As writers, we often spend a lot of time staring at an empty computer screen. In the old days, it was a blank piece of paper curled up around the typewriter roller, just waiting for the hunting and pecking to begin.
“Empty” and “blank” are the operative words there, because that’s what it feels like when the creative juices just aren’t flowing.
It’s a part of the craft that we take for granted. I have no idea what all is involved in writing a novel, but I have to believe Ernest Hemingway had moments in which he had no idea where to start. Ernie was known to knock a few back, so that probably helped get him loosened up and started on The Old Man and the Sea.
Sports writing might be a little easier – you mean to tell me that Farewell To Arms wasn’t about the decline of the Dodgers pitching staff? – because there’s always some game being played or about to be played and therefore something to write about.
I’d have no idea how or what to write about a City Council meeting, but I’m all over a Benton vs. Parkway baseball game.
I don’t know about the rest of the people who practice this craft, but the hardest part for me is simply getting started when you are swimming in a sea of nothingness.
My boy Gustave Flaubert once wrote “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”
Here’s what I believe in, Gustave — Newspapers.com.
I don’t know if this website is the greatest invention ever – air conditioning and the automatic teller machine are hard to beat – but I find when the verbs and adjectives are hard to come by, a deep-dive into my online account is the cure for what ails me.
And it only costs $74.90 every six months. (There is no discount for 19th century French novelists.)
I’ll spend hours looking for just the right bit of inspiration and often ended up fascinated with how the craft of sports writing has changed over the years. Sometimes it’s re-reading a piece I wrote in my younger days and wondering just what the hell I was thinking when I cranked out a 26-inch story on a prep football game between two teams with losing records.
But I often see stories by some really terrific writers who wrote a really terrific story on a really terrific game. No matter how the industry has changed, that’s still what it’s all about.
Sounds silly to some, but just trying to write a story as good as the next guy is a great way to start pounding the keyboard.
Newspapers.com is like a gigantic scrap book (kids, ask your parents from clarification) that can be used for whatever purpose you’d like.
But nothing is better than to look back a few decades and read the prose in which the stories, particularly sports, were written. I stumbled into a May, 1964 story about Jesuit (now Loyola) was headed to Hahnville to try to win the state baseball championship.
In the unbylined story, it was written “Restovich will take over the gateway post while Attaway is laboring on the hill. Mike Restovich will hold down second while Tony Papa will be at the other keystone post. The hot corner will be in the reliable hands of Marvin Jordan, the man with the supersonic arm. Tommy Mazur will handle the backstopping chores. Danny Gayer, hard-hitting James Bustillo and Tony Rinaudo will handle the gardening chores for the Flyers.”
If that’s not gold, I don’t know what is. Gateway post, keystone post, laboring on the hill … all of those are great, but “gardening chores” to describe the outfielders had me doubled over.
You think Hemingway could have cranked out a paragraph like that? Think again, my friend.
That’s inspiration.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com
