the air, which she chose to ignore.
“People write because they must. Because there is a story inside them that is meant to be shared with the world. But having that story inside you doesn’t make you a writer. How you tell that story does. And you tell it through honesty.”
She told us to put our pens down and just listen.
“Writers fail because they come to the page fully clothed. They adorn themselves with fanciful plots and layer themselves with complicated character development. They use flowery prose and words you have to look up in the dictionary. They do this not to impress their readers, but to keep their readers at arm’s length. They’re afraid. Afraid to bare their souls and inject themselves into their work. For that they are cowards.
“Don’t simply tell me that faith saves you, tell me how it almost failed you, too. Don’t tell me about love, speak of your passion. Don’t tell me you’re hurt, let me see your heart breaking. I don’t want to see your talent on the page, I want to see your blood. Dare to be naked before your readers. Because that is writing, and everything else is worthless crap.”
I’ll always remember that. In fact, written on an index card taped to my lamp are these two words—Be Naked. Because she was right, that’s what writing is all about. Fiction or non, poetry or devotional, funny or serious, it doesn’t matter. Our calling is still the same:
To bare ourselves so we may be the mirror the world holds to itself.
Finding Peace
January 26, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 33 Comments
photo by photobucket
I’ll see about a hundred people over the course of a normal day. That’s a lot of humanity for a guy who tends to be a little more at peace with the world when he’s alone in the woods. Still, it isn’t all bad. There are some folks I come across who tend to stick in my mind for whatever reason. Three of them are stuck there right now.
I passed Robbie Lawson’s house this morning on my way into town and saw him out in the backyard. It was rainy and windy and cold, yet there he was—all sixty pounds of him—waling away on his father’s old punching bag that hung from their oak tree. Robbie’s training, his father told me. Seems there’s a bully problem at school. And as the code of honor among boys precludes involvement of both teachers and parents, Robbie has decided to take care of things himself. Sooner or later that bully’s going to get what’s coming to him.
I saw Davey Jackson at the 7-11 doing what he always does. I’m pretty sure the owners stock up on those cheap single roses that sit by the cash register just for him. Davey stops by every other day or so on his way home from work to buy a scratch-off and a rose for his wife, Marian. The lotto ticket is a vain prayer for a better life. The roses aren’t a token of love as much as apology. Both speak to the same point—Marian’s a hard lady to please.
Among the throng of people at Target this afternoon was Kirk Sensabaugh, who had just returned from Afghanistan. He had the ramrod posture of a Marine and the sad eyes of someone who’d seen too much. It was his desire to go, he told me, and also his desire to go back. “We gotta finish what they started,” he said. Kirk was due for his second tour of duty in a month.
It would seem on the surface those three people have little in common. Seemed so to me, anyway. But the more I thought about them the more I came to realize they did. There was one thing they were each striving for in their own way, whether they realized it or not. And it’s the one thing we’re all striving for, too.
Ask ten people what it is they want in life and you’ll likely get ten different answers. Some will say happiness, others success, other security. There will be at least one “love,” one “fulfillment,” and one “purpose.” But at the root of each of those things lies a longing for one thing alone:
Peace.
That’s what Robbie wanted. Peace not with a schoolyard bully, but with himself. He’s afraid. Very much so. And even though he’d never confess that fear to anyone, it’s something that has gnawed at him. There’s a war raging in his tiny heart, and the only way he’ll find his peace is by confronting the person who holds it hostage.
Peace is what Davey wants, too. An end to the arguments and silence and a return to a love that was once there but is now hidden beneath layers of resentment and dreams unfulfilled.
Peace is also why Kirk has spent what to him was an eternity of months in the frozen mountains of a faraway country. Why he willingly and daily laid his life aside for the benefit of us all. He and those like him face our nightmares for us so we may sleep in safety. And more, they have come to understand what many in our country cannot—there is a peace that can only be found on the other side of war.
They’re searching and striving and hoping. All three of them.
But I wonder if they know the truth of what they seek.
I wonder if Robbie understands that there will always be bullies in his life and that only the least dangerous take the form of people. Or if Davey understands that the fairy tale that is marriage most often is not. Sometimes, many times, love just isn’t enough. And I wonder if Kirk understands that peace, whether obtained through war or instead of it, is a fleeting thing destined to blow away with the slightest breeze.
