If you have flown then I imagine you know the feeling. You sit down in your assigned seat and the seat next to you is empty. You then look forward at the stream of passengers working their way to you. Immediately you access their size and hygiene, then you look deep into their eyes. Somehow five to seven rows before yours their eyes will give them away. In my case I see their eyes saying “oh no I have to sit by him.”
A few weeks ago I was in that situation, I saw one of the biggest men I have ever seen and hoped he was not assigned seat 17B. His eyes told me he was.
So next to me sits this mountain of a man. Tall, bowed up, covered in tattoos. Tattoos that said this guy was bad to the bone.
He easily engaged in conversation, as a pastor I can’t let my seat neighbor sit in silence. The conversation immediately went to where he was headed. He was going to a dangerous part of the Middle East to drill for oil. When I suggested that sounded dangerous, he told me about his last job in the jungle where armed guards protected him around the clock. He said it was common to hear of a national being slaughtered by a bush knife. Then to top the machete murders he shared about his time in the Special Forces.
It was somewhere in his second Iraq tour when I began to panic. Knowing he would soon ask where I was headed. In light of his manly stories I dreaded saying I was headed to a writer’s conference. I knew my story would conjure up the intense dangers of paper cuts so I thought about making up something more exciting.
He did ask, and even as I sheepishly told him where I was headed — I knew he couldn’t hang in my world. Because writers are “B-B-B-B-Bad”.
My kids will have a bumper sticker that says, [bctt tweet=”“My Dad can beat up your Dad, because my Dad is an author.””]
Writing is hard work.
When I began working on my first book, I took a week’s vacation. I planned to finish my book in six days 5:30 am until Starbucks closed. At 9:41 pm on the fourth day while finally beginning chapter two, I said to myself, “Writing is ridiculous.” So I Googled “encouragement for authors”, and I found an article that spoke truth into me. In a different phrase not suitable for a column entitled The Ministry of Writing, it said, “Authors are bad to the bone.” It continued, “Regardless if a book gets published if someone finishes a book they are one of the Baddest (Butt) people in the world.”
I smiled and got back to work.
That was two years ago. Those two chapters would get revised over thirty times. Then they were thrown in the thrash when agents encouraged me to go in another direction, which I gladly did because [bctt tweet=”I am a writer and I am BAD TO THE BONE.”]