My new Cardinals blog January 5, 2011
Posted by Christine Coleman in Baseball.3 comments
Writing about baseball is something that I missed, I realized recently. As a result, I started my own Cardinals blog. You can find the blog, Aaron Miles’ Fastball, here. (And if you don’t know who Aaron Miles is, that’s fine. You don’t have to click the link!)
In keeping with my productivity goal for 2011, however, I am planning to still write about other topics here – though I’ll likely be writing about the Cardinals on my other blog much more often! Here’s a bit of good news on the 2011 goals front: a great first week at Weight Watchers, surprisingly so, as I lost 5 pounds. The exercise goal is harder to get back into the routine of, but I’ve gotten started at least. Besides, it’s only Jan. 5!
A fresh new year January 1, 2011
Posted by Christine Coleman in Goals.1 comment so far
Photo: yunphoto.net/en
It’s 1-1-11! A new month and a new year are ahead, waiting for us all.
While I mentioned thinking of the start of a year like a blank slate yesterday, this photo is more how I see the dawning of 2011: sunny, pristine, untouched and unspoiled. As the days progress, the field that’s this year will fill with footprints and the snow will melt and the seasons will change. New growth will happen, crops will be planted and ultimately harvested. But, for now, unknown possibilities are ahead.
It’s fresh, new, exciting and beautiful – and the opportunities are endless.
Looking back, looking ahead December 31, 2010
Posted by Christine Coleman in Goals.7 comments
The year is ending in less than 12 hours, with a bright and shiny new one on the horizon. I’m a big believer in clearing the slate, whether it’s on New Year’s Day or my birthday. And 2010 is a year I’m glad to leave behind.
There were good parts to the year, as there always are. I trained for and ran a 10K race. I wrote more this year, expanding my horizons into blogging and baseball writing, plus wrote a novel during November. I read 24 books. (Ever since I read the list that Stephen King had at the back of his book “On Writing,” I’ve kept track annually.) I went to plenty of baseball games, both River Bandits and Cardinals, and added a new ballpark to my list of ones I’ve visited (Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City). I enjoyed going to many of my high school football team’s games, especially in the playoffs, as they marched toward the state championship game.
But, overall, I didn’t like this year very much. Disappointing is the word that best describes it. Running the 10K race led to a hip injury that derailed my exercising, which also led me to gain weight … I don’t really want to go into the details about my frustrations with the year. I’m glad it’s ending, period.
As part of clearing the slate annually, I always set goals for the New Year. Throughout the past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking off and on about what I want those to be. And yesterday I decided on a word instead of a series of resolutions or goals. Productive.
That’s one thing I don’t necessarily feel like I was in 2010, or at least not as productive as I wanted to be. (I have gotten so very good at being lazy and wasting time, much more so than previously.) So I am going to be productive in 2011.
I’m going to be productive by writing regularly. I’ve realized writing about baseball is something I love, so I’m going to blog about the Cardinals again. (New blog alert – coming very soon!)
I’m going to be productive by losing weight. 2010 was one big excuse. No more. In fact, I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting in seven years two days ago.
I’m going to be productive by getting back into exercising. It’s amazing how quickly all motivation can go away after an injury, and how difficult it is to recapture. But I feel so much better when I do exercise, which is what I need to remember in the next couple weeks as I work to combat the inertia and crazy-busy time at work and get back into a real fitness routine again. Running is something I want to do again also.
And the list goes on about ways I want to be productive in 2011. It’s always easy, especially on Dec. 31, to say all the things I want to change as I clear the slate. All that really matters is action. And I can only do that one day, one hour, at a time, once Jan. 1 arrives in a few hours.
May it be a productive and fulfilling year ahead for all. Happy New Year!
These Things Happen December 13, 2010
Posted by Christine Coleman in Baseball.2 comments
Photo by Chris Lee/STLToday.com
Baseball is a business.
Yes, of course, it’s a sport too, and entertainment to those of us who are fans, but it’s a business first – particularly to those who are employed by a team. And, like any business, personnel decisions don’t have to be based on what’s smart or what’s “right” or what the customers think or the talent of the employees, or on anything other than what a boss wants. And that boss doesn’t necessarily have to be the CEO to get his or her way.
All of which brings me to yesterday’s trade of Brendan Ryan from the Cardinals to the Mariners. The trade was not a surprise. Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak said going into last week’s winter meetings that “exploring the Brendan Ryan market” was one of the team’s goals, following the trade the week before for Ryan Theriot, who essentially was publicly anointed as the Cards starting shortstop for 2011. Reasons were given for possibly trading Brendan, which were expected things like his defense not being enough to make up for his offensive inconsistency. Ozzie Smith spoke out on keeping Brendan a Cardinal, which to me seemed like a sure sign that he would be out as soon as possible. Because, as I said above, decisions are made on what the boss wants. For the Cardinals, that means decisions are typically based on what Tony La Russa wants.
