When it comes to similes...

I'd rather you send the bong instead. Preferably before you fidget with your balls. 8)

Oh, and Zito's spot-on. Damn, what a feeling that is. When the words are dripping off your fingers onto the keyboard. It IS as transcendent as a good high, and don't let anyone tell you different. I live for that feeling.

 

As 21 says, there's a different thread in the question of working under the influence. And another in the myth and history of hard drinking that surrounds sportswriting. Writing of every kind, really.

I think The Jones' point in this specific case, and mine, and 21's, have to do, rather, with the nature and nurture of inspiration.

Writing of any kind is a weird alchemy of inspiration and discipline. Each has to inform, support and encourage the other. Celestial inspiration is swell, but if you don't have the patience or the craft to translate it to the page, it's useless. And while rigor and routine are indispensible to the work, without some divine fire all you'll have to show at the end of the day is a time card.

What I think we're all talking about - spliffing, pacing, listening to music, reading poetry, - is keeping the creative part of yourself alive and well-tuned, vigorous and flexible and most importantly, accessible. As a writer, whether in journalism or out, you have to understand how your own head works, and how to feed and care for it.

Like Jones, I keep a small notebook on me at all times. I write down the little fragments that come to me during the day - bits of conversations overheard; noises; colors; dreams; reminiscences; descriptions of clothing, buildings, people, meals; story ideas; story titles; things I've read and admired - or hated; questions, answers, words, numbers, drawings. Anything. Everything. I never edit what goes in. When I fill one up, I start another. I have lots of them. Sometimes I can use these things in stories I get paid for. Mostly, I can't.

What's important to me isn't their immediate utility.

It's the gesture. It's the act of making the record. Of working my head. Of staying in touch with the connection between language and curiosity and spontaneity. Of trolling my thoughts for the stuff sunk in the deeps.

I do it too - and this will sound stranger and more mystical than I mean it to - because it's an offering to the Muse. It's the gesture of readiness. Here I am. Come to me. However and in whatever form you like.

You'd be surprised how willingly inspiration comes around when you keep the table set and leave a light in the window.

And not at all surprised at how intransigent, skittish and aloof the Muse can be when all the doors are locked and the house is dark.

 

Buck, you've succeeded in making me blush. I guess it's good to see my own advice reflected back at me like that. I think I wrote that post when I was in a more logical place, and it helps provide some perspective. I'm beginning to see that some of this self doubt was created by a piece I just wrapped up, one that I fumbled badly when it could have easily been an 80-yard touchdown. Its flaws are hardly limited to its similes (the narrative structure, I think, chokes on the bone as well), but it's important, I guess, to be reminded that there will be other stories, good and bad in the future, and that a little perspective goes a long way.

I guess my other point about the drug issue is this: I think it's extremely interesting to think about what shapes us as writers. Aside from talent, certainly part of it is the the adventures and experiences we have, whether it's going to college, going to war, huffing paint behind the Tasty Freeze, or falling in love and dealing with heartbreak. Everything I've done makes me see the world in a different way than buckweaver might, or Bubbler might, or Fenian_Bastard might. But I worry sometimes that I haven't traveled enough, or tried enough things to really write about the human condition with any real authenticity. Would I be a different writer and thinker if I'd taken a ton of bong hits in someone's basement and listened to Dark Side of The Moon instead of taken countless hits on the gridiron and listened too much Garth Brooks and AC/DC? Possibly. I guess it's silly to ask whether one path is more formative than the other. But I still wonder.

On the other hand, I guess that's the whole point of non-fiction writing and reporting. You observe, you listen, you ask questions, you take notes, and then you try to summarize your subject's experiences and put them into perspective.

Not even sure what I'm trying to say here. I wish I could use the excuse that I was typing these words in a weed-inspired haze.

 

DDown, you drug-addled psychopath my friend, you completely misunderstood me....I was only speaking for myself. No judgment on anyone else.

 

This is a third thread within this thread. Not sure many people could even formulate an answer, but interesting to think about. In a way, it addresses the simile question....the broader your life experience, the broader your mental storeroom of images and allusions.

 

The only time I use smileys is when I'm writing for my blog.

 

I'll drink to that.

 

Is this a good simile?

