Katdish.net

This is a repost from November, 2009. But that was a long time ago. And I still like the message as it applies to the blog carnival topic this week: Resolution.

“What has influenced my life more than any single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered…I would have probably gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.”

-W. Somerset Maugham (novelist, playwright and short story writer; notable works: Of Human Bondage, The Razor’s Edge, The Letter and Rain)

Much emphasis and broo-ha-ha is given to the pursuit of overcoming personal obstacles; of achieving goals despite one’s shortcomings and/or lot in life. Who doesn’t love a story of someone overcoming the odds and emerging victorious? I know I do.

But sometimes I think these stories – while certainly inspirational and encouraging – may serve as unintentional road blocks to pursuing our dreams, or we think that once we achieve one desired goal the rest of our lives will fall into place.

Fill in the blank:

If only I could _____________ then _____________.

Once I ___________ then I’ll be able to _____________.

Here’s my challenge to you. Don’t use your limitations as excuses for pursuing your dreams. You may just find the very thing you thought was holding you back wasn’t really an issue in the first place.

I’ll leave you with just a few more quotes to ponder:

“When the resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, here and now, without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point blank. – Ortega Y’Gasset

“God always gives us strength enough, and sense enough, for everything He wants us to do.” – John Ruskin

“If you wait around for the world to give you what you think you deserve, you are going to be sadly disappointed when you get it.” – katdish

(Yeah, that’s right. I just quoted myself. Snort!)

****

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Resolution, hosted by the lovely and talented Sir Peter Pollock. For more reads on the topic, please visit him over at his place, PeterPollock.com

It’s week five of The Best of Billy Coffey! If you’re new here, in Week 1, I shared a snippet of Billy’s second novel Paper Angels along with a few ways you can enter to win a copy of Paper Angels. As promised, I’m still choosing a winner each week. You may enter as often as you like, and there are several ways to enter:

• Leave a comment here or on subsequent “Best of Billy Coffey” posts each Monday indicating you would like to be entered into the drawing.
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to this post and/or subsequent posts. (Please be sure to let me know you’re doing so by adding @katdish to the end of your tweet or sharing the Facebook link with me.)
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to the Paper Angels Amazon page letting people know it is available for pre-order.
• Ditto Barnes & Noble
• Ditto Books-a-Million
• Ditto Indie-Bound

Each of the aforementioned actions will constitute one entry into the drawing. If you don’t win this week, each of your entries will go back into the drawing. Winners will be chosen at random and will be announced the following Monday. Enter early, enter often, and check back here each week for new opportunities to win.

Thanks in advance for helping get the word out about Paper Angels. If you’re not big into contests, I still encourage you to head over to Amazon or another online retailer and pre-order a copy. I know once you read it you will recommend it to a friends and family, and word of mouth advertising is the very best kind.

The winner of Week Four is Deborah. Congrats, Deborah! I’ll post next week’s winner next Monday.

For this week’s edition of the Best of Billy Coffey, I decided to include the introduction he provided on his own blog. The last time I checked, the Old Man had not paid Billy a visit in a very long time. I have my own theory as to who this unwanted visitor was and why he no longer haunts Billy’s dreams, but some things I’d just as soon keep to myself. I’m mysterious like that. Here’s Billy:

There is truth and there is Truth, and the big T usually trumps the little one. At least it does in my writing. The tiny details in my life are often sacrificed in favor of the big ideas within them. I like this. If there’s one thing I want to share with people, it’s that every life is filled with holiness; all we have to do in order to see it is slow down and take a deep breath.

Most of my posts have very little to do with me and instead tend to focus upon the people around me, folks who are a lot more interesting than I am. My life and what’s going on with me is not nearly as entertaining as the neighbor down the road or the guy who picks up my trash.

Usually, anyway. But not always. Sometimes something you’ve kept secret needs to be told, because sometimes what haunts you does so because you’re too afraid to talk about it.

For the past nineteen years I’ve known an old man in a bowler hat. He’s never given me his name, never offered. And frankly, asking him is the furthest thing from my mind.

I’ll invite you over to Katdish’s blog to read the story. It’s a good one, and one that’s offered me a good deal of liberation in writing. But since we’re tight, you and I, I’ll also give you a little warning. This isn’t my normal sort of post. There is upbeat, aw-shucks Billy, and there is the Billy who broods. Katdish let me brood today. For that, she has my thanks…

Fighting the Old Man

To me, he is simply known as the Old Man. I don’t know his name, and I don’t think I care to. Old Man is enough.