Like any skilled politician, La Russa didn’t explicitly say he wanted Brendan gone. But he certainly made some interesting comments about him, particularly last week at the winter meetings. From an article by Derrick Goold from last Wednesday:
“First of all, this is a team sport. If you play one of the team sports, if you’ve got your head on straight, if your representatives are talking to you correctly, if your family is keeping their — you know, they’re caring about you doing the best they can for you, you’re part of a team and an organization. The organization has an obligation to make the best team. You just can’t cater to one guy. I worry about that. You care about things like that, but you don’t change your decision. I mean, it’s up to the player to understand the organization or the team’s responsibility to put together the best team. In Brendan’s case, I think he’d prefer to be an everyday player, but if he’s with us next year, I think he loves the Cardinals and he’ll make the adjustment. Just handle it.”
Telling comments, especially “if you’ve got your head on straight” and “it’s up to the player to understand.”
As a Cardinals fan for eleven seasons now, La Russa is obviously the only manager I’ve known. So I never had the “he’s not Whitey” bias nor distrust against him that my long-term Cards fans friends (plus uncle) did. Their bias and distrust seemed to soften a bit in 2002, following the death of Darryl Kile and La Russa’s handling of the team in its wake. But that was a very long time ago. The 2010 season was definitely a disappointment for everyone and, for the first time, I was ready for him to move on and preferred that someone else manage the Cardinals for the upcoming season.
But it’s nothing I can control. My own approach to fandom seems to be different than others. I don’t spend the off-season dreaming and debating and wishing for this guy or that guy to become a Cardinal (or even the Cardinals manager), or plan what season I can expect my favorite players from this year’s River Bandits team to take the field at Busch Stadium. Personally, I know that I have no influence over what happens and what the roster looks like. So I’ll let those who do have that authority go about their jobs. The 25 guys who leave Jupiter, Fla., in March for St. Louis are the guys I will root for when opening day arrives – even if they were past villains to me, like Theriot and Lance Berkman. Same goes for the manager. It’s La Russa for 2011, so I’ll support him.
In other workplaces, there have no doubt been employees who shine in certain areas, fall short in others, and get on the nerves of a boss and peers for being late or being hyper. And those employees have likely been dealt with in similar ways to what Mozeliak did yesterday, even though it’s not exactly like Brendan Ryan is looking for a new job today as other such employees would be. Still, one constant remains: business is business.
And that’s always the bottom line.
That’s a winner! November 29, 2010
Posted by Christine Coleman in Novel-writing month, Writing.1 comment so far
Actually, I guess I should say I’m a winner – because that’s what this graphic I was able to download once I finished and officially validated my National Novel Writing Month story said!
Yes, I just finished about an hour ago. This is my third year doing NaNoWriMo, my third time winning by completing a novel of at least 50,000 words and my shortest novel yet at 50,500 words. Or, according to the NaNo site’s validator, it’s actually 50,447 words. (How did I lose three words along the way?) Regardless, it’s above 50,000. That was my only goal.
As I wrote two weeks ago, the story is kind of a mess. It didn’t miraculously get better as I wrote more and more. But it was even more fun to research and relive the Cardinals 2006 post-season than it was to look back at September. Now that I’ve done that, I definitely need to go back and watch game seven of the NLCS again, along with all the World Series victories. It was wonderful just to read about them and see the clips still available on the MLB site. (Click here and then click on the score for the game of your choice. You’ll find all the articles about the game plus video highlights.)
I had to finish the story tonight, as I’m headed out of town for a work meeting tomorrow and have a busy rest of the week and weekend ahead. So it likely will be several days before I even think more about the story, which is fine. I need to decompress. And I know I have major, major work ahead once I dive back into it for draft number two.
But, in the meantime, I can feel good about this year’s NaNoWriMo accomplishment. And, truthfully, if you’re at all interested in writing, I’d encourage you to do it next year. Yes, it takes commitment and work. But it can be done, and the end result – plus downloading all the “winner” goodies – is a well earned sense of satisfaction. Plus an actual novel that you wrote.
Halfway there November 15, 2010
Posted by Christine Coleman in Novel-writing month, Writing.3 comments
It’s the middle of November, so halfway through National Novel Writing Month. And just tonight I officially reached the halfway point of the required 50,000 words, finishing today with 25,546 words and 88 pages of a Word document.