SportsJournalists.com is like crack. It provides instant gratification, but will ultimately leave you a shriveled mess who sleeps in abandoned warehouses on urine- and cum-soaked mattresses that were thrown out by the local crazy house after the inmates got their hands on a bad batch of thorazine.

 

That is not a simile. That is factual clean AP-worthy reporting.

 

Per 21, this could be another thread entire.

But because we're here and handy, maybe we can quickly address the nature and application of experience in addition to the nurture of inspiration.

Double Down's doubts - about the range and depth of his own life experience relative to his ability to write - are doubts all nonfiction writers hold in common. On the other hand, novelists will say - sometimes with a straight face - that any average childhood, however prosaic and plodding, can provide a lifetime's worth of rich inspiration for story. Proust being the proof of this. Somewhere between the two extremes, I think, lies the truth.

No amount of life experience is ever really sufficient to prepare any single writer for every single story. As DD suggests in the bolded sentence above, what comes to the rescue of the nonfiction worker thereafter is reporting. A novelist calls it 'research' - but it's the same thing. Both acts bolster and enrich the limits of our personal experience.

But experience alone - without understanding, without interpretation - isn't enough to make your writing better.

So what I'd like to add to the discussion this morning is the necessity of empathy.

By which I mean the ability to synthesize your own experiences in such a way that they can be used to enrich your understanding of other people. Those other people being the rest of the population of the planet - the subjects of your stories, and the readers of your stories.

The ability to put yourself in another person's shoes, however briefly and within whatever limits of your personal imagination, is something great writers of every stripe seem to share.

And this isn't to say that every writer at all times should project themselves into the lives and minds of their subjects; or try to second-guess the subjects' impulses or decisions or actions based on the writer's own personal standards or agendas.

Rather, it is getting into the habit of looking for what people share in common - instead of simply delineating what makes them different.

There's a small, good example of this in the Hank Steuver piece under discussion on another thread.

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/41349/

In particular, I'm thinking of the little description in this piece about what it's like to stay home from school and watch "The Price is Right." It's not enough that Steuver has experienced this himself. What makes that graf work so well is that Steuver understands that most of his readers have done the same. He's willing to risk being empathetic in order to enrich his work.

As I've gotten older (and granted, more experienced), I've become more comfortable with the notion that simple human empathy - in combination with our own experience - is a very big part of doing good work.

Feel free to challenge this or disagree with it entirely. It's just a thought for the morning before I go back to work.

 

I think, as usual, you've nailed it, jgmacg.

I truly believe a sense of empathy helps both with reporting and writing.

Especially with longform journalism, it's essential to make a connection with your subject -- you want them to like you, to trust you, to be willing to go places with you that they haven't gone with other writers. Rather than interviewing a subject, I much prefer a conversational style, and if I see an opening to share something about myself -- something that relates to whatever drama or comedy is going on in my subject's life -- then I'll share it. A dialogue is a much better approach for that kind of thing than a Q&A. Especially if you can do it somewhere different -- like, not the locker room. There, the athlete knows he's king, and you're not close to him. He's untouchable on that turf. Get him to In n' Out Burger, get him on the beach, and suddenly you're closer to equal, just two dudes talking about life.

And the writing follows. I like to think I wrote a good piece on Ricky Williams because I've entertained my own thoughts of running away. (One night, I'll tell you about my slipping over the bridge from El Paso to Juarez and nearly disappearing forever.) I think I understood Barry Zito because I didn't just dismiss him as a flake, but treated him as a kindred spirit. You can't write about people "from a distance" and expect to see anything that nobody else does. You have to see things through their eyes, and describe those vistas to your reader as openly and honestly as you can. That's the real heart of profile writing especially.

Because ultimately, a story's success rests on whether your reader feels something, anything. Anger, jealously, joy, sadness, and yes, empathy -- you get somebody to read your words and lift those emotions out the white spaces around them, you've done your job as well as it can be done.

 

And that leads back to DD's original point -- I think the more travel you do, the more people you talk to, the more experiences you have, the better chance you have of finding some common ground with the wide variety of subjects we'll encounter over a career. I would rather not have gone to these lengths, but when I had my gall bladder out before seeing George Clooney, I had suddenly had surgery at the hospital where he had surgery. We talked about that shared experience for our first thirty minutes together. I'm sure the rest of our time together was better (and probably longer) because of that.

Again, I'd rather still have my gall bladder and have had our common ground be our irresistableness to women, but hey.