Billy Coffey

storyteller

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October 22, 2010 by Billy Coffey 9 Comments

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

I try to schedule field trips into my writing life as often as possible. Sitting at a desk and staring at a sheet of paper can dull the senses. It contracts you. The Out There gets lost in all of the In Here. It’s nice to get out every once in a while and wander about the world.

That’s how I found Archie’s store. Because when you are driving down a lonely country road and you happen across a dilapidated building masquerading as an antiques store and the sign on the marquee says Dead People’s Junk, you have to stop and look. You just do. Very often the places that seem too good to be true are true after all.

The creaky wooden door finally gave way with a hard push, ringing the bell that sat suspended over the archway. The old man behind the counter—“Name’s Archie,” he said, and then added, “You break it, you buy it, even if t’ain’t worth nuthin’”—offered me both a Coke and the general layout of the building. “Furniture’s in the back. Art—and I use that term loosely—is to the right. Guns are over by the far wall.”

I sipped and walked, letting my mind wander. Antiques are such because of their age and their scars. They have endured through the years, survived countless moves and deaths and threats of the landfill. And it is because they have endured that they are all rich in story. Antiques are a form of living history.

That’s what I was after in the land of Dead People’s Junk. The stories.

Like the kitchen table that sat stately and dignified in the corner of the back room. Solid oak, with the worn shine of countless years of meals and gatherings. The price tag made me wince and whistle a long exhale. 1927 was written on the tag beneath the dollar amount, as if to justify the value. I took a step back. This was not something I was interested in breaking.

But still, a part of me felt the price would be more than satisfactory if the story of the table was included along with the chairs and the center leaf. Two years after it was built, the stock market crashed. Then Hitler rose. The Japanese attacked. The bomb was dropped. Kennedy was shot. Interspersed between those were times both hard and soft, the ebbs and flows of the great tide that was life. Who had sat at that table through the years? What family had broken bread there? What joys did they share, and what sorrows? To me, those answers—those possibilities—were worth more than the quality of the construction or the grain of the wood.

I exercised my mind in that manner for about an hour, moving through the crowded aisles of castoff belongings. There was a rocking horse I imagined once belonged to a small boy who grew up to be deathly afraid of horses after taking a tumble from that wooden substitution on one long ago Sunday afternoon. A desk where a young lady once sat to write a Dear John letter to her boyfriend at war. An opulent set of china—Never Used, said the tag—that was an expensive wedding gift to a couple who chose a simple life over the extravagant lives of their parents.

I roamed and touched nearly every surface of every object, listening. I thought about the sign out by the road and wondered if that had been Archie’s idea. I wanted to ask him. But by the time I made it back around, he was asleep in his chair. His half-finished bottle of Coke sat by the cash register—an antique in itself. Orange crumbs from the pack of crackers he’d snacked on littered the front of his shirt.

I managed to leave without waking him and pointed my truck toward home. I was satisfied. In my opinion, no better field trip could be had.

But I thought about that sign again as I passed it and decided it was all wrong. That was not Dead People’s Junk. Archie’s store may have been filled with remnants of the past, but they also spoke to our shared future.

To a time when perhaps our own dining room tables will be stuck in the corner, and when people will come and touch them and wonder. That brings me a great deal of comfort. Because we leave more than our belongings to this world when we pass on to the next.

We leave our stories, too.

the-church-of-no-people
As speaking of stories and writing and whatnot, my friend Matt Appling posted an interview with yours truly over at his blog, The Church of No People. He asks some not-so-typical questions, and he’s giving away a copy of Snow Day. You can find the interview here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: antiques, field trips, history, writing

Three People

July 5, 2010 by Billy Coffey 4 Comments

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

Time is a luxury in my life. Between work and family, there isn’t much of it left to do other things. Important things. Things I really need to be doing.

Like writing, for instance.

Thankfully, summertime usually frees me up enough to get down to some serious business. Work slacks off a bit. Family does, too. Everything slows. This is good, because it allows me to speed up.

The thing I like most about writing is that it helps me understand the sort of person I really am. Sometimes, this is a good thing. Other times, not so much.

The other day was one of those not-so-much times. And to make matters worse, it happened even before I started writing.

I like to think we all get up every day wanting to be a little bit better of a person than we were the day before. We try to be polite and civil. We follow the rules. We pray and hope. But despite all of that, we’re still all pretty messed up on the inside. We’ll all be children, no matter how grown up we are.

I wrote about it over at katdish’s site today. Stop on over and take a look. Hope everyone had a great July Fourth weekend.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: writing

“You just don’t look like a writer.”

