Today it’s my privilege to have Ken Coffman as a guest Over Coffee. Professionally, Ken is a non-fiction author and an Engineer with Fairchild. Personally, he is a good friend, a bit of a philosopher, a gifted musician, a wonderful storyteller and author of a favorite character of mine, Glen Wilson.You could say his topic today embodies the philosophy he lives by: Be bold. Take the lead. Show up.
80% of success is showing up.- Woody Allen
What is the right percentage? 80% of success is showing up? I’ve heard 90%, 95%, and even 100%. Let’s not quibble, my friends. Some high percentage of success comes from showing up. But, what the hell does that mean?
I feel like I understand the concept and it doesn’t mean success is easy. Showing up sounds easy, so what’s going on? Let’s suppose you’re sitting in a room with one hundred other people. If you have a question, the physical effort of raising your hand is nothing. You lift that heavy hand hundreds of times a day. But the courage to take the chance, to draw attention to yourself, to risk asking the stupidest question ever asked…that takes courage. Grit. Guts. In this case you gotta show up by raising that heavy hand.
Let me illustrate with an example from my life. Every few years when I can afford it and the mood strikes me, I will act as concert promoter. A while back, I booked a show with Patrick Moraz. Patrick is a world-renowned keyboardist and pianist who played with Yes and The Moody Blues. Truly, he is as close to a modern incarnation of Mozart that we will see in our lifetime. That sounds over-the-top and ludicrous, doesn’t it? But, check it out. You’ll see.
For an opening act, I decided to book a friend, Eric Dahl. Eric is a talented songwriter/storyteller, but I remember the day he told me he didn’t know how to play the guitar. I’d seen him perform and loved his songs…how could it be that he ‘knows not’ how to play? As it turns out, a guitar-playing friend tunes his acoustic guitar to an open chord and all Eric has to do is move his thumb and index finger up and down the neck to play simple patterns. As an aside, this is the way Glen Wilson (from my novel series, the continuing adventures of Glen Wilson, which starts with Steel Waters) also plays the guitar. This is in no way coincidental, but never mind that.
The concert was fun and the audience ate it up. Then, at the end, for an encore, a group of people wanted to hear Eric playing with Patrick. My heart sank. This would be a disaster… We can’t combine one of the premier pianists of the world with a fellow who does not know how to play the guitar. Sensing a meltdown, I sank into my seat and tried to disappear.Here’s what happened. Eric got on stage, grinned at the crowd and started playing and singing a simple, funky bluesy pattern. Genius that he is, Patrick joined in and played wild, creative and amazing accompaniment. It was great. Perfect. Beautiful. And taught me a valuable lesson. I have the recording. It’s cool.
The life lesson?
Be bold. Take the lead. Show up.
What does this mean to my fellow writers? We’ll have setbacks. The blank page will sit on our screen and mock us. We’ll get a bad review. Another rejection letter. We’ll lose a contest. It can be overwhelming, paralyzing and depressing. That’s life. What should we do? Work! Perfect your skill at creating characters, designing a story arc and executing your ideas with good grammar, vocabulary and syntax. No matter where you started and no matter where you are today, you can get better and inch closer to your goal. Step-by-step. Day-by-day.
And that’s what I’m doing. Thanks Eric.
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Ken Coffman is the author of Steel Waters, Hartz String Theory and other mad novels available from Amazon.com and other online bookstores. He wrote a popular technical book called Real World FPGA Design with Verilog published by Pearson-Prentice Hall.
He is a Field Applications Engineer and Member of the Technical Staff at Fairchild Semiconductor.
He is a Field Applications Engineer and Member of the Technical Staff at Fairchild Semiconductor.
He is the coauthor of six patents, a member of the standards association of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a guitar player. He plays golf exactly the way his boss wants him to: very poorly.