I am happy with my progress. Things have been busier than I anticipated this month, but that’s life. As for my story, well – it’s a first draft. The scope of what I’m trying to write about is way too broad and needs a much narrower focus. But I can’t really change it at this stage, in this draft. (Yes, there would be some benefits to doing an outline and preparing more for this before the month begins. Oh well, can’t do a thing about that now!)
I like Maggie, who’s trying to figure out what to do with her life as she turns 40 and has had only one successful relationship in her life: the one she has with her baseball team, the Cardinals. She’s smart and a smart-ass and an unhappy lawyer who lives in Chicago instead of her hometown of St. Louis and she loves baseball. And, though it’s not at all autobiographical, she loves Chris Carpenter. It’s taking place in 2006, because I liked the built-in happy ending of that baseball season. Maggie takes the month of September off work and goes to every Cardinals game, starting with her birthday on the 1st. (That’s why she’s a lawyer. I was trying to think of a career where she could make a lot of money to do such a thing. Maybe that’s not realistic either, but it’s a first draft!) Though I’m not writing about every game, only a few, a month plus the playoffs is still far too much to try to really cover.
It’s been interesting to go back and look at those games in September 2006. I’d forgotten how painful things really were during the seven-game losing streak that ended during the last week of the season, where the Cards nearly coughed up a seven-game lead. (Perhaps that’s because I choose to remember only the good, and there was a lot of good once October arrived.) I’ve found two players listed in box scores who I have no recollection of whatsoever: John Nelson and Mike Rose, bit players even by September call-up standards. Aaron Miles makes an appearance in my story, an actual speaking part. (Why? He seemed logical at 4:30 one morning last week.) There’s a major intrusion by a character, Kyle, I wasn’t even planning to have in this story at all – he’s from my “Summer of ’94″ story, only obviously older and in a different dynamic when he meets Maggie. (Of course it was at a ballgame.)
I have vague ideas of where this is going. As with most of my stories, I do know by now where it’s going to end. It’s the getting from here to there that always presents the challenge. And, as in past NaNos, I might be skipping chunks of time (to fill in later) just to move the story along.
One thing I do know: I have to finish on Nov. 29, because I’m going out of town for work on Nov. 30. But I would like to be done before then anyway – Nov. 28 is my goal, since it would be nice to finish it on the weekend. I’m doubtful that I will be much beyond 50,000 words this year, but that’s okay. The challenge has been worth it, and I’m looking forward to the end result … so I can start to get a grasp on what this story really should be. There are enough interesting bits in the current wide meanderings that I’m looking forward to diving back into it and shaping it into something much better.
Ready to write October 31, 2010
Posted by Christine Coleman in Novel-writing month, Writing.add a comment
It’s just a couple of hours until Nov. 1 is officially here. If the month didn’t begin on a Monday, perhaps I would stay up and kick of National Novel Writing Month at midnight. However, since I have to work tomorrow, I will mark the start of the month by sleeping … and getting up at 4 a.m. to start writing instead. And I’m definitely excited about it.
Perhaps I haven’t done as much planning as I would like, but perhaps I never would do a lot of planning anyway – at least not a complete outline with chapter summaries written out like I read about on the NaNoWriMo blog here. I’ve continued to jot down notes for my novel (which for now is called “Forty”) and I’ve been thinking about the story a great deal. I have a lot of ideas, even if not all committed to paper or laptop, but am waiting now for the moment to arrive when I can start officially writing – and keeping track of that number of words.
My first year I aimed for, and reached, a goal of 60,000 words. That seemed easier to remember than the 1,700-whatever words technically needed per day to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. (I’m a writer, not a numbers person.) And 60,000 words is my goal for this year too. A nice, round, slightly overachieving kind of number.
Maybe I should get to bed now, though, because 4 a.m. will come very quickly. And when that alarm goes off, writing time for NaNoWriMo 2010 will officially be here!
It’s almost November … October 28, 2010
Posted by Christine Coleman in Novel-writing month, Writing.2 comments
November is just days away, as is the start of National Novel Writing Month. This is my third consecutive NaNoWriMo. There’s something crazy yet fulfilling about taking on the challenge. It’s addictive, especially for the competitive side of me, since I can watch the graph that charts my daily number of words climb up and up. And I love downloading a certificate at the end that tells me I’m a winner.
In 2008, my project was a familiar one: writing another draft of “Summer of ’94,” that novel I’ve written about on this blog many times (and the novel I planned to rewrite again a few months ago, but then didn’t). Creating a new draft of an old project relieved some of the month’s angst – like wondering on Nov. 12 just where this thing is going – since I already knew where I wanted the story to go.