I’ve known him for nineteen years now, and he knows me. Knows me well. When and where we meet always seems to be his prerogative. He is always dressed the same—dapper pinstriped suit with a red handkerchief, black bowler hat, immaculately shined shoes, and a cane. And I am always wearing the same expression: horror.

The Old Man is my nightmare.

He arrived one night shortly after my near suicide, sitting on a park bench in my dream. He motioned me over to sit down, gently patting the section of wood beside him. I did. He offered me a deal: come with him, and all would be well. Don’t, and…well, he said, “The consequences will be unfortunate.”

I was convinced of that when he turned to face me and a worm fell out of his left eye. It wriggled onto my hand and then in, slowly crawling up my arm and into my chest, boring its way into my heart.

I woke up screaming.

He arrived again two weeks later wanting my answer: stay or go? I stayed. By the time he was finished with me, I wished I had chosen otherwise.

And that’s the way it’s been since. Not every night, sometimes not even every month. But for nineteen years now he has come for me at his whim in his pinstriped suit and bowler hat and cane, each time asking me different variations of the same theme:

Ready to go yet?

I thought at first he was the product of an overactive mind. Or too many Stephen King books. But when I wake up screaming and incoherent and then force myself to stay awake for days because I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep and never wake up, I’m not sure neither my imagination nor Stephen King’s is at fault. I’m not sure at all.

He’s tenacious, the Old Man. Smart. Knows just what to do to hurt me the most and has no qualms about doing it.

I suppose whether he’s a demon or a psychological manifestation of my vast emotional baggage depends upon whether you ascribe to God or Freud. I’ll leave that to you.

Me, I know this: there is an unseen war waged daily around us between light and dark, life and death. The world of the spirit may be hidden from human eyes, but we are all laid naked before it. I once gave this little thought. Denied it, even. But no more. Now I know better.

I’ve always suspected that the devil gets too much credit for the terrors of this world. It’s always easier to blame his wickedness than our own. Make no mistake, though—there is evil beyond this world. Darkness. I’ve seen it.

That’s why there will be nights of endless coffee. Why the upstairs light of my workout room will be on at three in the morning because I’m doing pull ups. Why I can quote movies like Grease 2, films so horrible they are banished to the wee hours.

Because I must stay awake. Because if I close my eyes he may be there. Waiting, smiling, asking if I’m ready to go yet.

My fear? That one day I’ll say yes. That soon I’ll tire of the fighting and the beating and the temptation, and I’ll walk away with him. You become willing to do most anything to find rest, even if it’s rest in shadows.

Ready to go yet?

That’s what he wants to know.

Ready to surrender? To lay down faith and hope? Are you ready to quit wanting to stand and fight, to rid yourself of the notion that you must keep going when you just don’t have to? Are you ready to stop seeking the light and instead enjoy the darkness?

Are you ready to go yet?

So far, that answer has been no. I’m not ready to go. There are people and things in my life worth the fight, worth the beatings.

I stand and fight and keep going not because I want to, but because I must. Because the darkness in my life makes the light in it shine brighter.

So today, I ask you this: Anchor your faith in the deep harbor. Set your eyes on truth. Seek God. Love. Laugh. Believe. And always, always hope.

Because in some ways, the Old Man is after us all.

“My true desire is to relieve others of their pain though I myself may fall into hell.”
–Bassui

Many of you know that besides being a part-time blogger and internet tornado, I’m also a decorative painter. Or, as my friend Jim once introduced me as, a faux paux painter. Since my paint buddy Tamara went back to work full time, I’ve pretty much stopped accepting jobs, but I will do small projects for friends occasionally. A friend called last week and asked if I would be willing to do a faux finish in her powder room.

The above picture is how her bathroom currently looks. Rather, I should say it’s how it used to look before I began the prep work for the faux finish. It’s a perfectly nice looking little powder room, she just wanted something a little fancier for the guest bathroom.

This is how the powder room currently looks:

Stripped of the mirror over the sink, pictures and accessories removed, crown molding, fixtures and baseboards covered with blue tape, the room’s not nearly as attractive as it was just a short while before. Add some temporary task lighting (so I can see what I’m painting), and imperfections which were once unseen begin to appear.

