In the Meantime
February 9, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 27 Comments
It’s no secret that a father and son can bond over just about any activity regardless of the location or the conditions. This includes the middle of the driveway during a blizzard, which is where my son and I found ourselves over the weekend doing some big guy work.
The wind howled and the snow blew, smacking into our faces like a thousand tiny needles. The cowboy hat and three-day beard was enough to keep me conscious, but I worried about him. Worried despite the seven layers his mother had put on him before he followed me outside. I stood there with shovel in hand and regarded him—sweats/jeans/shirt/sweater/snowsuit/coat, followed by scarf/toboggan/hat. He couldn’t even put his arms to his sides.
“You look like a camouflage starfish,” I told him.
“Awesome,” he said.
We were, of course, the only people idiotic enough to be outside. Everyone else in the neighborhood was sitting by the fire waiting things out. Not us. No sir. We Coffeys are hearty stock. A few snowflakes weren’t gonna keep us down. It was our job to care for the Ponderosa.
So we set to work, me with my huge shovel with the orange plastic blade and he with the pint-sized model that fit his five-year-old hands. Shoveled and scooped and tossed. Also froze. Halfway to the edge of the road my son sputtered and stalled.
He sat down on a pile of snow that was almost as tall as he was and said, “Dad, I need Life Alert.”
“You need what?”
“Life Alert. Like those old people on the TV.”
“Why do you need Life Alert?”
“Because the lady says so. ‘All…senior…citizens…should…have…Life Alert.’ That’s what she says.”
“That was a pretty good impression,” I told him. “But you’re not a senior citizen.”
“When will I be?”
I scooped up more snow and said, “About sixty years.”
“That’s a long time. Are you a senior citizen?”
“Feels like I am right now,” I answered. “But technically no. Not for another thirty years or so.”
He sat silent for a few minutes, long enough for me to make four trips across the driveway and back.
Then, “When can I be a grownup like you?”
“It’ll be a while yet,” I told him. “Don’t you like being a kid?”
“Nobody likes being a kid. Kids can’t do stuff. I can’t wait to be a grownup.”
I nodded because I understood. When I was five, all I wanted to be was fifteen. At fifteen all I wanted to be was twenty-one. Now that I was thirty-seven, I secretly wanted to be five again. Such was life, I supposed. We spend so much of it wanting to be somewhere or someone else.
“I think you just need some patience,” I said.
“You mean I should be a doctor?” he answered, and then fell over into the snow laughing at his attempt at humor.
I leaned on my shovel and watched as he tried and failed to pick himself up. All those layers made him about as nimble as a turtle on its back. But rather than battle his plight, he simply embraced it and made a snow angel.
I lifted him up and brushed the snow off his clothes.
“No,” I said. “I mean patience like…patience. Like being able to wait for something.”
“Okay Dad,” he said.
The eloquent and wise life lesson I thought would come next never did. My son dropped the conversation like the gum that spilled from his mouth, kicked and then buried and then forgotten. I suppose that’s for the best. There are things you teach your kids and things they must teach themselves. Patience, I thought, was one of the latter. Not because I didn’t want to teach it to him, but because I had yet to really learn it myself.
Besides, I thought he would be okay. I had the evidence there with me in the snow. Patience is a hard thing to find when what you’re waiting to get is a lot better than what you already have. And even though my son wanted to grow up quick, I could tell he was quite content with being a kid.
Maybe that’s the secret. Not just to patience, but to life itself. We’ll always be waiting for something. Maybe the trick is to have fun in the meantime.
This post is part of the One Word at a Time blog carnival on Patience. To read more, visit my friend Bridget Chumbley.
Fishing for Answers
February 8, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 15 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Somewhere along the way, Christianity started to get a bad rap.
Maybe it was the sixties, that decade of decadence when everything was questioned and turned upside down. Or maybe it was earlier with the Enlightenment. Either way, the faith that built our country and comforted its people through wars and depressions and natural disasters is now not only doubted, but increasingly attacked. Even in my little part of America.
That’s what happened to me recently. Sort of. I say that because the man who played the attacker wasn’t really the person I thought he was. Not that it mattered. But what I learned that day was an important lesson for me. In these times, it isn’t enough to simply believe. You have to know why you believe and be ready to defend it, too.
To read the story, hop on over to katdish’s blog. And if you just so happen to visit a particular little restaurant in a particular little Virginia town, I’d like to suggest the fish.
The Art of Rejection
February 5, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 38 Comments
“This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address’. Just keep looking for the right address.” – Barbara Kingsolver
Writers compare rejection notices like veterans compare war wounds. And that’s appropriate, I think. The two are very similar, evidences of battles not necessarily won or lost or even stalemated, but simply fought. Both begin as a bitter pain that seems unendurable but, with hope and God and perseverance, may become points of pride later.