Last year, I wrote a completely new novel called “What You Want to See.” In doing so, I definitely went through the angst of “what is this story anyway?” but wrote on and finished above the required 50,000 words by Nov. 30. It’s doubtful anything will ever happen with the finished draft. Not that the story didn’t have potential. It was based on a real-life situation, however, and as I re-read the draft and pondered rewriting it, the idea of focusing on that incident in any form seemed more and more unseemly. But writing those 57,395 words was good practice.
Which brings me to 2010. My ideas for this story keep changing, which is fine. I’m not a writer who can meticulously plan and outline a story before beginning anyway. And I keep remembering the words taught to me by Bret Anthony Johnston during a workshop at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival several years ago: the only job of a first draft is to get you to the second draft. That workshop was on character, so I also have been thinking about another of his points: every character has to have a desire. Why this character pays attention to this one thing is the essence of the story.
So I have a character, Maggie, who is about to turn 40. And she loves baseball, especially the St. Louis Cardinals. And … I have a notebook with many different ideas scribbled down from there. Nothing necessarily concrete yet, because I can’t decide exactly what it is that Maggie wants. She is single, so does she not want to be? She maybe is a lawyer (because I wanted her to have her live in St. Louis until she was 25, so it made sense to have her move away after law school), but does she want to do something else? She left St. Louis because her family was upset with her about dumping her fiance because all they had in common was loving the Cardinals and going to games together – her grandparents had season tickets, his parents did. Does she regret that 15 years later? Does her family ever understand her reason for leaving?
Including today, I still have four more days to make some decisions about just what this story is going to be, plus I have some research to do. (What Cardinals player from the late ’70s would be good as her first baseball crush?) How detailed I will be, how many real decisions I will make – who knows? And that’s fine. What I am looking forward to is Monday morning arriving, getting up at 4 a.m. and getting started before I go to work, and then discovering through my writing more of what this story is going to be. During November, it’s easier for me to be those three things Bret says every writer needs to be: stubborn, disciplined and dedicated. (From the lack of my entries on this blog, I’ve not been living those writing traits recently.)
Perhaps it’s crazy, but I love it. And I must, if I’m already eagerly anticipating Monday morning.
***
If you’re a writer, I highly recommend Bret Anthony Johnston’s book “Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer.” He compiled lessons and exercises from a wide range of writers, everyone from Joyce Carol Oates on writing prompts and Elizabeth Strout (another instructor I had at Iowa) on point of view to Tom Robbins on envy and Richard Bausch on character and dialogue. It also includes a great collection of daily writing warm-ups.
Readers should check out Bret’s book of short stories, Corpus Christi. I’ve read them all numerous times, and continue to be blown away by the series of three interconnected stories within it. I first started reading this book on a business trip several years ago. I was so engrossed in the first story of the trilogy, “I See Something You Don’t See,” that I couldn’t wait to finish it – even though our first flight landed in Atlanta and we had a two-hour layover until our next one to Orlando. So I told my coworkers I would catch up with them in a bit because I had to finish reading this story first. And I sat down by the gate we had just entered to finish reading.
I live for this! October 7, 2010
Posted by Christine Coleman in Baseball.3 comments
And that's a no-hitter! Photo: Chris Trotman/Getty Images
Yesterday was my second-favorite day of the baseball season. (Opening day, of course, is the first.) Even without the Cardinals in the post-season, I love the playoffs and the way the intensity and excitement build as each series moves along. It’s the last baseball of the season and, in most cases, it’s the best.
In previous years, with the Cardinals in the playoffs, I’ve taken a day like yesterday off so I could watch all the games. (It is disappointing that Cardinals baseball is done for this season but, really, I can’t complain. I’ve been a Cards fan for 11 seasons now. They’ve gone to the post-season seven times, to the NLCS five times, to the World Series twice and won it all in 2006. And when I look at the entire roster of the 2010 Cardinals, not just the five All-Stars and Jaime Garcia, it does not say “playoff team” to me.) Yesterday, I settled for coming home at lunch to watch the start of the Rangers-Rays game and then listening online. It doesn’t necessarily matter to me who wins that series. I like the Rays, but it’s also great the Rangers are in the playoffs once again. And I’m always for Cliff Lee. So I was happy he settled in and got the win.
The game I was most anticipating yesterday was the Reds-Phillies, and that was for two reasons. One, like most Cardinals fans I know, I’m rooting for a Philadelphia sweep just to get Cincinnati out of there as quickly as possible. Any good feelings I might have had for the Reds disappeared in August. Secondly, the Phillies have been my playoff step-team since 2008 and I enjoy their games. So I made sure I was at my desk when the game began just after 4 p.m., then silently cheered as the Phillies came out swinging and took the lead in the top of the first. It was even better when Roy Halladay got a hit and drove in a run in the second inning and the Phils scored three more to chase Edinson Volquez from the game.
