Ode to the Boys of Summer

I love baseball season. Or, as I call it, writing season.

When it’s not baseball season, I often listen to music while I write, or I’ll work in bustling public places. I like background noise. But I really like to write to the dulcet tones of color commentary while people in matching outfits swing sticks at fist-sized spheres in fields of perfectly trimmed Midori-green grass.

Baseball games are the perfect accompaniment to writing. They’re fraught with tension, sometimes drama. Characters can be visually interesting. The crowd chants and close up camera shots create empathy. Yet there’s down time. A game can drag. I say this with all due respect and appreciation. I love the tight pitching innings. But I also love the oh-another-3-2, who’s-this-guy innings that keep my back brain busy while my front brain flips between page on my laptop and TV screen. Something about that distraction level works for me.

Like my home team, the San Francisco Giants, my pace picks up in the second half of the regular season. I tend to crank out first drafts by the playoffs. As I’m writing this, the Giants just won in a walk-off Sandoval homer in the 13th inning and I wrote 1,200 words by the 10th inning. A good summer night. I bet Pablo’s happy, too.

One comment

  1. I love it. Not to mention I’ve actually teared up at several games. I was at a September 11th Yankees game that was a memorial for 9/11. Oh my heart. Pretty much sobbed with 40,000 of my closest friends. There IS something special about a baseball game. Terrific writing metaphor. Thanks, Robin!

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