It has been a long and frustrating winter for me, tennis-wise. Which is probably why I've written so many posts related to tennis. Blog therapy. My frustration has centered around the most basic shot - the forehand ground stroke. In an effort to improve, I rented ball machines and had lessons and even hit by myself against a wall, for hours. Most times, it felt like I was getting better. Yet each time I'd go back onto the court, I was back to hitting them all over the place with no control. Humiliating!
Then recently, I was at my son's soccer game, which happened to be next to a tennis court. During breaks in the game, I'd gaze over at the courts and watch the tennis players, specifically their forehands. I noticed how they looped their rackets around behind them and came through the ball in one even motion - a technique I had never tried. Would that work for me?
Long story short - yes. It did. It worked very, very well.
"What a sucker!" you say? "All those hours of hitting by yourself wasted!"
But I say, "No!" and "Please don't call me a sucker."
Because those hours I spent were actually building muscle memory on the other parts of that shot - the footwork, the timing, the follow through, etc. So that when I finally added the 'loop,' it tied everything all together and 'clicked.'
In the same way, writers write a bunch of stuff that isn't working. But they keep writing. And writing. They may take a class. Or have their piece critiqued. And they write some more.
And then one day, they're going to look at what they've written and suddenly, all those separate pieces are going to click into a meaningful whole. A whole they couldn't have arrived at any other way.
So, keep writing. It's the only way you're going to stay in the game.
