Can Basketball Make You A Better Writer?
basketball, writing, and the human condition may be more alike than you think
The underbelly of my existence is a strange concoction of basketball, writing, and life lessons. Oddly enough, these three narratives overlap quite often.
Today is my clumsy attempt to present some of these ideas to you on a pretty platter — a few things I’ve learned (and am still learning) about the intersection of sports, creativity, and humanity.
1) The 3 alter egos of the writing process
The three stages to writing are ideating, writing, and editing.
I like to think of each stage as a different person in the same friend group. They're a hodge-podge of creativity and logic, of push and pull, with vibrantly different character traits and world views.
This means that each stage must be approached differently. To loosen them up, to bring out their best, you’ve got to flatter them. You’ve got to speak their language.
For example…
Ideating is the adventurous, free-spirited, slightly-alcoholic-but-still-fun friend.
Playful. Experimental. Sometimes a little sloppy.
Ideating is the recess of writing. I can sit down at my desk with a glass of Cabernet and Harry’s House bumping softly in the background, and I can bounce ideas off the page in any way I like. For me, ideating is enjoyable because there’s no pressure to get things right – just ample space to make mistakes, play with ideas, and ultimately see if said ideas are sticky enough to double down on.
What feels good? Where’s the through-line? What happens if I connect this idea with this idea?
Writing is the crunchy, barefoot, avid-yogi friend.
Grounded. Calm. Deeply immersed in breath-work.
Writing is the flow state, stream of consciousness heart of the writing process. For me, this is the lock-the-door, nobody-text-me, my-house-is-on-fire-but-I-don’t-even-notice flow stage.
To picture a flow state, imagine any basketball movie you’ve ever seen (I’m thinking about High School Musical, what about you?).
Without fail, there’s that one scene at the end: The clock is counting down! The crowd is going wild! The game is on the line! And the star player needs to make a basket. That’s when something interesting happens.
The roar from the bleachers fades to silence. The star player’s vision narrows in on the shot clock. His breath slows. We hear the heavy thump of his heartbeat. He has entered the most optimal state of performance. A flow state. He has become so zeroed in on scoring, on winning the game, that he forgets everything around him. Most importantly, he forgets himself.
This is the magic of flow state writing. We forget ourselves. We transcend. And it is perhaps one of the most beautiful demonstrations of love that we have. Why? It is the definition of outward-facing. Stepping out of our own self-consciousness allows us to commit fully to creating something beautiful for someone else.
Sitting down at the page, this is what stream of consciousness writing feels like: slow breath, tunnel vision, moving and flowing in harmony with the words pouring out of you.
Forget ego, forget self. Just write.
Lastly, editing is the picky, irritable, hard-to-please-at-the-dinner-party friend.
Skeptical. Sarcastic. Always voicing what everyone is thinking but no one is saying.
Editing truly is the backbone of the writing process. It’s the time to dig your heels in, to wholeheartedly embrace your inner critic. Don’t go easy on yourself here. In fact, you should kind of be tearing your work apart.
Whenever it’s time for me to edit, I come to the page serious (definitely no wine or Harry’s House) and a bit stoic. Editing is not fun or creative for me. It’s business. It’s steeped in logic and rationality. It’s all about making decisions for the good of the group, individual emotions be damned.
Everything orbits around questions like:
Does this actually make sense? Could it be better? How? What does this sentence accomplish? What value does this character add?
To master the writing process, you must understand its parts and its collective whole.
When ideating, you may think you’re the greatest writer to ever live. Ideas are flowing; plots are emerging; and you’re already practicing how to tell your spouse that your novel is going to be made into an HBO series (should I take him to a fancy dinner? Write him a letter? Set the backdrop of the TV as my face?).
But when editing your work, you may start to believe you’re the worst writer on the planet. You hit roadblock after roadblock, plot hole after plot hole; and 70,000 words in, you realize you kind of maybe hate your main character.
The point is that these stages cannot exist fully without the other.
On their own, they are eclectic, manic, hyper-active little people with entirely different world views and cocktail orders.
But together, they make sense of the world around them. They ground each other. They finish novels. And the consistent, monotonous cycle of ideate, write, edit – over and over again – is what drives the writing process forward. In the end, it’s what makes it sing like the gorgeous and exhausting symphony that it is.
2) Don’t cherry pick ideas
I’m often tempted to abandon my current WIP (work in progress) to work on other book ideas I have swirling around in my brain.
I don’t, of course, but I’ve found that I’ve been subconsciously saving ideas for later books.
A ground rule of basketball is to never pace yourself. Never save your energy on one play so you can go hard the next. If you lose a game by 2 points, that loose ball you didn’t go after in the first half could have made all the difference.
If you’re on the court, you need to bust your ass.
Same with writing.
Stop cherry-picking ideas for later. Half-baked narratives and underdeveloped characters aren’t enjoyable for anyone, writers and readers alike. Not to mention (this is a bit dark, but we’ve got to touch on it), if you happen to die in a tragic car crash after you published your first book, all your brilliant ideas that you so carefully saved for later will die with you.
What are you saving yourself for?
Give it everything you’ve got. Let it bleed you dry. Trust that your next story will emerge on its own. But whatever you do, don’t pace yourself.
3) Write excellent, not perfect
When chasing excellence, people often become engrossed in perfection.
Consequently, they adopt “all or nothing” mindsets. I’m going to workout every day for a year and get ripped. I’m going to cut out all alcohol, all sweets, and only eat raw kale for three meals a day. I’m going to write 1,000 words a day and finish my novel.
But what happens when you slip up? How will you handle it?
Basketball is a game of mistakes.
When stepping onto the court, you know you’re going to miss a shot, get beat on defense, or turn the ball over. You aren’t concerned with being perfect, because your excellence is not measured by your lack of mistakes. Your excellence is measured by how you react to your mistakes.
If missing one lousy shot means you give up and walk off the court, then you shouldn’t be out there anyway. Same with your novel. Same with your workout routine. Same with your entire life.
Excellence has never been and will never be achieved through perfection. It is achieved through the monotonous consistency of getting up when you’re down.
As Mac Miller so eloquently said in 2009 (my favorite song of his):
“I struck the fuck out and I came back swinging.”
That, my friend, is the true essence of excellence.
Stop worrying about being a perfect writer with the perfect system. Focus on being an excellent writer– someone who isn’t concerned with flawless, intricate writing systems; just on hitting keys.
Thanks for reading!
If you liked this piece, you’d probably like this one. Or maybe even this one.
See you next week. :)
G
Great article Grace! I'm really inspired by and admire your writing style.
1. Love the 3 stages/personalities of writing. They're so applicable to other creative fields as well. And also really resonate with how you describe flow state: "We forget ourselves. We transcend. And it is perhaps one of the most beautiful demonstrations of love that we have." SUCH a wonderful feeling to be in this state!
I did not see High School Musical BUT the original Space Jam is my basketball movie... jam 😬
2. I'm resonating with this a lot. I have many ideas for essays at once and write them down in my notes, but never revisit them. Then I forget them and kinda lose the idea lol oops.
I want to publish more. Do you have several essays/book ideas developing at once? For my art, I usually have several paintings going at once. But for my essays/newsletters, I just write/develop one at a time over several days.
3. Thank you for sharing this, I always strive for perfection, which in my silly head = excellence. And get disappointed if it's not achieved. I need to change the narrative in my head. Strive for HIGH QUALITY because perfection doesn't exist, but excellence and high quality does!
Thanks for sharing these lessons!!
Got a nice little jolt of inspiration from the "don't pace yourself" encouragement.