Pitchers are my favorite baseball players, which is another reason why I love watching playoff games – the chance to see the top pitchers on their biggest stages. It was exciting just to listen on the radio as Halladay sent down Red after Red, so I hurried home to watch on television. During that short commute, he walked his lone batter of the game. I marveled at his command and precision inning after inning. After Drew Stubbs was called out on an unbelievable pitch to end the top of the eighth, I checked the Reds lineup online.
Yes, what I’d been thinking was true: Brandon Phillips would be the third batter in the top of the ninth inning. The man whose big mouth started all the problems with the Cardinals, then exacerbated them with his shallow gesture that started the brawl on Aug. 10 – yep, that guy. The potential final out in a no-hitter. Thank you, baseball gods.
Like everyone, I was impatient during the bottom of the eighth. It didn’t matter what the Phillies did – just make an out and be done, so Halladay can get back out there! And the stage was set. I wanted so much for this to happen, both for the historical aspect of Roy Halladay throwing a no-hitter in his post-season debut and for the absolute delight of the Reds being his victims. Ramon Hernandez hit a pop-up to Chase Utley at second. That was one. Miguel Cairo was next, pinch-hitting, and he was quickly gone on a pop-foul to third. Two down. Then came Phillips. The crowd had been standing and roaring all inning, but notched it up in intensity. The shots of the fans were wonderful – what an incredible experience to be there! And then Phillips hit a grounder right in front of home, which Carlos Ruiz picked it up and fired to Ryan Howard to end the no-hitter. Beautiful, on so many fronts! And, like many Cards fan, I had to tweet the obvious: karma is the bitch, Brandon Phillips.
The drama, the beauty, the ultimate ecstasy and agony – all are the many reasons why I love baseball. And even with my team done for 2010, my interest and excitement will continue until the World Series champion is crowned in a few weeks. It’s an MLB marketing slogan, true, but I really do live for this. And there are three more games to watch today!
Overly ambitious, yet again August 18, 2010
Posted by Christine Coleman in Goals, Writing.4 comments
So my plan to write a new draft of “Summer of ‘94” this month has not panned out. Why I set this goal anyway, I’m not really sure – why can’t I be content with the baseball blogging I’m doing and leave it at that? Actually, I do know the answer: my ultimate goal is to be a novelist. Writing about the 2010 Cardinals isn’t advancing me toward that goal, although it is keeping me writing regularly (which is something I was not doing when I started this blog in March). So why can’t I just say “OK, I’m going to start over with this novel” and then write when I can? Why did I think trying to writing a novel draft within a month was the only way to go?
My friend Linda will nod her head in agreement at this: the goals I set tend to be a little high, and this is a perfect example. We’ve had an interesting discussion this week via phone and e-mail about goals, which led to discussing what is “enough.” Why can’t we be content that the strides we are making and the things we are doing are enough? As I said to her in an e-mail, “Doesn’t it sometimes seem like we live our lives based on what THEY expect of us – even if we don’t know who THEY are?” Her response: “Yeah, I don’t know why we never feel we’re enough.”
We’re both reading the book “The Happiness Project” right now for our book group meeting later this month, and it’s been thought provoking. Gretchen Rubin, the author, realized that life was passing by quickly and she wasn’t focusing enough on the things that mattered to her, so she decided to devote a year to learning about happiness and improving her life in specific ways. She developed her “12 commandments” to guide her through the year and the first was “Be Gretchen.” Of the 12, it definitely struck me the most and made me realize that’s what I need to do: be Chris. Which starts with recognizing that I am overly ambitious, but I need to be realistic as well. There are only 24 hours in a day (and I really do need to use more of them than I do for sleep!) And I also realize that watching the Cardinals, frustrating as this team can be, is definitely a priority for me as well.
What does this mean for my fiction writing right now? That I will write when I can. My full-time job is perpetually hectic. The intensity of the Cardinals season is increasing with about six-and-a-half weeks left. I’m back to exercising regularly after a hip injury (which I never wrote about here) and want to start running again, with more realistic goals this time. (No more 10Ks or beyond!) But I do still get up very early in the morning, and want to devote that time when I can to something productive toward my fiction writing.
So, yes, my ultimate goal is still to be a novelist. Time is passing by so quickly – my recent birthday reminded me of that. But maybe with age is also the wisdom that it’s okay to have high ambitions, but I also need to be realistic about the results.
