Sheer Effort

I recently finished reading Annie Lamott's Grace (Eventually).  If you want to improve your writing, you should read Annie Lamott books.  This latest book has nothing to do with writing.  It is not an instruction manual on writing.  It will neither help you research, prewrite, draft, revise, edit or polish.  It will help you write better though.  Grace (Eventually), is a series of essays about hope, faith, grace, family and life.  If you let the rhythm and voice of Annie's words soak into your mind, your own writing will grow.

Feeling in a particularly Annie Lamott sort of mood, I cracked open her book Bird by Bird and did begin to search for a little advice on writing.  Bird by Bird is about writing.  Her essay titled Polaroids is one of the most inspirational pieces of writing that I've ever read.  I could easily pick out two or three ideas in this essay and write an entire post about each.  Today it is about a theme that Annie was trying to develop for an article, while attending a Special Olympics.  Throughout the course of that day, the theme that Annie so desperately searched for, came in incremental waves.  It was about tragedy transformed over the years into joy.  It was about the beauty of sheer effort.

There are not many things that bring tears to my eyes.  Stories of sheer effort though, do.  Like the time I am watching Vickie's high school basketball team, sitting in the stands next to one of our star performer's dad.  He tells me of how Chrissy would shoot two to three hundred shots a night at home.  And how at times she would have to shovel snow from the driveway first.  Chrissy was plagued by knee injuries and missed playing her entire senior season, except for one game.  She still couldn't play, but near the game's end, someone from her team needed to shoot a technical foul shot.  Coach calls on Chrissy.  She limps slowly to the foul line.  The gym turns into a library...until Chrissy drains the shot.  And then it turns into pandemonium. 

Stories of sheer effort abound in the world of sports.  Like in 1988, when Kirk Gibson hit the Home Run.  I was watching live.  I'll never forget it.  The off-season training regimen that Walter and Eddie Payton endured were legendary examples of sheer effort.  Or the movie Rudy which was based on the real life of Daniel Ruettiger.

The idea of sheer effort and writing had already been swimming about my brain this morning.  My encounter with Marissa Harshman on a RadioBack mission gives proof.  Marissa knows a thing or two about sheer effort.  If you have a chance, check out Marissa and her classmate's work at the Poynter Institute's Summer Fellowship program.  These folks will be carrying the torch into the new frontier of journalism.   

Comments

[Verna Wilder]

Hi Dave! Thanks for this reminder to read Annie Lamott, to read Bird by Bird and books of her essays. She's brilliant, isn't she? So I went to my shelf to pull Bird by Bird and just spend a happy 15 minutes browsing and reading my marginalia and her underlined text. Now I'll reread it and go back to Grace (Eventually) which is in the stack on my nightstand.

[dave]

Yes she is Verna...a bit of a rebel too. I like that!