Michael Cogdill's Blog

Believing a grand thing can't be done amounts to worse than failure to do it. It's failure to venture at it. To venture a try. It's believing in failure before giving failure a chance to get its pants on.

Such failure to try is failing at its worst. Buck naked failure. Failure shooting the world a moon, somehow showing its ass and sitting on it the same time.

To sweat and huff and pant and hell-raise and pray and believe and fall and get up after falling and needing a truss from the heavy lifting of trying IS a success. It's the species of success that tatters and bruises and beats and kicks you so far down, haters and the commonly craven spit their vulgar cowardice into the dust of your trying.

Their vulgarity is kicking you with one foot while failing to take a daring step with the other.

Do not fear the dust of your failure. Don't sneeze at it. The dirt of it forms the tablet of your life. Into this dust is written your story, your narrative, told in hard muscle, told way before a chisel hits your epitaph.

We fail one stroke of trying a time. And only by such failure do we ever succeed.

In dust and glory and cinders too hot for those who won't dare to try, I salute your trying. Keep at it, until the dew of succeeding falls upon you. Dare to fail, then get up. Scorch and wear out, but get up again.

For countless great success stories, failure is the sun-burnt prelude to anything worth a damn. It's reality with grit bitten into it mouth corners. Failure is the cracked and scarred tableau of who you are.

It is success with its work clothes on. And they look mighty fetching on you!

The Opera Coat Seizes Olympic Power

Six days past the opening ceremony, weariness set in. Almost ennui, though not quite boredom. This portion of this summer had belonged to her sister’s Olympic dream for years. At dinner tables and on every school day’s commute, the talk always raced toward the work of the family Olympian and the sacrifice to get her there. Now, it lay done. The work of, and for, the hard-body family athlete – finished. The dream an awakening to something new.

In the shade of her had lived the little-girl aspirant of couture and style who longed more for the high ivory trees of New York than the flat blue bog of women’s water polo. It sometimes seemed impossible she and her big sister had shared a womb.

She is, eternally, the family baby, this little sister, Glenda, youngest of four, hoarse from joining in their earnest cheers for that oldest sister, Hannah, on this London trip they scraped the ribs of piggy banks to afford. These days into the London dream, lived far out loud, a chance she prayed would come finally did.

Quiet as an abbey ghost, she dipped into walking shoes and slipped her fidgety soul out of the hotel room, where everyone else napped through the mid-afternoon lull, trying to sleep off the anti-climax. Like bears in December, she thought. Every one of them spent from London’s thrill except her. She thought herself like a tiny bird, throbbing of heart, eyes starving for what she adored, launching off the sill of this family. Off to soar on foot and peck at the lovely oddities of Olympic Soho.

Hardly twenty minutes on the random streets, bound for nowhere she knew, she felt it more than saw it. The grace of its drape caught her, even from behind the window. An opera coat, vigorous and rare, reached for her, nearly jarring in its catch of her eye through the glass of a used clothing store on a nearly lonesome branch of avenue…

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People often ask about my embarrassing moments. Here’s one, far removed from live television. It proves the power of blood humor to light our deeply human dark.

Emceeing an event, before a crowd flirting with a thousand, I had to introduce a funeral director I didn’t know. I’d never laid eyes on him. His last name gave off some uncertainty, so I joked, “If I screw up this undertaker’s name, he’s bound to break his leg kickin’ my rear end.”

God as my witness, out of the crowd and up to that stage stepped a one-legged funeral director. Grinning a grin wider than the universe.

That undertaker had lost his leg in a ravaging motorcycle accident. The wreck had skidded him to the very sharpest edge of death. But he was back from that edge, absent the leg, and in possession of a joie de vivre I’ve never seen again. That man adores and celebrates being alive in THIS VERY PRESENT MOMENT unlike any soul I’ve known.

He and I became instant friends. Here, now, well after the crimson drained from my face, I celebrate him.

Last year, standing at a concierge desk at a hotel on Hilton Head, a man slipped up behind me asking, “Sir, would you care to borrow my wooden leg to kick some tail?” I turned to meet that grin again. Blinding. Unmistakable. The concierge, lovely woman, thought herself witness to a twin outbreak of male-bonded insanity. Watching our surprise reunion of friendship, she suddenly wore a face of stark horror. Like she’d just seen a baby the spitting image Morley Safer. No matter. My undertaker’s way of seeing the world soon won her. It won that day and the entire hotel lobby.

