This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, October, 2016
The first nine months of the year were good for The One Board. I was lined up, repeating my shots and crafting with confidence. Then, in an excited haste to get to another bowling tournament, I rushed off an airplane, inadvertently leaving behind my trusty first-draft notebook that housed three potential columns, and now I sit here finding myself unsure. I know I have to make a slight adjustment off September, but I can’t risk overadjusting and getting lost. The 10th month is crucial, because I can’t achieve perfection (or better: a 289) without the first 10 columns.
I’ve been doing everything just as bowling has taught me. I’ve taken it one column at a time. No, one sentence at a time. Geewillakers, one word at a time. I’ve proclaimed my preference to marathons over sprints while sprinting to the next sprint. I’ve had the right pen in my hand and was in the right part of the page, looking for hold and writing to it. I talk frequently with my pen rep, devising the best strategy to find the friction necessary to get the ink from the pen to the page, then calling in a graphologist to decipher my scribbles as I type them into a word processor under the watchful eye of my computer rep who helped me determine the optimal layout on my laptop screen.
To write a successful column, one has to catch a break here and there. It’s essential to capitalize on those breaks as well as the beginnings of sentences and proper nouns. When a poorly constructed sentence somehow plays well with the audience, a true veteran piles on with one of the best sentences in literary history, putting up two in a row and placing immense pressure on the other writers to try to keep up.
The key is committing to the sentence. The conditions vary constantly, and I may not be sure about a particular phrasing, but if I commit to it and trust it, it’ll either be perfect or I’ll learn from it for the next sentence. I have to learn from my mistakes and go forward. Stay down on the keys and post my punctuation marks.
Once I let it go and it’s off to the editor, there’s nothing more I can do. I can only control what happens before I get to the send button. As Pete Weber said his dad said, everything that happens before the sending of the column is 100% me and everything that happens after is 100% luck.
I don’t read anyone else’s writing. I can’t let what they’re doing affect where I may be. It’s a grind. I need to stay in my own world and focus on myself, then whatever happens, happens. All writers are great guys or gals, so I’m happy for anyone who succeeds.
The grind is what makes it all worth it, which is why I only buy whole coffee beans. Sure, pre-ground beans cost and taste the same, but unless I have to put myself through even a slight inconvenience, is the cup of coffee really worth it?
I’m not here just to get a check. I’m here to win. But, even if I don’t win, I’ll at least be able to say I got a check. Maybe. Well, definitely, because I’ve worked out an intricate system of income sharing with my fellow writers, guaranteeing no one gets rich but we all get at least one sandwich per week. That’s all the assurance I need.