Thoughts on Writing

   For a contest sponsored by the college I'm headed to this fall, I was searching through some of my last articles to be published for entering. It made me think back on my writing overall, and its place in my life. How many people have an opportunity to work part-time at newspapers for five years, before college? How many people are published at least 237 times in newspapers, magazines and websites before they graduate from high school?

   It was fun. Hard, time-consuming, but fun. Of course, some things are easier to write about than others, for example, football is easier than track, and basketball easier than wrap-ups or previews. Some sports were awful to watch(Baseball, for one), some were painful, most were enthralling, quite a bit were nerve-wracking. But, you know, it makes sense that out of football; basketball(guys and girls); baseball; softball(fastpitch and slowpitch); tennis(guys and girls); track(guys and girls); archery; arena football; doing profiles of players, coaches, or announcers; statistical roundups of the seasons, talking about schedules; (and if you include for fun, ping pong, volleyball, really slow-pitch softball, mini golf, Ultimate Frisbee, or Bible trivia), some of those stories stacked up over awhile would be easier to narrate than others.

   When I started, I was a short, skinny eighth grader, terribly shy and scared out of my wits, who liked sports, and who enjoyed writing. From having to talk with coaches, players, people behind the scenes in the press boxes, parents, etc; I learned to conquer most of that shyness, and as I type this I'm a short, skinny high school senior, who still loves sports, and enjoys writing, though he knows he needs a lot more work to improve to where he wants to be.

   For a while, it seemed kind of...I don't know, I guess boring would be the right word, everything was so routine. Not enough of a challenge, most of the time I could pretty accurately predict the synopsis of how the game would go before it even started, and could get a good idea of what coachspeak would be used to describe it. And then fighting through to get the tale, basically the same as the one two days before, out to the people, who would read and then forget about it. I guess it was probably about March or April of last year that something felt like it was just a little off, a little wrong. So I examined it, and it seemed like the Lord was gently pointing out to me, "Wesley, you've got a gift here, but you don't have the right attitude about your gift, you aren't using it the right way." My focus was off, on myself instead of the people involved. So, I, little by little, began to back off the intensity and focus on other things(Like schoolwork.)

   You know how there's that saying about how God works in ways that to us seem mysterious, or the analogy about the cross-stitch that's our lives? That we don't usually understand what's going on until we step back? Well, after winning a slot as part of the Oklahoma delegation for the nationwide Youth Tour, and the trip to Washington D.C. that was the prize, (and thus, since the group was the best writers in the state, a little too proud of myself, though surprised I was in that category), about two days after we got home, I found out the website I'd been writing for was closing down. That was tough, it had meant a ton of exposure and great criticism for improvement. And about this time, things weren't going quite so well at the paper I'd been doing most of the sportswriting for, either. The guys from the bigger paper up the road wanted more space, and since daily papers are higher on the pecking order than twice-a-week papers, and since I wasn't technically an employee, merely a freelancer, I had less and less to cover. When fall came around, bringing with it the return to school and school athletics, for various reasons I was assigned the task of following the fastpitch softball team of the secondary town in the coverage area, instead of football at the main school, softball at the main school, or even football at the second school.
 
   Was I disappointed? Yeah.
 
   Was I a little mad? Yeah.
 
   Bit I figured that as long as God had placed me here, I may as well do the best job at it that I could. It was either that or quit writing altogether, and I needed all the published stories I could get to impress colleges. So I wrote about softball, which I don't really understand, and is only a slightly prettier cousin of baseball, which is incredibly hard to write about, and even harder to stay awake while viewing. And you know what I found out? That yes, softball is baseball's cousin, but it's interesting to watch. And yeah, it's basically the same game, but the strategy is so much different. And I think most of all, the atmosphere was so much in contrast to the baseball I'd seen so much of. You know, where the players stoically observe, only to make noises when barking(literally) encouragement to the batter. And parents and grandparents either watch tensely, yelling at people for mistakes, or talking quietly amongst themselves about Ford's new cars, why Jessica couldn't babysit the kids, or debating the merits of the political candidates. Nope, softball players make up cheers(which, if you stop and think about it, isn't all that strange, since most of them are cheerleaders), bunt often(creating dramatic moments of "Will she beat out the throw?") and the parents, they were some of the friendliest people I've come across as a group, around any field. Lady everyone called Grandma B passing out pop to fans(or thirsty sportswriters) on hot August days, the way everyone seemed to know everyone else's grandkids and were all keeping an eye on them, the little kids praying a ball would fly foul so they could chase it, encouragement shouted loudly towards whoever needed it, the amused counting of how many balls would hit the roof of the concession stand each game, it was just a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere that was so different from any of the others. I enjoyed it. They didn't complain much about mistakes, just occasionally correcting my spelling, glad that their daughters and nieces and granddaughters got some notice for their efforts out on the ball field.

   With the close of the season in October, I was left without a job, so it's been a pretty quiet winter. Hard to adjust to causally spectating during a game, though I'm slowly relearning a process first grasped at ten months. Hopefully this fall or a little later I can find a place onto a newspaper or something, Lord willing, but if not, well, I'm happy for the time I've had.