I say this here to remind myself — and everyone who sees this — that no matter what happens to us, we get to define what it means. A man who’s breathed the very wind of death says plenty to us about how largely and wonderfully we’re called to live. Marilyn Monroe said she didn’t want to be rich, she just wanted to be wonderful. As your own democracy of one, elect to live wonderfully. I know an undertaker who can show you the way!

This year brought us a great book, Dear Me, A Letter to My 16 Year Old Self — one of the least resistible titles I’ve ever seen. The letters carry enthralling wisdom and some names you’ll recognize. They’re funny, aching, addictive in their comfort. In an uncommonly beautiful way they cry out about the common realities we all share in being human. They remind us we all walk much the same wilderness at that age, young and uncertain, and they’re bound to pull you back into the hallows of your 16 year old heart. They have a way of causing the best of that young heart to beat within you again.

So, of course, I couldn’t resist.

Here’s my own letter to my 16 year old self, waving in all readers. Feel free to tell me if your world and mine, at 16, shared some of the same emotional linens.

Dear Michael,

Stop.

Stop worrying about the elephant haunting every room of your house. The drinking your father does is his problem to fix, not yours. Stop trying to talk him out of it. Let him live with it. If he chooses, he’ll die with it. He is not your problem to solve. Just move apart from him. Forgive him, and don’t underestimate him. He doesn’t have to live this way. He won’t, always.

Those girls are beautiful. Lovely, inside and out. Have fun, but don’t settle up yet. Love will look and feel different on you in a few years. Be a gentleman. A truly gentle man. Take in the joys of a 16 year old heart. You’ll have one for way too short a time. You’ll long to have its full thumping madness back inside you someday.

People are underestimating you. They’re trying to get you to underestimate yourself. Don’t bend to their will. Refuse to live down to them. Celebrate the great teachers in your life. Don’t let the bad ones get you down. They can’t see what you’ll become. You’ll shock devil dust off their hides.

Nothing is more embarrassing than ignorance. Do your school work. Yeah, the dull high school work, do it!! Your college A’s will come easier if you do. Do some foolery prevention. Work toward cum laude now!


Speaking of that, assume you know little about the world. With those who claim to know everything about life, God and living, politely disagree that they do, then move away from them. Don’t give them permission to put you down. And keep your own pedantic mouth closed as often as you can. You’ll have fewer regrets that way.

Quietly embrace Divine mystery. It’s the road trip of your faith. Take your faith trip with the top down, make it a joy. Along its road, do things for people who need you to help them. Love people. Listen to them. Hear them. The face of young faith looks best with the wind of love in it. You’re not dumb, no matter who says so. You can understand that!

But don’t be quite so naive. Recognize pure old meanness when it grins at you. The people who haze and bully you — forgive them, but move apart from them. Go from them, now, knowing their malice won’t matter for long. It’ll disappear into your grown-up days. Don’t get beaten down into believing what they say about you, or do to you.

Boy — and you still are one — run headlong into teenage fun. You drive too fast, play too hard, think and feel too little. But that’s what 16 year old American boys do. Be careful, but not to excess.

Finally — well, almost — adore your friends out loud. Love them with a loudness that rattles the windows. Tell them out loud you love them, with your chin up, looking them in the eye. Love them and your mighty well-meaning family. Celebrate and adore your mentors. Some of them won’t live as long as you want, or need. Hug them, for what feels too long, while they’re here. They are God’s men and women for your day. They are doorways to your success. To your legacy.


Gratitude looks good on everybody, kid. Wear it, with some freshly laundered humility. When you’re tempted to worry, as teenage boys do, throw that lying worry off yourself. Cloak your stout heart in being thankful instead. Worry, truly, is a waste of your imagination.

Go. Live. With both throttled down, live, wide open! Live the living daylights out of your life. Live like you mean it. Have fun like they’re about to stop making it. Do all this, but watch for that Tomfoolery. Fun as he is, he can get you killed. He nearly will.

Now, smile, out loud.