The most obvious flaw is the huge gouge in the wall which is normally covered up by a mirror:

Once the ceiling vents were removed, I discovered the previous painter hadn’t bothered to remove them but instead painted around them:

Plus a multitude of small imperfections which go unseen in the dim light of the bathroom:

All which must be addressed before any actual painting begins.

I enjoy painting immensely, whether it be a simply repainting a room or doing a faux finish or mural. There’s something incredibly satisfying for me about the ability to completely change the mood and character of a space with nothing more than a can of paint, a paintbrush and a few hours.

Do you know what I don’t like about painting?

The prep work: taking down pictures, filling nail holes, taping, removing switchplate covers, wiping down baseboards and crown moulding and walls, etc. It’s tedious, boring and annoying. It’s also necessary if you want to do the job right.

All the aforementioned things make a room look considerably worse before it begins to look better. Now’s not the time for inviting your friends to see the room. It’s best just to keep the door closed until the painter can come back and finish what she started.

We all go through minor and major renovations in this life. There are times when what has worked well for years just doesn’t seem to fit anymore. Sadly, life isn’t a 30 minute makeover show with instant results.

Change is a process, and oftentimes things get a whole lot uglier before the get better.

If you’re in the prep stage feeling ugly and useless, ask yourself this:

Who’s in charge of the renovation?

Do you trust Him?

Are you willing to stick it out through the ugly mess and have faith the He knows what He’s doing?

I sure hope you are.

Because even masterpieces don’t start out as masterpieces.

Abstract Impressionist painter Jackson Pollock

We’ve started a new sermon and small group series at C3 called “Not a Fan”. Here’s a VERY brief introduction:

It’s all about being a committed follower of Jesus Christ rather than just an enthusiastic admirer. Jesus has millions of fans. Far fewer followers. I’d love to tell you I’m a follower, but I can’t honestly say that, because there are plenty of things I put before God. In Sunday’s sermon, Jeff quoted a line from a song by Nickel Creek called Reasons Why: “Others have excuses, but I have my reasons why.”

That really hit home for me. It’s easy to look at someone else and judge what we think is separating them from truly following Jesus: pride, past hurts, addiction, the Church. Heck, even religion often separates us from Him.

But with other folks, those are all just excuses, aren’t they?

It’s different for me.

Right?

Right???

Where am I today, I wish that I knew
‘Cause looking around there’s no sign of you
I don’t remember one jump or one leap
Just quiet steps away from your lead

I’m holding my heart out but clutching it too
Feeling this sort of a love that we once knew
I’m calling this home when it’s not even close
Playing the role with nerves left exposed

With so much deception
It’s hard not to wander away
It’s hard not to wander away
It’s hard not to wander away

It’s easy to allow ourselves to believe we cling to reasons rather than excuses. In my case, I often think my biggest fear is that I ever truly give everything over to God, there are certain things that I’ll never get back. In the end, I need to get to a place where I ask God to give me what I need. Not the things I want.

How about you?

Reasons or excuses?

It’s week four of The Best of Billy Coffey! If you’re new here, in Week 1, I shared a snippet of Billy’s second novel Paper Angels along with a few ways you can enter to win a copy of Paper Angels. As promised, I’m still choosing a winner each week. You may enter as often as you like, and there are several ways to enter:

• Leave a comment here or on subsequent “Best of Billy Coffey” posts each Monday indicating you would like to be entered into the drawing.
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to this post and/or subsequent posts. (Please be sure to let me know you’re doing so by adding @katdish to the end of your tweet or sharing the Facebook link with me.)
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to the Paper Angels Amazon page letting people know it is available for pre-order.
• Ditto Barnes & Noble
• Ditto Books-a-Million
• Ditto Indie-Bound

Each of the aforementioned actions will constitute one entry into the drawing. If you don’t win this week, each of your entries will go back into the drawing. Winners will be chosen at random and will be announced the following Monday. Enter early, enter often, and check back here each week for new opportunities to win.

Thanks in advance for helping get the word out about Paper Angels. If you’re not big into contests, I still encourage you to head over to Amazon or another online retailer and pre-order a copy. I know once you read it you will recommend it to a friends and family, and word of mouth advertising is the very best kind.