Because the peace they seek, the peace we all seek, cannot be gotten through our own efforts. It depends on Someone greater than us.
Because God made us for Himself, and there can be no peace unless it is peace in Him.
This post is part of the blog carnival on Peace hosted by Bridget Chumbley. To read more posts about this topic, please go here.
Angela Vs. the Big Bad
January 25, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 5 Comments
photo by photobucket
I suppose the whole December 2012 thing is to blame for much of the talk about the end of the world these days. Seems like that sort of thing is just about everywhere. I was in the bookstore over the weekend and spotted at least a dozen new titles about everything from Armageddon to the Earth’s poles being reversed. Crazy stuff, that.
I also caught the newest post-Apocalyptic movie over the weekend. Not usually my thing, but I really like Denzel Washington. The movie was decent enough, but the real action took place in the theater itself. When the projector broke.
What happened next can be found over at katdish’s blog today. It made me feel a little better about both the state of our world and our ability to endure whatever Big Bad comes our way. Because in the end we won’t need leaders or muscle-bound heroes. As long as we have people like Angela, I think we’ll be just fine.
A Thousand Words
January 21, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 49 Comments
My office door is closed as I write this, but I can hear the sounds from downstairs as they sneak through the small crack at the bottom—the laughter of two small children, the sound of dinner almost made, laughter from the television. Yet here I sit and peck.
I demand a thousand words a day from myself, which sounds a lot more than it really is. It doesn’t matter what those thousand words happen to be about, nor does it matter what they are for. It could be a blog post or a book chapter or food for the garbage can, and it doesn’t matter. Because it’s still writing, and that’s what matters.
It seems absurd to have to state that a writer is a person who writes, and yet I have to constantly remind myself of that. It’s a concept I can just as easily let go of as grasp. I can delude myself into thinking that if I’m reading a book about writing, I’m writing. I am learning my craft. The same goes for walks outside (“research,” I call it) and trips to Staples (“preparation”). But it doesn’t work that way.
Because a writer writes.
So it’s a thousand words for me. Every day. Regardless. Because I need that discipline. I need the reminder that even if writing is not who I am, it is what I do.
The thing is this:
There are days when those words gush forth from that mysterious place inside me like water from a fire hose. When I have long hours to sink into my desk and ponder. When the sun falls through open windows and warms everything and heaven itself seems to pour upon me buckets of inspiration.
Those days are rare. Exceedingly so.
More often than not those thousand words will be stretched out from around six o’clock in the morning until one o’clock the next. Rather than gushing forth, those words will be cajoled and, in some cases, dragged into the light. Most of them will come in those precious few minutes between one thing at work and another at home, between schleps around a college campus with a hundred pounds of mail and helping with second-grade homework. They will come when I sink myself into my desk not out of comfort, but out of exhaustion. When the moon shines against draped and curtained windows and leaves me cold. When inspiration comes in slow drips like sap from a tree.
That’s the norm sometimes. Tonight especially. But I’m here and here I’ll stay until I have my thousand words.
I always thought I’d be a writer when I reached an audience or when I got published. But the truth is that when the one came along and then the other, I never felt any different than I had before. Every writer wants validation, and often that validation comes in the form of book and agent contracts or an increasing number of visits to a website or blog. Then the words will rush out. Then you’ll be a writer.
Trust me—that’s just not so.
A writer doesn’t become a writer by getting a steady stream of comments or a high-profile agent or a higher-profile publisher.
A writer becomes a writer by writing.
There’s a knock at the door. I look up and see a tiny head peeking.
“Hey, Dad,” says my son.
He doesn’t want anything and doesn’t say more, he just wants to know I’m still here. I say that I’m almost done and then I’ll be down. We can play super hero. He nods and smiles and is gone.
If writing teaches you nothing else, it will teach you this—sometimes you have to be selfish. You have to get your words in. Your family won’t always understand. Neither will your friends. That’s okay. It comes with the territory. At its core writing is a lonely task, and so is my thousand words. Because in order to share myself with the world, there are times when I must remove myself from it.
I take a look at my counter and see that I now have 684 words. Perfect. And I realize it’s time to drag more words out into the light, and that I’d better hurry.
Because there’s a little boy downstairs who wants to play super hero.
