A Day in the Life of a Published Author
January 7, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 55 Comments
photo by photobucket
I’ll admit there is little I remember about the conversation I had with Rachelle Gardner when she called to say I had been offered a publishing contract. Bliss mixed with shock and combined with a temporary but nasty case of the shakes can do that to a person. But I do remember her saying these words near the end:
“Your life is going to change now.”
I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but it sounded awfully nice. Not that my life was horrible at the time. It wasn’t. But to some extent that phone call divided my life into two distinct parts—the part that was before I was published, and the part afterwards.
I was ready to experience the part afterwards.
Ready to be a real writer and live a real writer’s life.
I didn’t know what that meant exactly either, but that too sounded awfully nice. I envisioned a flurry of emails and phone calls with editors and agents and publishers, interviews and mentions and furious planning.
To me being published was a sort of rebirth, a chance to lay aside the old me for a new and improved version. After years of trying and failing, I had found my holy grail. Those black clouds of fear and doubt were about to be replaced by blue skies and rainbows. My days, I decided, would now be meaningful.
For proof of whether that assertion has been proven true or not, here is a recollection of a twenty-four-hour span during this past week—one day in the life of a published author:
5:30 am – Alarm scares me awake. Cannot get out of bed. Throw the nearest object to silence the clock and miss, waking everyone in the house.
5:35 – Have a wonderful idea to include in my next book while in the shower.
5:37 – Forget the idea.
6:00 – Leave for work. With wind chill, the temperature is five below zero. Ponder the fact that real writers are likely still in bed.
7:00 – Begin sorting over two thousand pieces of mail. Wonder what in the world has happened to me.
8:30 – Break time. Thaw out extremities, then check email, Twitter, and blog comments. Really hoping people like my post. Also hoping everyone else’s numbers dipped a little over the holidays. Pessimistic voice inside my head mutters Yeah, right.
8:50 – Get an idea for a blog post during a conversation with a friend. This one I manage to write down in time. Still kicking myself for forgetting the one I had in the shower, though. Now convinced it could have been a bestseller.
9:00-11:59 – Thoughts of book tours and rampant adulation are replaced by the fact that I am scouring the campus looking for a box of grapes sent by a student’s mother.
12:00 pm – Lunch. Editing what I wrote from the previous night and looking over a few blogs. Decide that Jon Acuff’s book is going to be huge. Also decide that I’m not jealous because Jon’s a nice guy and he deserves it.
12:04 – Decide that even though Jon’s nice and he deserves it, I’m still jealous.
4:00 – Drive home. Have another good idea for the book. Pull over to write it down and am passed by someone who waves. Forget the idea. Curse my impending senility.
4:30 – Onslaught of kids/dinner/homework/exercise. Can’t write because of the commotion. Decide to reread Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. My enemy has a name, and its name is Resistance.
6:00 – catch up on emails. Nothing from publisher. They haven’t forgotten about me, right? Hush the pessimistic voice in my head before it answers.
9:30 – Family settled, I go upstairs to write.
1:15 am – 1,000 words for book number two, 720 for a blog post. Delirious from exhaustion.
1:30 – Bed.
Such has been my initiation into the world of publishing. Sounds glamorous, huh? Don’t get me wrong—I’m loving every second. This is, after all, my dream. But it’s not a blissful dream. Not a restful one. It’s work. Excruciating, tiresome, lonely work. Also the only work I’ve ever wanted to do.
Rachelle was right (Rachelle’s always right). My life has changed.
But I haven’t.
Getting published doesn’t remake you, it simply magnifies the person you’ve always been. I’m not as afraid or jealous or doubtful as I was before. It’s worse now. All those insecurities of being a writer are still there, and they still rage. The only difference is that while those emotions were once a distraction, now they’re a threat. Where once they tried to keep my dream from me, now they’re intent on taking it away.
There is no holy grail in writing. No point where you can relax and say you’ve made it. No place you can dream of getting to in order to make everything good.
Because no matter where you go in life, you take yourself with you.
Wandering Far
January 6, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 10 Comments
Photo by Kelly Langner Sauer
Frankie kept talking but still refused to look at me, making his words seem more a soliloquy—a prayer, even—than a conversation.
“I remember going to the store with Tara when she was six,” he said. “I got to talking to this guy I knew. Just shootin’ the breeze, you know? Tara wandered off.”
I leaned back in my chair and took a sip of coffee. Frankie’s, I noticed, was still full. Customers milled about chattering of weather and news. Like Frankie and me, they spoke of things unchangeable.
“I just looked down to rub her head, and she was gone. Gone. Know how that feels?”