The winner of Week Three is Karolyne S. Congrats, Karolyne! I’ll post next week’s winner next Monday.

And now, another one of my favorites. Actually, If you held a gun to my head and made me pick my very favorite, this would be it:

How to Take a Punch:

Four years ago…

It started the way most good stories do, over lunch with a friend. This particular friend was named Charlie, an iron-fisted brawler disguised as a nerdy engineer who worked in the building next to mine.

“You should stop by tonight,” he said. “Great workout. It’ll make a man out of you.”

“I’m already a man,” I answered.

Charlie nodded and said, “Maybe. You ever been punched?”

“No.”

He put his fork down, looked me in the eye, and said, “A man never knows what he’s made of until he gets punched.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded philosophical enough to get my attention. “I’ll be there,” I told him.

All true boxing gyms are located in much the same place—the nearest poor neighborhood of the nearest city (you’ve seen Rocky III, right?). Which made getting there from the quiet confines of the country an adventure in itself. Charlie had warned me that the gym was much more old school than new, and he was right. There was no heat, no air, and no bathroom. There was merely a ring, several punching bags, dirty mirrors for shadowboxing, and a bucket to throw up in when the trainers pushed you that far. Written in bright red letters above the ring were the words JESUS SAVES.

It was, in a word, perfect.

I met with Charlie, the fighters who were warming up, and the trainers. “Gotta hand it to you,” the head trainer said. “Takes stones to show up the first time on sparring night.”

“Sparring night?” I asked. I looked at Charlie, who had looked away. I could see the smile on his face, though.

“You’re getting’ in the ring, right?” the trainer asked me.

Gettin’ in the ring? No, I was not gettin’ in the ring. I was not stupid.

“Yeah, I’m gettin’ in,” I said. Because macho manliness trumps stupidity every day of the week and twice on Thursday.

“Good,” the trainer said. “You can get in with me, then.”

Charlie looked at me with a look that was part humor and part Oh, boy.

“What?” I asked him.

“Nothing,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

I stared at him.

“He won Tough Man last year,” he confessed. “But don’t worry.”

Don’t worry. Famous last words of rednecks everywhere. On par with Hey ya’ll, watch this!

So. Into the ring.

Charlie adjusted my headgear and said, “Move. Don’t forget that.”

I nodded.

“And keep your hands up. Block and punch. Make your defense offense.”

I nodded again.

He checked my gloves and wiped them against his T shirt. “And for the love of God Almighty, keep your chin down. You expose that chin, and you’re a goner.”

“I ain’t goin’ down,” I said, and smiled to prove it. “So what is this, sparring or more?”

Charlie looked across the ring, paused, and said, “He’ll let you know. And wipe that smirk off your face. This will not be fun for you.”

“What makes you think—”

And that’s all I managed to say. I was silenced by Charlie shoving my mouthpiece in and yelling “Time!”

We met in the center of the ring (“Hands up,” Charlie shouted. “Move…move!”), touched gloves, and nodded to one another.

I’d taken plenty of martial arts, and sparring in a dojo was very controlled and normally done at half-speed. But this wasn’t a dojo, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.

“So,” I said to the trainer, circling him, “what am I—”

SMACK!!

He threw a jab that managed to sneak between my headgear and connect with my nose. And it was not at half-speed. It was so fast I didn’t see his hand until he was pulling it away from my face.

“Move!” Charlie shouted.

SMACK-SMACK-SMACK!

Jab-jab-cross.

“Don’t stand there, do something!”

Boxing is controlled violence. It is technique. It is the mastery of punches and angles that are honed to precision by countless hours of training. Anger won’t get you through ten rounds in the ring.

It will, however, get you through one. Because when that right cross snuck through my headgear and cut my eye, I got mad. Very.

He threw another jab, but I slipped it to the left and threw a hook into his side and another to the side of his head. His eyes widened a bit, and Charlie yelled, “Yes! Stick and move! Thirty seconds!”

I learned that night that thirty seconds in a boxing ring is a lot longer than thirty seconds outside of one. Because it felt like we stood in the middle of that ring pounding on each other for an eternity.

“Time!” Charlie shouted. Finally.

We stood there in the middle of the ring, smiling. “Awesome,” the trainer said.

Awesome indeed.

That gym was my home away from home for a while, but in the end family and a lack of time forced me to quit. But there’s still a heavy bag in our exercise room, and I still go a few rounds on it every night.