Looking Up
January 20, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 6 Comments
Photo by Ann Voskamp
The most recent of my daughter’s many career incarnations is an astronaut, courtesy of a thirty-second newscast of the most recent space shuttle launch that somehow made it onto our DVR. I would have erased it without a second thought if she hadn’t have been sitting next to me at the time. One minute the anchor was expounding upon the latest Hollywood scandal (at which point the volume was lowered), and the next there was the Atlantis, rocketing into the sky.
It was the first time my daughter had witnessed anything of the sort, and she had the look on her face to prove it—slack-jawed, eyes bulged, breath held. It was, she said, the most magnificent thing she’d ever seen…
I’m over at High Calling Blogs today, and I’ll invite you over there to read the rest of this story. I promise it’s a good one. We’re reminded daily of how much humanity screws up. The news is full of violence and corruption and heartbreak. But it’s worth reminding ourselves that we’re not all bad. Sometimes we do get it right.
Haiti, Pat Robertson, and the Thin Places
January 18, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 13 Comments
Injured people sit along a road the day after the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, (AP Photo/Jorge Cruz)
It seems more than a little sad to me that comments made by Pat Robertson about the situation in Haiti has almost overshadowed the situation itself. People have been quick to criticize him (which is justified) and Christianity as a whole (which is not). There is no doubt that the Haitian people need help. Telling them they deserve what they’ve gotten because they made a pact with the Devil is not help.
However.
I have a perspective on Haiti that some people lack. My grandfather was a missionary there for much of his life. He loved Haiti and loved its people. But he was quick to say there was much more to that county than people realize, a fact he learned firsthand when he went missing for three days there in the 1980s.
To hear that story, hop on over to katdish’s blog. Yes, Pat Robertson’s words weren’t the very best that could have been said. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he was completely wrong.
Finding Success
January 15, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 44 Comments
photo by photobucket
I haven’t read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers yet, mostly because I know what his point is. This isn’t like deciding not to see a movie because you already know the ending. It’s more than that. Deeper. Sort of on par with not going to the doctor because you know you’re sick.
Outliers deals with success. More to the point, why some people find it and others never do. Gladwell studies the lives of the super elite—Bill Gates, Tom Brady, and the Beatles, for instance—and also people like Chris Langan, people you’ve probably never heard of and yet were or are just as talented.
What Gladwell found was both predictable and decidedly not. The predictable part is something I can completely accept without hesitation. The part that’s not? Well, let’s just say that if he’s true, then a lot of what I’ve always held to be true about success in anything just…isn’t.
For instance.
Outliers states that the mastery of any skill, whether it’s computer programming or throwing a football or writing, requires ten thousand hours of practice. Bill Gates, for instance, spent the better part of his high school years sneaking into nearby Washington University to program and then snuck back through his bedroom window before his mother could wake him for school. The Beatles found their first playing job at a strip club in Germany, where the owner forced them to play eight hours a day.
In other words, they put in their time. They worked. And that work paid off. People will come and go, but both Bill Gates and the Beatles will be around forever.
But wait. There’s more.
Those ten thousand hours of practice—in my case writing and rewriting and writing again—might make mastery possible, but it won’t guarantee success. Accomplishment requires more than the putting in of one’s time.
Gladwell finds another common theme besides hard work in every person he studies. Bill Gates wouldn’t have become the billionaire computer genius he is today if he hadn’t have been fortunate enough to grow up a stone’s throw away from what was at the time the preeminent computer complex in the United States. The Beatles would have never honed their skills to the point where they were not four men on a stage but seemingly one if they hadn’t have stumbled into that strip club in Germany.
In case after case, time after time, the people who stand upon the apex of human achievement in every conceivable area all have this in common:
They got lucky.
And I hate it.
I hate it because chance should have nothing to do with success. I hate it because I was raised to believe that this is the one country on God’s good Earth where you could start with nothing, work your tail off, believe in your dreams, and ultimately have them. That in the end whether you stand or crawl in this life was largely up to you. It was sweat and tears and picking yourself up just one more time than you fall down. Luck had nothing to do with it. We made our own luck.
We made our own breaks.
But I’ve been spending some time lately looking back on my own life from the first time I put pen to paper and dreamed until now. And I can see clearly the fact that I’ve caught my own share of breaks. Breaks that, if never received, would have resulted in a manuscript that still sat on my desk rather than a publisher’s.