I didn’t know whether to nod or listen. I nodded. If Frankie saw it, he let it go unmentioned.
“I just panicked. Just turned and left, leavin’ the guy I was talking to standing right there in the middle of the store. I ran down every aisle, asked people if they’d seen my daughter, everything. I swear, that was the worst feeling in the world.”
“Until now,” I said...
To read the rest of this story, please hop over to my column at High Calling Blogs. It’s a tough lesson for every parent to learn, but maybe a necessary one. Sometimes no matter how much we love our kids, they’ll wander. Just like no matter how much God loves us, we’ll do the same…
The world of possibility
January 4, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 9 Comments
photo by photobucket
I remember my first taste of magic.
I was six and vacationing with my family at Virginia Beach. There was a ramshackle store just off the boardwalk near the pier. Can’t remember the name, but I do remember the top hat and cane that was on the sign.
My father and I wandered in one evening to escape a sudden rain, and for twenty minutes we were both entertained by the proprietor, a nameless man with a gray beard and an uncanny ability to conjure something out of nothing. I was mystified.
I remember my father telling me that it was all just a trick, that whatever magic there was in the world was harder to see and easier to dismiss. But I didn’t care. Subterfuge or not, I had been awakened into a world of possibility. That was all that mattered.
All these years later, I still love magic. But a Christmas present given by a distant relative this year threatened that love and forced me to make a decision–do I keep believing in that world of possibility, or do I surrender to a world of fact instead?
To read what exactly that present was–and the choice I made, too–please stop by katdish’s blog today. Maybe you’ll see what I’ve seen over my life. That you don’t necessarily have to see to believe, but you always have to believe to see.
What now!
January 1, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 21 Comments
by photobucket
New Year’s Day is the adult version of starting a new school year. It’s our chance to forget the failures of the previous twelve months, all of the bickering, all of the nagging notions that we just don’t measure up. It’s the ultimate Do Over. The one time we can say with all sincerity that this time will be different.
This time, we’ll get it right.
But I’ve always been reluctant to embrace this day, mostly because I have my doubts that I’ll get it right. The turning of the calendar page is an easy thing to do eleven times out of the twelve, but that last time is exceedingly difficult.
I suppose it has much to do with the fact that for much of the year I felt as if I were moving toward something, whether a date or a season. Yet with the turn of December to January there is no more moving toward. There is only the End and the inevitable question it will ask—What now?
Those two words carry a weight that in some way burdens us all on this day. It’s the reason some choose to welcome the New Year with drink and celebration, and others with a quiet sense of reflection. Because no matter who we are and no matter how aware of it we happen to be, some part of us is at this moment pondering that question.
What now?
It’s a question that when answered tells more than just our opinion, but the state of our lives.
I’ve had years spent in the mire, neck deep in sadness and despair. When I’ve been laid naked before my days to suffer the bitterness of its sharp winds and biting cold. I’ve neither run nor walked to many a new year, but clawed my way. And the question on those firsts of Januaries past was the same as all of them, though with a simple emphasis that betrayed the feebleness of my soul.
What now?
What else can happen to me? How much more can God allow me to hurt?
There’s little doubt that life is a big thing and I am rather small. The tides of chance and circumstance can either carry me to distant shores or draw me to the depths. There is much that lies beyond my ability to either predict or control. I am at fate’s mercy. Not free, but bound to chance.
And there have been years when Day One feels like sweet water in a parched desert, a signpost in my life’s wilderness that says while I may not have found home, I am headed in the right direction. It is at once a gentle calm and a sparking fire that allows me to keep my feet firmly planted yet reach higher than myself.
Those are the years when victory, no matter how small or inconsequential, is assured. When the road may not be smooth and sloping gently downward, but is nonetheless straight and sure.
Those are the years when that question is asked with anticipation instead of dread. What now? becomes What now! And that makes all the difference in the world.
Too many of us live under the false assumption that life is good or bad. It’s neither. Life is simply a mirror to our own selves, reflecting back to us the image we shine into it.
I suppose it would be easy to say that January 1 is nothing more than a date. That there is nothing new about us today that was not present yesterday. But I don’t think that’s true. If every day is a gift, then this day has a bow that is a little bigger. There is an air that all things have been made new and that there is much more behind us than before. This, to me, is a source of comfort. We can change nothing about the past twelve months, but we can do plenty with the twelve months ahead.
We have 365 days to make our lives. Eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours at our disposal. What will we do with them? Will we spend them as we have in the past, with fear and trembling? Or will we instead see them for what they truly are, our defining moments?
Will we shrink and say What now? or will we find the courage to say What now!
Author of Snow Day and Paper Angels (November 2011), both by FaithWords. 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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