Because Charlie was right. You don’t know what you’re made of until you get punched. And whether that punch comes by standing in the middle of a boxing ring or the middle of a life, you survive the same way. You keep your chin down, you keep moving, and you never stop swinging.

We’re all going to get hit sooner or later. It’s a given in this world. But I know this. I can take a punch. I’ve taken many.

But I can give one, too.

Church Lady image courtesy of photobucket.com

“I want to be a Puritan,” my son says.

These are the first words uttered to me when I pick him up from football practice. He’s never been one to ease into a conversation and has a tendency to make extreme, declarative statements as a reaction to something that has upset him or made him uncomfortable. My mind quickly reviews our previous conversations for the week and I remember him suggesting that I not attend his pep rally. “Mom, there is a whole lot of cussing at my school, and I know you don’t want to hear that.” I assured him at the time that none of those kids were going to say anything I haven’t already heard, but him wanting to shield me from it was still admirable.

But back to the Puritan statement.

Me: Why do you want to be a Puritan.

Son: Because they lived good lives. They didn’t cuss or do bad things.

Me: Okay, well you do realize that if you become a Puritan you will have to give up the use of your computer, television viewing, your video games, many of the songs on your iPod as well as many books you may want to read.

Son: I think that’s a small price to pay to live a sinless life.

Me: There’s no such thing as a sinless life. Everyone sins, either through action or thought. Jesus was the only human who lived a sinless life, and He’s God.

Son: Okay, well. Then a life with less sin. I think that would make me happy. Did you know that children who talked back to their parents were subjected to public beatings?

Me: Are you suggesting that I beat you publicly? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live a life free of sin, as long as you understand that you never really will. Besides, if you go around constantly trying to do right, think right and be right, how do you fit grace into that picture? Grace for yourself as well as grace for others?

He was relatively quiet for the rest of the ride home. I’ve considered sending my kids to private Christian schools in an attempt to shield them from the worldliness of public education, and the transition from elementary to junior high has exposed my son to many things I’d just as soon he not have to deal with. But you can’t live life in a Christian bubble. If you’re going to be salt and light, you have to understand that there is much darkness out there, even at the tender age of 14. I’m praying he makes the right choices because he knows better, but I’m relying on grace and mercy because I understand that knowing better does not always equate to being better. Besides, how can you ever truly understand the gift of grace if you’ve never fallen from it?

Which brings me to Reason 11 why I hate writing…

More specifically, the genre of Christian writing and who defines what that means. For me, any decent work of inspirational fiction will contain at least four key elements: Sacrifice, Trust, Hope and Redemption. But the characters and the narrative have to be real in order to be believable.

There is a large contingent represented in the world of Christian publishing who believe that any book which contains profanity, sexual immorality or perverse behavior of any kind is not worthy of the classification of Christian genre. I refer to them as the Blue Hair Mafia, and I’m not the first one to use this descriptive. They want assurances that anything they read will not offend their delicate Christian sensibilities. They want to live inside their safe, Christian bubble and not have to confront the harsh realities of a fallen world when they open up a book. No, they want to escape to a white-washed fantasy world where people say “shoot” instead of “shit”, where unbelieving husbands become believers because their loving wives prayed them back from the pits of hell, where children are tempted by drugs and alcohol but their faith protects them from ever indulging in such sinful behavior and where Jesus snatches them up before any real damage can be done. Who am I to say whether or not they should read nice, safe, Christian stories if that’s what they want to do?

I only wish they would afford others the luxury of writing books which might actually plant a seed of belief in a person who is either without faith or clinging to their faith by a thread. Someone who, by Blue Hair Mafia standards, is living a life of debauchery, a life so far away from Jesus they feel like He could never take them back. How is a book full of white-washed reality going to relate to them?

I’ll tell you how.

It’s not.

What it will do if they manage to get through the book in the first place is convince them they could never be worthy of grace because they are so much worse than any of the characters in the book. Which is pretty much the opposite of what an author who calls herself a Christian should be writing if she claims she want to draw others to Christ through her writing.

In a now somewhat famous sermon from a few years ago, American Christian preacher Tony Campolo summed up my frustration with the mentality which permeates our churches and all forms of “Christian” entertainment when he addressed a congregation with the following introduction:

“I have three things I’d like to say today.
First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition.
Second, most of you don’t give a shit.
What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”

So what do you think? Am I completely off base with this? Do you think profanity should never be used in Christian books?

