Most folks have had an occasion to attend a work-related seminar or course. They can be ... hit and miss. To keep things fresh, some instructors will try to weave their personal hobbies into their teaching. I've seen it quite a few times. "How axe throwing made me a better orthopaedic surgeon." "Crochet tips for the airplane mechanic." "Karate's lessons for civil lawsuit mediators." (One of these is actually real). Don't get me wrong. Hobbies are great. Everyone needs a hobby. But why this compulsion to machinate one's favorite past-time into teaching about one's work?
The answer, I think, is that most folks like to share the things that bring them joy. And since for most folks work can sometimes (oftentimes? most times? invariably?) be a drudge, perhaps it's only natural to want to try to air-drop a little outside happiness into it.
In this post, I'm going to take that inclination one step further--and mix one fun hobby with another.
I like to bowl. Ever since I was 5 and my father would take me to the church league on Friday nights (staying up until midnight, granny-shooting 6 lbs chipped up alley balls, getting four quarters for the arcade--what's not to like?). I actually took a bowling class at FSU. I've kept up with it, on and off, over the years. Right now, I'm bowling between 140-150 on average. That's after bowling about once a week, week in and week out, for the past year and a half. And in that time, I have twice hit what had been a lifelong goal: breaking 200 (this last time, I hit it right on the nose; if I hadn't whiffed on picking up the ten pin on 2 consecutive frames, I could have pushed it over 220). Anyhow, hitting that benchmark twice got me to thinking about writing.
Twice I've had the privilege of publishing a novel with a press. Each offer felt like I had hit a milestone; each experience was richly rewarding. But there was a LOT of failure (gutter balls, if you will) along the way. Draft manuscripts that went nowhere, scenes that fell flat, characters who never came to life, prose that made me wince.
The thing is, that still happens, tiny successes notwithstanding. Like in bowling, I still make plenty of misses in my rough drafts. But here's the other thing: those misses aren't as bad as they used to be. If I miss the ten pin a little high, well, that's better than cleaning out the gutter. I need to tweak something, not change my whole approach. So, too, with writing. The problems I catch in editing a finished ms (and there's always ample plenty of them) may require a great deal of work, but they don't require a rewrite of the whole manuscript. That's improvement. And improvement leads to bigger and better milestones. More 200 games, fewer missed spares.
Here's hoping you make all your spares.
Happy writing,
Matt