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Writing Through the Curves

6/28/2017

6 Comments

 

by Angela Cybulski

   

Picture
Nolan Ryan, Angels star pitcher and
baseball hall of famer, a master of the curveball.
       I have a lifelong love affair with baseball. My grandfather and great-grandfather loved the game and I spent a lot of time with both of them as a child.
       When I could barely walk I’d stand against the screen of my grandfather’s TV when he was watching the game and just stare at the players. I can still feel the heat of the screen against my hands and the bright light blurring in front of me. By the time I was three years old I was in love with Willie Mays. Too young to watch an entire game, I’d drop whatever I was playing with when my grandfather called me to say that “Willie is up to bat!” I’d run out and watch him hit and then go back to play until he came up again. I’d sit with my great-grandpa while he listened to the games on his radio, eating roasted peanuts and taking sips from his beer. As I got older, my grandfather took me to Angels games; I started playing softball; by the time I was in middle school I’d taken ownership of my passion for baseball apart from my grandfather and great-grandfather. Spring and summer was filled with the sounds of the transistor radio, listening to Saturday afternoon ball games outside or at the beach.
       For me the phrase “Keep your eye on the ball” has resonance beyond the game. Baseball has taught me lessons that extend into other areas of my life away from my favorite team or my own time on the field. Like most sports, baseball is a good model for helping us strategize whatever situation, problem, or event we’re dealing with. By staying focused and concentrating on the “ball” (i.e. challenge) we can find ways to deal with it: control it, live with it, solve it, surrender to it, accept it, or perhaps even eliminate it by knocking it out of the park. It all has to do with our attitude and the way we approach the “game” of life.
       But every once in awhile you get a curveball thrown at you. And any baseball player will tell you that the curveball is different. It comes along, initially just like any regular pitch, straight at you. You can see it, you think you can deal with it. But at the last minute, the good curve ball swerves and dips, unbalances you, leaving you looking at the air where it was and not at the ball itself, which sails across the plate and under your line of vision, making this particular pitch exceptionally hard to deal with and capable throwing your entire game seriously off.
       Lately, my life has been like dealing with one curveball after another. As a result, I feel myself spread thinner and thinner and dangerously on the edge of burnout. My energy level and ability to focus is sorely depleted and I’m having a lot of trouble concentrating on all of these major issues, much less managing to find time or mental focus necessary to continue sustained work on the manuscripts I edit or, even more important, working on my own writing. (For those of you who may not know it, all of us editors at Wiseblood Books are also writers, which makes us uniquely attuned to the struggles of those whose manuscripts we have the privilege of editing and bringing to print).
       Finding a way to keep writing during this challenging time of life while still attending to the tasks at hand continues to become more and more difficult, thus raising a crucial question: How do I stay in the game of writing without striking out due to the overwhelming presence of the curves?
       Starting this week, and occasionally for five or six posts following, I’ll be publishing a series of helpful tips to the Wiseblood weblog that have helped me to ensure I’m writing through the curves in a healthy way. I share these in hopes of helping other writers, particularly those who aspire to publish with Wiseblood, navigate their own challenges to living a productive writing life. I hope you’ll follow along and share your town tips and strategies for maintaining a healthy creative life when the curves threaten to throw off your game at its core.
       ​Cheers!


6 Comments
Jonas
6/28/2017 09:19:34 am

As a long time player and fan of baseball ( and Nolan Ryan...go Rangers!) I am really looking forward to these next posts. I love your connection to the romanticism unique to the game, it's connection to writing in beauty and process is seemingly endless.

One thing I'd ask, when I played ball in college I was told that the best batters don't hit curveballs because they don't miss the fastball when it comes. Would ignoring life's curves make a more successful writer? Or better, just focusing on the straight pitch with confidence? I wonder what you think.

Reply
Joan
7/7/2017 11:31:45 am

I never was much of a ball player (more of a juggler, I suppose) but, dealing with life’s curves (I think) are essential for good writing, making it real and relateable to the reader. Curve balls aim for home plate (family responsibilities and relationships), and this is when it’s tough to stay in the game of writing. Maybe the answer to the question begins with personal balance and well-being. Ultimately, discipline and dedication, perseverance and practice, are what a writer needs to stay focused and ready for the pitch.

