Writing Is a Sport, Like Everything Else

The French Connection (Robert, Perrault and Martin), Football, and Figure Skating. Must be the alliteration, my love of sports that start with F.

Figure skating--maybe you think it's not a sport. Okay, but I want to see you spin around three times in the air and land on one foot...

Maybe you think Figure Skating is evil, a so-called women's sport in which girls do best, girls doing everything they can to keep their bodies adolescent, in order to pull off jumps that full-grown women with normal body fat percentages cannot complete. Better, you say, to watch Mia Hamm or Lisa Leslie, grown women who are strong, who are part of a team, who do not worry about what they are wearing.

True and Fine, but how is that like life or writing? The thing with figure skating is that it's random and unfair. Pretty is an advantage, as is having the right designer outfit, the right music, the right kind of rhinestone ponytail holder. It matters whether you smile and maintain your poise after you fall down. Plus, there's a Kiss and Cry, where you have to react, on live TV, to the judgement you receive.

Kind of like life, where things are random and unfair, and how you handle pressure matters. Now some of the most blatant abuses have gone away with the end of cold war politics. Our new global divisions are unlikely to impact skating again. Unless Vera Wang modifies the Burquini , our athletes won't have to contend with the Pakistani judge's ideological bias.

So what does this have to do with writing, you want to know? Besides the alliteration...

First, it's a package deal. Like a figure skating routine, a piece works or it doesn't. The elements come together, and your story catches an editor's eye, even if another story had more metaphors or faster similes. Also, there's no definitive measure, no hard and fast rules, just objective judgements--the Czech judge likes Kristi, the editor at the Atlantic Monthly is sick of coming-of-age pieces, and your competition at Ploughshares was in the same MFA program as the volunteer reader. All you can do out there on the ice is your best. If you mess up, smile, get up and start again. Maybe wink at the French judge a little more often... With your writing, all you can do is make your stuff as good as you can. When a publication only takes 1-2% of submissions, the only strategy is to smile in the face of rejection, and keep going.

Last winter, I skated for the first time in decades. After holding onto the boards for a good long time, I was able to skate around without holding onto the boards...call me Kwan. Hey, progress is progress. I hope I'm a better writer than skater, but my plan is to keep at it, do my best, and get up when I fall down.

Maybe I’ll ask Jed if he can help me think of more sports that start with F, so I don’t run out of things to blog about….