Which made me wonder why I was so lucky when there were just as many manuscripts sitting on other people’s desks that were just as good, better, than mine.
What makes me so lucky?
I thought this all might sound better if I replaced “luck” with “blessing,” but it didn’t. All that left me with was that God chose to bless me with my dreams rather than someone else who’d worked just as hard and written just as well.
So here I sit, pecking away at my laptop in the middle of the night and wondering. Is this really an even playing field, or are some destined for their breaks—for that blessing—and some not? And if so, what does that say about life with such unfairness built into it and a God who will allow the spark of a dream to fan to flame only to burn itself out?
I don’t know. Maybe you do.
What do you think? If you’ve found success, was it because of a break? And if you haven’t yet, do you think you’ll need a break to get there?
The Basement
January 13, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 23 Comments
photo by photobucket
The weather has stretched Christmas out by an extra couple of weeks here, at least on the outside. Wind chills below zero have kept lights on the trees and guttering and wise men still in search of Baby Jesus. By and large people seem fine with this. If they’re not, it hasn’t gotten to the point where getting on with things outweighs the risk of hypothermia.
I would imagine that if anyone is relieved at a little Christmas overtime, it’s Kenny. Not just because seven-year-old boys wouldn’t mind seeing sparkling lights and an inflatable Santa in his yard an extra month out of the year, but because helping his father take them down would require going into the basement.
And Kenny doesn’t like the basement.
I have a theory that every house has a junk room. A place where all the I’ll-put-it-here-for-now stuff goes, whether keepsakes or yard sale fodder or stuff you really need to throw away but just can’t bring yourself to do so. For some, that place is the attic. For folks like me, it’s a shed in the backyard. For Kenny’s family, it’s the basement.
All of that old and mostly forgotten stuff down there gives him the willies. It’s scary down there, he’s told me. Dark and stinky, too. It’s where the spiders and mice and ghosts live. Also the furnace. That’s the worst. Kenny’s convinced their furnace is the gateway to hell itself.
At night before bed, he doesn’t worry about the front or back doors being locked. Kenny worries about the basement door. He’s seen the movies (though he won’t fess up and tell me which movies he’s talking about) and knows what can happen. In other words, he isn’t afraid of something coming in, he’s afraid of something coming up. It’s a fear magnified by the fact that the lock is on the inside of the door instead of the outside. The builder’s mistake, and one Kenny’s father has never gotten around to fixing. Which means the spiders and mice and ghosts can keep everything in, but Kenny can’t keep them out.
This fear—this dread—is Kenny’s alone. He hasn’t told his parents about the basement, and how he worries about the lock on the door before he goes to bed, and how he prays his dad will eventually change the lock around to the other side so Kenny could get in but they couldn’t get out. But he won’t say anything. It would make him seem like a kid. And when you’re a kid, the very last thing you want is to act like one.
Me, I understand all of this. The kid part, but especially the part about the basement. I might not have one of those in my own house, but I do have one inside of me. Deep down and seldom seen. It’s the place where all my junk is kept, the fears and worries and failures. The sins I’ve committed and the regrets I have.
It’s a mess, my basement. Junky and moldy and dark. I suspect things crawl around down there, too. And there are ghosts. Plenty of ghosts.
But I’m not alone. Flip through your Bible and you’ll find plenty of people with junky basements. Moses had one, what with that murder charge and all. David, too. Peter junked his up pretty when he denied Christ after saying he never would. And let’s not forget Paul, who had on his hands the blood of hundreds.
They found out the very thing we do—living with junk in the basement isn’t just scary, it’s tough.
But they also found out that God can clean up those basements. He can get rid of the junk, scrub everything down, and chase away all the nasties. But He can’t do it alone. We have to open the door and let Him in. Because like Kenny’s house, there are locks on our basement doors, and they all lock from the inside.
Spencer’s Lust
January 12, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 19 Comments
photo by photobucket
Spencer said, “I ain’t never doin’ it. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
The words were slurred because his tongue was still hanging out of his mouth, giving the impression that this five-year-old had been drinking a little more than his customary Kool-Aid.
“Do you have to keep sticking your tongue out like that?” I asked him.
“Yeth,” he slurred again. “If it’s in my mouff, I can’t control it.”