Reply
Angela link
7/15/2017 01:13:29 pm

I agree with you 100%, Joan. We cannot ignore the challenges life presents in the form of curveballs because good writing cannot happen in a vacuum. It is born of a life well-lived and through all of the challenges and trials that make up human experience.

But amidst those very challenges often things come that tempt us to push writing to the margins or, worse, neglect it altogether. My own struggles with this and strategies for overcoming it are what I hope to share a bit of in this series.

I love Flannery O'Connor as a mentor/model for writing through the curves. Her experience of lupus was so debilitating and so long-ranging and yet she wrote and studied and maintained deep relationships daily. Her faith was largely responsible for her success here, but to your point, she had also cultivated a habit of perseverance and daily discipline which allowed her to negotiate and play through the pitches that would have otherwise derailed her.

I'm so glad you stopped by and took the time to read and leave a comment. I hope you'll read the rest of the series and share more of your thoughts.

Cheers!

Angela link
7/15/2017 01:00:25 pm

Jonas! Thanks so much for stopping by to read and for taking the time to leave a comment. It's great to have you here. :)

First things first . . . I'm a Nolan Ryan California Angels girl all the way. No offense, Texas! So glad to know you love him, too. What a legend.

Your question is so interesting and I suppose it could be taken either way. The curveball is never the best option to hit, but for a pitcher its always an option in his arsenal because it psyches the batter out, gets him to swing and usually miss. I guess that is how I'm looking at the curve analogy when it comes to writing. If life is a series of long at-bats you could easily stand at the plate for a long time getting curveball after curveball, intermingled with solid pitches that are worth your swing, followed by another series of curveballs. Psychologically and emotionally this is a huge roller coaster, right? But the curveballs DO exist, they come at you, throw you off balance, and get you looking.

I suppose when it comes to writing I'm arguing that it needs to be made a priority and still needs to happen EVEN THOUGH those curveballs are coming. You can't ignore the curveball -- you still have to deal with it on some level -- but I think as writers its HOW we deal with the things that tend to keep us from our writing that will determine how successful we are in developing a daily practice and keeping our writing a priority. Just like a player needs to be able to manage the curves so he can effectively get on base, something he won't do if he swings at what appears at first to be a solid pitch and ends up not being.

Life is rarely pitched straight, and writing demands so much of the reserves of mental and emotional energy we commit to dealing with the curves that we have to find a healthy way to deal with both the straight and the curved pitches. Hopefully this series will give some strategies for doing that. Stay tuned! And please share! I love to meet fellow baseball aficionados!

Cheers!

Reply
Jonas
8/9/2017 08:05:34 am

Awesome response! I like how you say that, ”life is rarely pitched straight" it’s true. No matter what, we all have to deal with the pitches that life gives us.

I know that as a husband, full time teacher, and father of two-under-two, the biggest curve for me are making enough silence to hear my Muse. Yet like you said, I have to make it a priority. Though sometimes I think the Muse is the one prioritizing. Making time takes creativity. It helps that I do a lot of rough writing on my phone. But I’ve always been curious how others authors do it. Some people say to get a cat. It might be more productive than the two dogs I got. Still searching.

Maybe writing fiction makes a difference, production wise. I’m not sure. I can only imagine that in the world of academia where citations are the muscles a writer doesn’t have the liberty to choose location. Then it may not be an issue of hearing the Muse, but of hearing yourself. In that case, as least for me, the greatest off-speed pitche would be the research itself.

I look forward to more on the topic Angela, you have a lot of insight that I’d love to read.

…go Rangers…


+jonas

edu birdie link
7/29/2018 07:13:14 pm

Baseball is life, according to some people whom I got the chance to talk to. That could be the reason why I understand the feeling of your grandfather towards the said sport. By the way, thank you for sharing this story to us! I've been getting a lot of inspiration from articles I've been reading lately. I am so happy that I got the chance to read this article. There's a new inspiration in me that I need to develop!

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