God loves you, boy. Try to join God in that endeavor,

m

Some letters beg to get written. Others beg on for the writer to share them. So here, I’m letting all of you in on a letter of literary praise I sent to writer Rick Bragg, a chronically underestimated Alabama boy who defied those who underestimated him. Rick Bragg won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing at the New York Times. He’s an inkwell hero of mine. I just want him and the world to know.

Dear Mr. Bragg,

Thank you for taking time to read this. I’m sure you’ve grown used to riding high tides of praise. So I’ll try to make something new of this one.

I thought I was a pretty decent writer — of television journalism and fiction. Then, I read All Over But The Shoutin’.

Rick Bragg, that book will shade every sentence I write, every book I read, for the remainder of my time. Many have tried — and keep trying — to write with the very life blood of the human heart. Instead of finding that rare inkwell, plenty of them — even the celebrated poets — too often spray around prose that amounts to the swamp water of too much, not enough, or who cares.

You, on the other hand, have taught me more about the art of prose than I’ve learned in all my 50 years. More than another 50 are bound to grant to me.

And though this note may tempt you to think so, I’m not just a cream-rinsed TV wonk – at least I strive not to live as one. I’ve managed to win 27 Emmy Awards (most of them for feature writing) and the National Edward R. Murrow for feature in a career spanning 25 years. Had I experienced your work sooner in my career, I’d have not only more hardware, I might have gotten nearer the vicinity of writing such a line as, “A swagger is a silly walk for someone with so far to go.” (I hope that’s close enough to the exact quote.) BRAVO, Rick Bragg. Bravo!!

You and I share some history of the South: Poverty, alcoholism, a junk yard dog sensibility in our lore, perhaps our DNA. We were also raised by mothers who worked themselves into near break down to make sure their boys do without less. You and I have shown the pompous that they underestimate what they see as trash at their own risk. We have shone on the world the magic of rising above the worst of our raising and DNA while staying tethered to them at once. There’s a priceless inspiration in that. You have certainly inspired me.

I wrote my novel, She-Rain, in the voice of a hardscrabble, lint-headed boy who jumped the fences of the Tarheel cotton mill culture to grow into a hell-raising beauty of a federal judge. I wrote it to entertain, of course, but also to caution the world against underestimating a human life, no matter its place and time. All Over But The Shoutin’ achieves this with a depth, a beauty, a wisdom and spirit that ought to have drawn you another Pulitizer Prize. You should have one for each hand. That’s my opinion.

But enough of my opinions. I leave you with a vow that I will travel a long way to shake your hand sometime. Simply to congratulate you on living as one of the finest writers I will ever read. Neither of us knew it at the time, but we covered the Susan Smith tragedy quite near one another in little Union, South Carolina. Perhaps we ran into one another during the trial. Maybe I got in your way at least once during that sweltering time. I wish I had read you then. I would be a better writer and a better man now.

Wishing you peace and a fine pig tripe burrito. We’re boys of the South, but I must say our paths diverge on pig tripe. Yet this boy raised on soup beans has to say — you are my literary hero! I’m sure the spirit of Scott Fitzgerald will understand.

I’d love to hear from you if you have the time. As I read you further, you will certainly hear from me, and so will every future Rick Bragg reader I can find.

Warm tides,
m
P.S. A reader of She-Rain gave me All Over But The Shoutin’ because she claimed she loved the two in much the same way. That’s the highest compliment of my literary life. And all this comes with echoes of my wife, Jill, who read your book before I did and, as I do, shouted praise out loud!

F. Scott Fitzgerald, scribbling in the working notes for his novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, said, “Action is character.”

I’ve long cleaved to this wisdom, as if Fitzgerald’s statement formed a guiding set of reins, setting my course as a writer trying to entertain on two levels: The action of the tale has to keep a reader longing for the next word, of course, but the words themselves ought to glimmer with a life all their own. They should form a sound that moves the reader’s soul. The words alone should have breath and a voice. It’s not an easy reach.

This little passage of She-Rain is a quick look at what I’m talking about, at least in my opinion. Let me hear yours.


"The day came on so cold the air felt breakable. The coldest day even the grayest heads could recall, talking of it for weeks. A pack of us had piled onto Pap’s mule wagon, the children smothered in quilts and shivers and a show of good faith. We were party to the goodbye.