Ah, the Twitter…

A place to connect, to find links to interesting topics and people.

A place to be completely random and ridiculous in 140 characters or less.

Which is exactly what I was doing on Tuesday evening after the release of Apple’s newest form of electronic crack, the iPhone 4S, when I tweeted:

I was really just being a smart ass. Just another service I offer on a daily basis. But then something unexpected happened. Someone suggested a much better alternative to throwing my abandoned phones into my overflowing junk drawer:

Sandra later sent me a link to the National Coalition against Domestic Violence, who have a program which can put your old phone to good use:

NCADV is recycling cell phones to:
• Fund programming that empowers victims of domestic violence and helps them remain free from abuse
• Support legislation aimed at ending domestic violence
• Give support and resources to organizations across the US working to stop violence in the home

How It Works:
• Roughly 60 percent of cell phones will be refurbished and resold
• The revenue generated from the sale of refurbished phones will be used to support NCADV programs that help end violence in the home
• The remaining cell phones are recycled according to the highest environmental standards

My discarded phones (and yours) can be put to much better use than just taking up space in a junk drawer. They could save a life. I don’t know about you, but that’s worth giving up an overpriced coffee beverage for a day to pay for postage.

Still on the fence about it? Maybe these statistics will help you decide:

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence:

One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.

An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year.

85% of domestic violence victims are women.

Historically, females have been most often victimized by someone they knew.

Most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police.

If you’d like to help, you can get all the details here.

Get rid of something you no longer need and help someone else in the process. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Warning: Metaphors ahead.

If I were to invite you to my home for a meal, chances are pretty good that something you eat would be seasoned with Tony Chacere’s Creole seasoning. Like it says on the container, it’s great on everything.

Well, that’s not exactly true. I’m guessing it’s not very good on ice cream or cereal, but I’ve never tried it on either.

I do know it’s great on burgers, steaks and pretty much everything else we cook on the grill. If it had a pulse at one time, it will more than likely get at least a small shot of Tony Chacere’s at the Richards house.

But just because it may be good on most everything, doesn’t necessarily mean it should be used on everything. It’s a great seasoning for blackening fish, then again, sometimes I don’t want blackened fish. Sometimes I prefer a lemon and dill flavoring on fish and sometimes I want nothing more than some cornmeal and a little salt and pepper.

As with food, I have preferences with how I season my outlook on life circumstances. My go-to is humor. I’d rather laugh than cry, rather smile than frown. But humor isn’t always appropriate in every situation. Nothing is appropriate in every circumstance. There are choices, of course. Always choices, and how we choose to season our outlook on any given situation will have a huge impact on how we view the world.

Let me show you what I mean.

I’m going to give you two descriptions. Each will be followed by a photograph of what I’m describing:

Disenfranchised,
voices of social justice, personal and financial equality,
peaceful protesters,
civil disobedience,
champions of the down-trodden,
freedom fighters,
united front,
standing up against greed and corruption,
power to the people…

image from theatlantic.com, Occupy Wall Street

Spoiled,
entitlement generation junkies,
drunkenness, debauchery,
lost, misdirected,
communists, useful idiots,
lazy, foolish, time wasters,
ridiculous,
looking for meaning in their meaningless, non-contributive lives through the disruption of the lives of others.

image from theatlantic.com, Occupy Wall Street

So which description is accurate? Probably neither completely, as both descriptions are extremely biased and one sided.

Our own experiences and beliefs season our outlook on life and on the lives of others. If we refuse to even consider how others who don’t share our values might see the world, we will more than likely stay in the mess we’re in.

***

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Seasons, hosted by the lovely and talented Peter Pollock. To read more stories about Seasons, please visit Peter at PeterPollock.com

It’s week three of The Best of Billy Coffey! If you’re new here, in Week 1, I shared a snippet of Billy’s second novel Paper Angels along with a few ways you can enter to win a copy of Paper Angels, Week 2 was Billy’s Come to Jesus Moment. As promised, I’m still choosing a winner each week. You may enter as often as you like, and there are several ways to enter:

• Leave a comment here or on subsequent “Best of Billy Coffey” posts each Monday indicating you would like to be entered into the drawing.
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to this post and/or subsequent posts. (Please be sure to let me know you’re doing so by adding @katdish to the end of your tweet or sharing the Facebook link with me.)
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to the Paper Angels Amazon page letting people know it is available for pre-order.
• Ditto Barnes & Noble
• Ditto Books-a-Million
• Ditto Indie-Bound

Each of the aforementioned actions will constitute one entry into the drawing. If you don’t win this week, each of your entries will go back into the drawing. Winners will be chosen at random and will be announced the following Monday. Enter early, enter often, and check back here each week for new opportunities to win.