“Ah,” I answered and nodded in approval. It was a good idea, I thought. A more practical way to tame the tongue. “Good luck with that. If it works, you’ll be famous.”
“Why?” he asked, eyes bulging.
I shrugged. “It’s never been done before. Not as far as I know. Folks say it’s impossible.”
Spencer hadn’t considered the prospect of fame. Riches, yes. But renown might be even better.
“I ain’t never doin’ it,” he repeated. Meaning that was that and I should probably be moving along.
So I did. Away from the Sunday school rooms and through the foyer to grab this week’s church bulletin, then finally into the sanctuary to settle my family. It just so happened that Spencer and his family settled in two rows behind. Just after the first hymn and just before the first prayer, I stole a look over my shoulder.
Spencer’s tongue was still out, despite the repeated attempts by his mother to rectify what she no doubt considered ill manners. I raised an eyebrow at him and got a thumbs up in reply.
His father takes the blame for the entire situation. He was the one who took care of Spencer’s loose bicuspid with a bit of fishing line and a doorknob. “Quick and painless,” he’d told his son. Spencer didn’t think that was quite so. Turned out that both of them were right.
The trick was quick, yes. And also painful.
Fathers often resort to desperate measures to put a stop to a crying child, and Spencer’s tried everything in the book up to and including an impending visit from the Tooth Fairy. That perked Spencer’s ears a bit and brought the wailing down to a somewhat manageable sob, but that only lasted until Spencer found out all the Tooth Fairy was good for was a dollar. To him the pain and suffering alone was worth at least ten, not to mention the mental distress.
Knowing his son was quite the budding capitalist, Spencer’s dad decided to up the ante with an old wives tale.
“Better stop cryin’,” he told his son, “or else your tongue might slip into that hole in your mouth.”
Spencer stopped. “Why?” he mumbled.
“You mean you don’t know what happens if you keep your tongue clear?”
“…no.”
“If you never let your tongue touch that spot, the tooth that comes in will be gold.”
It was without doubt a stroke of genius, a psychological ploy designed to divert Spencer’s attention away from the pain he was feeling. More than that, he gave his son a goal. And we all know that a little pain is nothing if there’s a goal to be reached.
However.
There is that unscientific yet utterly concrete law of unintended consequences. Each cause has more than one effect, which will lead to any number of side-effects. In this particular case, the effect was what Spencer’s dad intended—his son stopped crying. The side-effect, though, was that Spencer walked around the house for a full day and a half with his tongue hanging out.
His parents didn’t mind (though his mother would have preferred her son not stick his tongue out while in the house of the Lord). In fact they encouraged it, going to far as to tell Spencer that it was considered permissible to house his tongue inside his mouth during sleep. Evidently consciousness is a prerequisite in the cultivation of a gold tooth.
In the end his parents have experience on their side. They understand the desire to accomplish a goal, no matter how intimidating the odds. They also understand that very often the thing we’re trying so hard not to do is the very thing we end up doing. Life is all about the constant battle between the two.
The pastor delivered a fine sermon that Sunday, but I have a feeling no one will remember it. What they will remember is the sound of a little boy shouting “Aww heck!” in the middle of the service. The Bible does indeed our desires are tough to tame. We’re always getting in our own way. Which is why the real sermon that day came from a child in a pew rather than a preacher at the podium.
This post is part of the Lust blog carnival hosted by Bridget Chumbley. To read more entries, visit her at One Word At a Time.
Choosing Love
January 11, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 8 Comments
photo by photobucket
That our hearts are made for God is a given, at least to me. But that our hearts are also made for one other person in this world is also a given. To find that single person with whom we can share our lives and our dreams is sometimes a long and difficult search. Love is never easy. I think that’s the point of it all.
Love is often complicated as well, an intricate dance that at times involves not one partner but two. Such was the case with Jenny. She had to choose between two loves that offered two futures. In the end, I suspect neither choice would have brought her the happiness she wanted. That’s another point of love–as much as it can fulfill us, it can also leave us empty.
To read Jenny’s story, stop on over at katdish’s blog. I’ll be back here on Wednesday to talk about lust. Which should be pretty interesting…
I’m a writer whose first novel, Snow Day, will be published by FaithWords in 2010.
But don’t let that fool you. I’m just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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