July 2, 2010 by Billy Coffey 33 Comments

flagprofileI stopped by the local bookstore over the weekend to speak with a friend and ask a favor—Would it be possible to schedule a book signing sometime in the next few months? We chatted a bit about the particulars and then he excused himself to fetch the store manager, leaving me alone at the front with a young lady working one of the cash registers.

“So you wrote a book?” she asked me.

“I did,” I said.

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about a man whose job is cut right at Christmastime.”

She turned up her nose. “That doesn’t sound very uplifting.”

“Oh, it is,” I told her. “He might lose what means much, but he finds what means more.”

“So, it’s like a real book.”

“Sure is, pages and everything.”

The cashier muttered a “Huh” and left our conversation at that, turning to adjust her bookstore smock and straighten the stickpin near her collar. Life Is Short, Read Much! it said. My friend still wasn’t back with the manager, so I passed the next few minutes perusing the new releases on the table beside me.

“You just don’t look like a writer,” girl offered, eyeing me from my boots to my hat.

“I don’t?” I asked her.

“No, not really.”

“What’s a writer look like?”

“Well,” she said, “like…not you.”

“Ah,” I answered, nodding as if her definition had cleared that up just fine.

“We had a writer in here last month,” she said. “You could tell. She has glasses and short hair and was dressed all in black. And she used big words. Really big words. I couldn’t understand much of what she said.”

“My hair’s short and I my hat’s black,” I tried. But that wasn’t enough.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “You look just fine. For a regular guy, anyway. But even if you dressed like a writer, you wouldn’t act like one.”

“I wouldn’t?”

“No.”

“How’s a writer supposed to act?”

“Like…not you.”

Ah, again.

“I want to be a writer one day,” she said. “But I don’t think I can ever act like one. I’m not that smart.”

I was about to say something, but just then my friend returned with the manager in tow. We worked out a tentative date and time, and he even offered free coffee for the occasion. Who says writing doesn’t have its own perks?

The cashier was gone when we were finished, her shift over for the day. That was a shame. I wouldn’t have minded spending a few more minutes with her, if only to explain why what she said was simply not so.

Because she was wrong, you know. Wrong about most everything she had said. I consider myself a guy who writes rather than a writer who’s a guy, for one. Big difference there. It means that if the bottom ever falls out or the well ever runs dry, I’ll still be me.

But more than that, she was wrong about how a writer is supposed to dress or act or talk. Very wrong.

There’s a grave misperception that writing must incorporate some sort of rules of eligibility.

You must have a college degree, some say. Or you have to be smart. You have to display a melancholic disposition or be a tortured soul. You have to be this old or this young.

Not so, I say.

True: not everyone can be a writer.

Also true: a writer can be anyone.

And that’s something important to keep in mind the next time someone says you can’t.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: pre-conceived notions, writing

Why I got a tattoo

June 29, 2010 by Katdish 46 Comments

tattooThe first rule I ever remember learning was maybe the most important—always keep your promises. The reasoning behind that rule was basic. In the end, all a man has is his word. If we say we’re going to do something, we’d better do it. Simple as that.

I’ve done my best to fulfill my promises over the years. I’ve succeeded most times. Failed some, too. Others have had to be put on hold until the circumstances were right. One of those promises was one I made to myself, one that had been put on hold for seven years. I was determined to keep that promise. Last Saturday, I did just that.

I got a tattoo.

I realize that may sound a little ridiculous. Childish, even. I assure you that neither applies in this situation. My tattoo was serious business, the product of much thought and introspection. It wasn’t done on a whim, and it isn’t, as Jimmy Buffett so eloquently put it, “A permanent reminder of a temporary feeling.”

When I first sat down to write Snow Day, I did so with two thoughts in mind. One was that if it was good enough, it would get published one day. The other was that it could very well give a lot of people what I was so lacking at the time, and that was a sense of hope in their lives.

The odds of getting a book published were not lost to me. I knew what I was getting into and what would be involved. So I promised myself that if I managed to hang on and if God just so happened to smile upon me, I’d get a tattoo.

It’s easy to lose chapters in the story of your life, easy to let the ones already written slip away and into the wind while you’re writing the here and now. I didn’t want that. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.

And I didn’t want a run of the mill tattoo, either. I wanted something unique to me. Something that told my own story.

I wanted a Native American feel, since they’re in both my blood and my family tree. To the Native Americans, every person has their own totem, an animal that acts as a protector and guide through physical and spiritual worlds. Knowing your totem is an innate process, they say, and a sacred one. Though my own beliefs don’t really allow room for spirit guides, I’ve always been drawn to wolves. To the Native Americans, wolves were the pathfinders, the protectors of wisdom and tribe. Loyal and strong and independent. Always watching. At home in the mountains and the wild places.