Thanks in advance for helping get the word out about Paper Angels. If you’re not big into contests, I still encourage you to head over to Amazon or another online retailer and pre-order a copy. I know once you read it you will recommend it to a friends and family, and word of mouth advertising is the very best kind.

The winner of Week Two is Annie McMahon. Congrats, Annie! I’ll post next week’s winner next Monday.

And now, another one of my favorites. Billy shares some great writing advice in his unique Coffey-esque style:

Writing Naked

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.

When I first started blogging, I wasn’t much of a writer. Many would argue that I’m still not much of a writer and on some days I would tend to agree with them. But more and more, I’m seeing a trend away from a community of equals sharing the journey. Admittedly, I don’t get around to as many blogs as I used to, I simply don’t have as much time anymore. I hope folks who visit here click on my blog roll page and check out some of the people on there, but in all honestly that’s more for my benefit than anything, because it’s a way for me to keep up with my friends in the blogosphere.

Everyone has different objectives and reasons for blogging. I’m not as driven as others are to build a platform because I’m not trying to sell anything or get anything published. If I had to characterize what I think my role is in blogging and other forms of social media, I would have to say more than anything that I try to be an effective promoter–of good ideas and good people. Lately that’s become more difficult for me because it seems people care less about being authentic and more about being popular. Many writers of high traffic blogs seem to have achieved rock star status. The comments section often reflect a sense of hero worship. But it doesn’t end there. Many bloggers try and emulate what popular blogs are doing, and in doing so lose their own unique voice. When this happens, you’ve lost me because I don’t need another version of someone else. None of us do, really.

The following is an excerpt from a post I wrote in May 2009, but I think it still applies:

Why I’m okay with being Obnoxious:

I figured out a long time ago that I am a very square peg surrounded by round holes. Trying to fit into those holes simply wore me down and slowly chipped away at the person I was meant to be.

That is not to say that I am completely satisfied with every aspect of me. I am always striving to become the person God wants me to be. But God, not someone else’s ideal picture of what a 43 year old wife and mother of two is supposed to be.

That’s why I’m okay with being obnoxious. Some of you might be wondering if “katdish” is some sort of persona that has been created that allows me to say things that I might not otherwise have the guts to say as myself. Let me clear that up for you. This is me:  warts and all. Those of you who know me in real life can attest to this.

I’m not smart enough to keep up with more than one personality. Besides, I think doing that drains your soul and robs you of a valuable witness to the power of God’s grace – for the sinner and the saint. And for the record, you ain’t no saint! (Please, no theological arguments here, you know what I mean.)

Sometimes I say things that should probably have been left unsaid. But in the non-cyber world, I have my husband and friends who love me enough to tell me to shut up. In the blogosphere, I have a handful of good friends that will do the same. (You know who you are.)

I’m totally okay with someone not liking me. I think caring more about what people think and less about what God thinks is a horrible, wretched way to live. Now here’s a newsflash, if you don’t like me, there’s a pretty good chance I don’t like you either. But that’s okay. God calls us to love one another. He never said anything about like. Just as long as we’re not walking around with giant planks in our eyes, I’m cool with that.

The following statement is intended for those who need to hear it. Clearly, some of you grasped this concept a long time ago. But I offer it anyway:

May I be so bold as to offer some advice? Stop trying so hard to keep up appearances. Accept that you are broken. Even if, like me, you have been smashed with a hammer. God’s light often shines brightest through the broken vessel. I for one, will love you for it.

God? He loves you, regardless. His love was poured out for you at Calvary. He doesn’t need you. But He desires your abiding love with all of His heart.

How cool is that?

Note: One of the main criteria for being on my blog roll is my belief that the writer presents things in a unique way. So if you’re on there, chances are good I’m not talking to you.