Many of us at ProfHacker are football fans. In fact, if you were to walk down the virtual hallways of PH Headquarters, you’d hear a number of us shouting out cheers for our favorite teams. Heather would be chanting, “Go, Commodores!” and Kathleen would yell back in response, “Geaux, Tigers!” Amy and I would have a shout down over “Go, Irish!” and “Go, Frogs!” Erin and Ryan would be battling it out with their pro team favorites: “Go Pack Go!” and “Here we go Steelers, Here we go [clap clap].” (That clapping gets a bit annoying, but, you know, it’s part of the cheer.) Lastly, George and Amy would have the ultimate college football championship t-shirt slogan contest. George’s “USC Upstate Spartan Football! Still Undefeated!” pales in comparison to Amy’s “Saint Mary’s College Football: Undefeated since 1844.”
We have a lot of fun around here.
But what does all this talk of football have to do with our continuing series, the Writer’s Boot Camp? What many of us enjoy about football (apart from Alma mater connections) is the athleticism and skill of the players. We understand how hard they work in order to do what they do each week on the gridiron. We appreciate their discipline and their commitment.
That’s the connection.
In order to produce quality writing (and a quantity of writing), we must adopt some of the same work-ethic strategies as football players or other high calibre athletes: we must put in the time on field, in the weight room, in the training room, and at the training table. What that might mean for a writer is to:
Increase your dedication: For football players, playing and practicing the sport are a large part of their job, and little else usurps the time devoted to these activities. If we take the job of writing seriously, we must develop the same kind of dedication. For us, nothing else can come before our time to write. We must treat writing as a professional endeavor. Malcolm Gladwell in The Outliers uses the “10,000-hour rule ” as a marker. Success comes, he says, after one has spent 10,000 hours performing an action, whether that be passing a football or writing a paragraph.
Compete against high-calibre opponents: On the football field, the better ranked an opponent and the more challenging the event, the more strategies and skills a team can learn. Likewise, as writers, we are connected to high calibre writers, our writing will improve. Are you a member of a writing group? Do you read writing produced by excellent writers? Let the skill of others push you to a higher level of work.
Take care of your body: Athletes take care of their bodies, nourishing and providing what the body needs to be successful. While writing isn’t as physically taxing as football, as writers, we can still take care of ourselves by getting enough exercise and eating well. ProfHacker has ongoing Wellness posts that help us in these endeavors.
Develop physical toughness: Serious athletes who take care of their bodies develop physical toughness and strength. Pecking away at a keyboard isn’t quite as physically taxing as lifting hundreds of pounds in bench press repetitions or running stadium steps. However, writing uses different parts of the body (the back, the core, shoulders, neck). We must develop toughness and strength in the parts of the body that help us maintain our productivity.
Develop mental toughness: Top-performing athletes develop a mental toughness, an ability to work through distractions. Have you ever thought what it must be like to be on the football field at the end of a close game, the last play determines the winner or loser of the game, the fans are screaming and chanting across the stadium “Go, Frogs! ” and “Go, Irish! ” …. and you, the star quarterback, must call a play, throw a pass, and win the game for your team. Having mental toughness means that you would not let all those distractions get in the way of what you need to do.
That is easier said that done, though. We come up with a million excuses why we can’t write (time, kids, students, job, community, meetings, Law & Order reruns on TV). The starting quarterback or the starting D-line . . . they don’t make those excuses. They get to practice, they watch the films, they do what they have to do to play. It’s the mental toughness that separates recreational athletes from top-calibre athletes.
Here at ProfHacker, we have an ongoing series on the Writer’s Boot Camp. If you have missed any of those posts, here they are. Maybe you can use some of these to jump-start your move from recreational writer to professional writer.
- Commitment to Write
- Breaking Writer’s Block
- Using the DRAW Method
- Inspiration
- Using 750words.com
- Set Yourself Up to Start Successfully
- Writer’s Groups
- The Writer as Athlete
- Just Do It
How about you? How do develop the habits of mind and body to produce professional/quality writing? Do you see yourself as an athlete of the keyboard or the notepad? Leave your suggestions, comments, questions, or hints below.
[Image by Billie Hara and used under the Creative Commons license. Go, Frogs!]
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