See this? we say. Got that one three years ago. Hurt like hell, too. Doesn’t really bother me much anymore though, except when it rains.
For the past dozen years or so I’ve kept my rejections in a file folder that’s shoved into the bottom of an old wooden chest in a corner of my office. The chest is both latched and locked, and there are approximately thirty pounds of books stacked on top.
I suppose there is some psychological explanation as to why I keep that folder as far away and inaccessible as possible. I’ve thought about it. The truth is that I still can’t bear to read some of them and still can’t throw away any of them, and both for the same reason—I fear I will lose a little bit of myself in the process.
However.
Last night I took those thirty pounds of books off my chest, unlocked and unlatched it, and dug out my folder. For the simple reason that there are times in a person’s life when he must pause in his forward movement just to see how far down the path he’s come.
I counted fifty-seven. Fifty-seven letters and emails that chronicled a writer who began as a veritable literary idiot then progressed to a rank amateur and then hardened veteran in need of a miracle. There they were, all of them. A picture of my dreams.
Every writer knows rejections come in three different classes. There are the standard form-letter ones, the more personal ones, and, if you’re especially fortunate, ones upon which an actual living human has scrawled a few actual words with an actual pen.
I had a lot of the first, some of the second, and a few of the third.
Some were blunt. I found one in the stack that was simply a return of my query with “No Thanx” scrawled at the top.
There was lot of “We’re sorry, but this book does not fit our publishing interests.” A testament to my lack of proper research.
One of the handwritten comments said, “You are an excellent writer, but unfortunately our calendar for the year is full.” That one got me through another couple months of No Thank yous.
But then I got this one from a newspaper editor: “I cannot in good faith accept this query. To be honest, you’re just not a good writer.”
That one? That one killed me. I quit writing for about three months after reading that.
Some said I was too country. Others that I wasn’t country enough. Some said my words were too simple and my thoughts too erratic, and others said my thoughts were too simple and my words too erratic.
I wasn’t experienced enough.
My platform was lacking.
And on. And on. And on.
F.X. Toole, whose short story Million Dollar Baby became the movie of the same name, gave up writing for boxing when he was a relatively young man. A broken jaw, he said, hurt less than a rejection.
I understand what he meant by that.
And I also understand that the above quote by Barbara Kingsolver sounds wonderful in theory but very, very hard in application. Because it doesn’t matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise, we’ll always fight the temptation to see a rejection as not simply a pass on our book, but a pass on our life.
Go to your local bookstore and you’ll see entire shelves dedicated to the art of getting published. And while many of those books are worthy of attention, the secret is much simpler. Much better.
Write your book. Make it as good as it can be.
And after that, send your queries.
And then, after all that, do one more thing. The most important thing. The one thing you must do no matter how many rejections you get and no matter how discouraged you become.
Always try one more time.
***
And speaking of trying one more time…
Congratulations to Amy Sorrells for getting “The Call” from Rachelle Gardner of WordServe Literary. I’m honored to be in such good company.
Having a Say
February 3, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 8 Comments
photo by Ann Voskamp
My children were convinced that the snowstorm last week was their doing. No doubt about it. And as that snow resulted in school closing, they were also convinced that every teacher and student in the county should shower them with praise. They seemed quite smug about the whole thing.
This magical manipulation of nature involved a rather unorthodox and highly secretive ritual performed the night before—they flushed two ice cubes down the toilet. According to the theory, one cube produces approximately two and a half inches of snow. Good for snowballs, but not for closing school. Hence the extra cube. Five inches would certainly do the trick.
I’d never heard of flushing ice cubes down the toilet to guarantee a snow. Tossing the snow shovel into the middle of the front yard always worked when I was a kid. And occasionally still does. Everyone knows it always snows when you can’t find your snow shovel…
I’m over at high calling blogs today, so just go right here to read the rest of this article. And feel free to share what your own snow day rituals were. Because I really had never heard of the flushing-ice-cubes-down-the-toilet thing, and I’d really like a snow day soon…
Handling the Remote
February 1, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 10 Comments
photo by photobucket
For years I enjoyed unfettered access to our television. The one I bought with my own money. I could watch what I wanted when I wanted and for however long I wanted.
But then my daughter was born. And then my son.
Now I must share my television watching with them. Which means sacrificing football games for Spongebob Squarepants and Lost for Phineas and Ferb. Okay, so the second one is really kind of acceptable because I really, really like Phineas and Ferb. But you get the idea.
But even though I had to sacrifice what I wanted for what they wanted at times, I retained my position as the official Handler of the Remote Control in our household. A coveted position, no doubt. And one that’s been challenged of late by my daughter.
To understand why men are so remote control conscious and how that applies to life, please head on over to katdish’s blog. And for heaven’s sake, let your husband/boyfriend/significant male other have this one responsibility. We need it.
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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