Everything outside shone silvery white, all the trees wrapped and crackling in the shimmer of frozen January rain atop a snow. Cloth wrapped about the faces kept the ride quiet under the low winter noise. It seemed every branch, twig and roadside weed crunched against the lightest wind. A feel of frailty came off it, yet I loved the blank white. The way it made that trip to town feel as new as Christmas morning the day we hauled Frank to the Marshal Depot. Pap was paying his way."

Reading should be transformative. Writers ought to take you somewhere, causing the dust of a dirt road or the cold of a place and time to settle onto you. When we succeed at this, you, as a quiet reader, live out loud the truth of the people in the tale. You have a chance to touch, to hear, and to know them. By the transport of words, readers discover deeper parts of themselves. They find a new and familiar world at once. To read well is to travel well. But more than travel, readers – in the hands of a caring writer – arrive in a story from which they don’t want to turn away.

Some writers decry description. They uphold only the leanest truth telling, figuring the reader’s imagination will do the rest. It’s not a terrible idea, though one that often underachieves what a writer is called to do. Fitzgerald’s genius still holds true – action is character. And in a world of well-chosen words, action -- and readers -- find a fine place to dwell.

Jonathan Franzen would likely have preferred having boiling oil poured down his writing pants to facing the question about giving Oprah a snub. I confess as I watched him finally share the stage with a mighty gracious Oprah this week, I detected a Craig Ferguson-worthy awkward pause all over him. It seemed to me he locked up for a moment -- lost in a quiet fit of fumbled hypocrisy -- as he accounted for his recoil against having The Corrections chosen for Oprah's book club. Oprah was enormously kind. Rather than gloating, she offered him welcome and sincere praise. The lady loves his work, and rightly so. He's a very fine writer. Yet on the show, he made no honest allusion to his opinion -- those years ago -- that his male audience would flee his work if he took a book date with Oprah. Having heard every word of his Oprah interview, I still believe this: He feared the intelligentsia of literary fiction would think less of him if he took Oprah's praise and did the show with The Corrections. So, he snubbed her those years ago, setting off a far bigger media tsunami than he thought possible. Then, this week, he and Freedom rode the wave of there's-no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity straight onto the stage to make up with the Queen of all media. His appearance testifies to the kindness of her. Lesser women would have ignored him, perhaps letting him drown in what has looked like his own hubris.

Since my initial posting on this, some women readers of my novel, She-Rain, have come to some defense of Franzen. They see him as a genuinely self-effacing writer who despises walking in the glow of media, and I agree with them on some levels. Unlike many of his critics, I refuse to indict Franzen as some pompous misanthrope. I believe he's a sincere artist with an interesting process and a noble artistic goal. His gravity-defying praise is often deserved. Yet I stay convinced his novel, Freedom, and its attendant fame amount to a set of chains he wears with some eagerness. Big publishing has used it to drag him under spotlights he outwardly disdains -- even while those lights tan him in shades of gold. He soaks in the money, yet remains openly conflicted about the sun from which it comes.


Publishing is a shrinking herd of followers. Too many editors and critics call a thing brilliant merely because they've heard of the thing's creator, or because they deem it some new gospel on the religion of cool. Thus we end up with books and writers tending to parallel the upward momentum of the likes of Snooki and The Situation. We who read and write are expected to chain ourselves to these figures and go meteoric with them, shouting praise en route to the stars. Franzen is among the industry's stars, no matter how determined he appears not to wear its shine, and Freedom has become too much about a publishing industry anointing. May its literary legacy rise above the noise!

Franzen, for me, would have helped it along had he confessed to Oprah -- right there on television -- his deepest fears, reluctance, hubris, whatever, of those years ago. Instead, I believe he did as he was told by a publishing house in love with celebrity.

Now, wait, this is no veiled criticism of Oprah. I believe she genuinely loves the book, and her graceful way with Franzen speaks of a woman who embodies grace and leadership much too rare. Oprah goes her own way, with courage and a fine will. Franzen, you are extremely fortunate she chose to take you along, letting go of any hard feelings from years back. May your future art find itself worthy of what she’s done for your present and your past. May you come to celebrate, as I do, the new publishing model that will require writers to work as creative entrepreneurs, owners and managers of their own work who gratefully embrace the opportunity, not just the celebrity, that comes with standing in the spotlight. Your work needs no artificial anointing from the trembling hands of publishing. Break those chains, Mr. Franzen, and let your future art out to run. May a kind sincerity run at its side.

