Wednesday's Writing on Writing

One of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me was a subscription to Sports Illustrated. I've read it religiously for decades, and I read the sports page every day as a kid too. Some of the best writing published has been found in S.I. I could hardly have had better instructors.

After a football injury I started covering our high school's games for a local newspaper. My parents had to drive me to the games, then to the< newspaper office, where they sat waiting for me in the parking lot as I fashioned my stories for a dollar per printed inch of copy.

I almost immediately realized I had found my niche. While my early articles were painfully amateurish, I did have a certain flair and bent towards sports writing, because of all my reading and my passion for the games.

I healed in time for baseball in the spring, and I eagerly returned to what I considered the center of my life. But then I injured my knee, and this was before the advent of reconstructive surgery. While it took a long time to admit or accept it, any future I might have had in baseball was gone.

That injury finally shook my life back into balance. I was a Christian but had put baseball far ahead of even my faith. Now I understand that I had to forfeit the game I loved to put God back in his proper place in my life – but giving up my dream caused deep pain.

Setting my sights on a career in sports writing assuaged some of the sense of loss. But God had a better idea, as He always does. Forty-five years and a whole bunch of books later (many of them on sports), my aim is to teach others to write.

If you're ready to try, consider what we have to offer at www.ChristianWritersGuild.com