Play-by-play column-writing

Anyone can have an opinion. But writing it down in a coherent
manner is hard.

Harder still is exposing it to public scrutiny in Milton’s
open “marketplace of ideas” (not his term, but
associated with him nonetheless as a result of his influential
essay “Areopagitica” on free, rational discourse).

Week after week, I continue delivering the hits, like posthumous
Tupac, yet every week it seems to get harder. I’m on my ninth
sports column and already I’ve said everything there is to
say about sports, ever.

Richard Wilbur understood the writing process best in his poem
“The Writer.” The creative mind is a dazed starling
trapped inside a room, “batter(ing) against the
brilliance,” pausing to gather its wits and abruptly
“beating a smooth course for the right window / and clearing
the sill of the world.” Writing is a series of long lulls and
sudden creative outbursts.

But if you’re still interested in doing what I do, I
present this comprehensive guide on successful sports column
writing. I’m not telling you how I pull the rabbit out of the
hat; I’m just providing the cape and wand.

Stats: A requisite for nine out of 13 sports columns. There are
all sorts of worthless minutiae surrounding spectator sports, and
chances are some guy with a mustache and mustard stains on his
favorite Budweiser shirt knows them all. No matter how apparently
inconsequential the statistic, someone somewhere along the line has
computed it, and someone somewhere cares. The resources are all
around you; it’s just a matter of plucking the ripened fruit
off the trivial knowledge tree. Which brings me to my next point.
…

Research: I have a general rule of thumb: If I can’t find
the answer off a five-minute Google search, it probably
wasn’t important enough to begin with. If there’s a
particularly juicy “Law and Order” episode around
deadline time, I’ll skip this step altogether. This is why I
am a column writer and not a beat writer. Beat writers have to know
all kinds of stuff about their subject. I go off “gut
instinct.” That is, I write whatever’s off the top of
my head.

Interviews: Watch yourself become the most popular guy at a
party when people find out you can put their names in print. Also,
interview athletes ““ this is a good way to fulfill your
editor’s “Make It a Sports Column”
requirement.

Which reminds me. …

The “Make It a Sports Column” Editorial Requirement:
Constricting like underwear, but where others see an obstacle, I
see an opportunity. I would make a great motivational speaker.
People ask me about the key to my writing, and I would have to say
it is my positive outlook on life. I believe in people. Point is,
as long as you have the words “sports” and
“athlete” you should be fine.

Culture: People will take your writing seriously vis-a-vis your
use of pretentious cultural references: big words, literary
allusions, foreign terms, etc. Big-city liberal-arts-degree words
are useful here and nowhere else.

Quote Liberally: Shakespeare is fine but, you know, it’s
been done. People will think you have something worthwhile to say
if you drop a lot of obscure literary references.

This is where your dorky friends will come in handy. Because
they don’t socialize, they know lots of stuff. Suppose you
want to write something kinda smart, but it’s not like
you’re going for the freakin’ Magna Carta, so tell Lord
Dork III, Esquire of Dorksington of the Greater Dork Commonwealth
not to say anything too smart. Then misplace a couple commas.

Editing: If birthing is an appropriate analogy for the creative
process, think of your editor as the midwife. The editing process
severs the umbilical cord of intimate attachment between the writer
and his “baby.” Your editor cleans up all the
irrelevance (extended parenthetical digressions, tangents, snide
asides, etc.).

At the end of all that, most likely you will be left with
something of questionable lineage. But you still get your picture
in the paper.

Remember 1989’s “Bill and Ted’s Excellent
Adventure” when some football player is on stage giving a
history speech, and then he says, “… and … uhhh … San
Dimas High School Football RULES!”

As a sports columnist, your job is making that fill 750
words’ worth of space.

Hector uses the Sword of Damocles to butter his English
muffins. E-mail Leano at [email protected].