If God would have made me as an animal, it would have been a wolf.

I wanted a reminder of those long years spent trying and failing, too. I didn’t ever want to forget the faith I found or even the doubts I had, as both served to make me a better man. Our hopes and dreams don’t nearly define us as much as the manner by which we journey toward them. I needed to make sure I could remember that. Which is the reason for the designs around the wolf. Each design represents a year I spent waiting to get published. The small ones are years that went by quickly, when hope was abundant and doubt was hiding. The long ones are the years when I almost gave up.

There are a lot of long ones.

One question has been asked the most—did it hurt? My answer has usually been given in typical Country Boy fashion—“It didn’t tickle.” The truth is that it hurt. The truth is also that I was looking forward to that hurt, because much of the last six years hasn’t tickled, either.

I got a lot of thinking done during the two and a half hours I spent with an electric needle punching me in the arm (the tip of which, appropriately enough, looked much like the nib of a fountain pen). I allowed myself to remember. Everything. The places I’ve been, the people I’ve known, and the blessings I’ve received.

To the artist doing the work, it was just another tattoo.

To me, it was my story.

This post is part of the blog carnival on Strength, hosted by Bridget Chumbley. To read more, please visit her site.

Filed Under: blog carnival Tagged With: blog carnival, endurance, strength, tattoos, writing

On love and writing

February 11, 2010 by Billy Coffey 25 Comments

penlove
image courtesy of photobucket.com

For some reason I sort of unconsciously fell into a pattern of writing about writing for the past few Fridays, which has turned out quite well despite the fact that what I know about the technical aspects of being published can be summed up in less than a paragraph. Since this is the last post I’ll do before Sunday, I thought I’d have to forgo anything along those lines and write something Valentine-ish.

Then again, maybe I could do both.

Because for writers, their craft is irreparably entangled in love. It is an affair of both the mind and the heart that is equal parts passion and indifference, joy and misery. It is falling in love and falling in hate all at the same time.

Both love and writing begin in much the same way. There is a bit of trepidation with a lot of Should I really be doing this? running through one’s mind. But the more you try to convince yourself you should ease away, the more it quietly pulls you in. And the more you remind yourself of the hurt and pain that may result, the more you’re also reminded of the sheer bliss.

And, eventually, you fall in. Fall in love with either a person or the act of giving thought and feeling life. Small steps at first—a flirtatious comment, a few short sentences. You have one foot upon a path that leads into a very black but very inviting unknown and the other safely planted in your own familiar but dull world, and you must choose. Will you plunge and offer your heart? Or will you instead play it safe, trusting that a familiar loneliness is better than the risk of a new and different one?

But then you come to the realization that you don’t really have a choice at all. To have one foot upon the path of the unknown is enough. You are in and on and there is no going back.

There are decisions that are arrived at by clear thinking and careful planning. Love is not one of them. Neither is writing. Those are decided by the heart. The mind may come along for the ride later. It also may not.

And therein lies the risk. Sometimes what we think is love isn’t really, just as sometimes what we consider destiny, one in a million, is temporary and common at best. Love and writing can both seem so simple and so easy at first, but they’re not. That’s what can happen when you approach both with much feeling and little thought.

You have to know what you’re getting into from the start.

With love and with writing.

Because it won’t always be easy. The shine can fade into shadow at times and the cloud you think you’re walking upon can evaporate and leave you tumbling. And you come to face the hard fact that what was once trouble-free is now fraught with it and the sunrise you thought you were enjoying is really a fire that threatens to consume you.

There is a truth to love, and it is the very same truth to writing—both take work. Hard, difficult, daily work. And without that work you are destined to fail. Because neither of them are the rocks we believe them to be. They are not enduring. They are not solid all the way through.

They are fragile, castles of sand facing a raging tide that must be built and rebuilt again.

And therein lies their worth.

The precious things in life are not the ones that last regardless, but the ones that must be tended to. The ones that must be nurtured and cared for and, above all, practiced. Love is like that. Writing, too. Both will wither without attention. Both can seem like the real thing and not be.

And both can bring a sense of peace and joy that few things in this world cannot. They are the means by which we seek to assure ourselves we are not alone in this world. That our thoughts and our feelings matter.

That we have a worth and a purpose beyond ourselves.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: writing

The Art of Rejection

February 5, 2010 by Billy Coffey 38 Comments

IMG_2308“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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: writing

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