Writing, I've found, in practice, is not so terribly different from sports.
What an awful feeling, I remember from my high school days, to step onto a basketball court after a two-day break. Even at seventeen, I remember, the creaky joints, the stiff back, throwing the ball up and having it hit the bottom of the rim . . . bounce back and hit me in the nose. A quick cross-over dribble off my foot -- did my feet grow in the past two days? Am I ever going to be able to pass the ball to a teammate again? Should I just get a bag of potato chips and lock myself in a different part of the world where nobody will ever call upon me to run all the way from one key to the other key in a single day?
Holy hell.
But then I'd make a couple jumpshots, do a few king drills, pass the ball off a particular cinder block and catch it in stride en route for a lay up.
Writing turns out to be much the same thing, even as I sit down for the first time in two days, or four months, and clobber the keyboard with mash-potato hands and fingers of cream corn. I feel awful. I want to walk home and play ping pong, but I think over the next five hours, I'll be able to catch some kind of stride, make a useful paragraph or, at least, a strong sentence or a phrase that will become a pleasant refrain.
What an awful feeling, I remember from my high school days, to step onto a basketball court after a two-day break. Even at seventeen, I remember, the creaky joints, the stiff back, throwing the ball up and having it hit the bottom of the rim . . . bounce back and hit me in the nose. A quick cross-over dribble off my foot -- did my feet grow in the past two days? Am I ever going to be able to pass the ball to a teammate again? Should I just get a bag of potato chips and lock myself in a different part of the world where nobody will ever call upon me to run all the way from one key to the other key in a single day?
Holy hell.
But then I'd make a couple jumpshots, do a few king drills, pass the ball off a particular cinder block and catch it in stride en route for a lay up.
Writing turns out to be much the same thing, even as I sit down for the first time in two days, or four months, and clobber the keyboard with mash-potato hands and fingers of cream corn. I feel awful. I want to walk home and play ping pong, but I think over the next five hours, I'll be able to catch some kind of stride, make a useful paragraph or, at least, a strong sentence or a phrase that will become a pleasant refrain.
No comments:
Post a Comment