And may all of us find books we truly love, shedding the manacles of what the dying publishing industry calls the next -- or current -- great one. Readers, more than ever, you are the curators of great books. Be frank, and honest, about how a book makes you feel, no matter the noise that surrounds it.

...and here's the pool in which we'll all have this party:

http://michaelcogdill.wordpress.com/

Friends on Goodreads, I welcome your comments there on books that have deeply moved you, those that have failed, and how you feel about the seismic change going on in publishing now. Whether it's Jonathan Franzen, Pat Conroy or Charlotte Bronte you want to talk about, your comments are waved in on all writers and every literary front.

My thanks to so many who have embraced She-Rain with passion, grace, and stunning reviews. I hope I live up to all of you with the new novel, For The Love of Honeysuckle Road. Stay tuned. Excerpts coming there on the blog.

On that blog I'm also soon to run a 55 Fiction expo. To all who've practiced this addictive art of writing a story in 55 words or fewer, welcome to the fun. To all who haven't, give a try. There are few excercises more apt to make each of us a better writer, compelling every word to fight for its life.

Warmest peace to all!

m

Readers, let me hear your thoughts on this little piece of love writing. It's not of any romance genre, but I hope you find it lands beautifully in the wheelhouse of all that's romantic -- and beyond.

http://she-rain.blogspot.com/2010/06/...

The beach more than warms away the gloom of winter. It reminds us that the world is a big place of beauty – no matter the full disclosure of an ill-chosen Speedo.

Many of you know the unique joy of reclining on a shore, feeling a book give you a sail. That sea horizon mystifies us with the enormity of what lies beyond, and a fine piece of writing carries us to meet what we would otherwise never see. Beaches speak of great journeys and landings. Books make them happen, even without our pants on.

Those of you who know me try to understand my nearly insane love of hot-weather running. I’m the rare man who adores the feel of sea-level humidity. To hit a beach and put 5 miles under my feet in 90-degree weather brings me a happiness I’m hopeless to describe. I’m unaffected by the countless sunbathers who shoot looks at me that might as well say -- “@$%* fool! What the #%^* is the matter with him?” I can answer only this way: running a hot beach takes me to a mighty good inner place.

Those of you who carry She-Rain to your vacation shore this year honor me with your time, and I want to repay that with this little revelation: Much of the story emerged into my heart, and eventually onto the page, along a beautiful piece of shore. The adventure of She-Rain often took form while I put those miles under my feet. My wife, Jill, suffered in the confetti of little notes I scribbled all over the place just trying to get the thoughts down before they vanished. I suppose the same magic that makes a beach inspire a reader makes it into a muse to this writer.

She-Rain ends on a fine piece of shoreline, and I did that as homage to the shore’s reach into my soul. Great horizons of water ironically gave rise to the Appalachian Mountain blue you’ll find in the novel’s world. As you rest on a beach with my book on your lap, I hope you find the tale carries you far beyond the worries we all take on vacation with us. May you lose yourself in there, even in the suffering of Frank, Mary Lizbeth, Sophia and the others. You have my pledge – the book will transport them – and you, I hope – to a place of boundless hope. I’m struck just now by the truth that She-Rain takes form as a year does – beginning in the coldness of often dark times, rising toward a warm light we can despair of ever feeling again, then coming to an end on a great holiday.

Gratitude should never take a holiday, and I have some to share. My agent, Terra Chalberg of the Susan Golomb Agency, just keeps on reminding me that the best parts of our lives are made of relationships. She does this with much more than her brilliant and professional advocacy of me in the literary world. She does it with the grace, welcome, and care we tend to feel from the best of our family. Terra, you are family to Jill and to me! Thank you for showing us to the good shores of friends for life.

And to everyone who’ll stare out at a big piece of water in these fine warm weeks to come – think of the legacy we build with the simple words – thank you. Whisper them quietly to yourself for the goodness of your times, and feel a peace come back in return. I bid you peace, with wishes for the joys of many fine reads to come. To all readers of She-Rain, my deepest thanks to you! Here’s to reading, nearly naked on the sand!