I bet you never considered the physical side of long-form writing. I know I never did, before I casually walked up to the edge of this writing pool and dove into the deep end, taking on “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” like just any other writing assignment. After all, I’d just spent 20 years writing many thousands of words per week as a PR person in the NHRA world, so how could this be any different?

It is different, and I’ve already learned a few lessons about keeping the words flowing without have the machinery (my body) break down. Writing, as it turns out, is a very physical thing. Especially when you’re putting 11,000 words together over the course of three days.

I did some quick research before I got started on this, and the “expert advice” from so many established writers was pretty much all over the board. Some made no mention of how much or how long they write per day, others were very specific about having limits and walking away from the keyboard after a predetermined amount of time, but only a few mentioned anything about pain.

When I got started, and my esteemed editor Greg Halling and I were talking about my pace and how many pages we were shooting for, I mentioned to him that I’ve had a compressed disc in my neck for years, as well as one in my lower back, so just staying healthy as I wrote this book would be a real priority for me. I can only sit here and type for so long before the buzzing in my neck starts to shoot down my arm when the nerve gets pinched or inflamed, and I definitely can feel it in my lower back when I try to stand up straight after four marathon hours of blistering typing. But, these are things that have to be overcome.

It’s all really noticeable to me this week because the book hit Chapter 7 and that made for a really big transition. “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” is a chronological life story, so of course it starts out in my early childhood. Technically it actually doesn’t, and I’ll tip you off right here that Chapter 1 is about a series of major moments in my life, in REVERSE chronology, so it starts in the present day and works backward to when I was three years old. At that point, Chapter 2 picks up right there with adorable little three-year-old me and from there we move forward.

I have an in-depth outline to work from, to keep me headed in the right direction without too many weird digressions (hey look, a squirrel!) but I also realize the value of flexibility. If an idea pops into my head and it hadn’t been on the original outline, I go with it anyway. A couple of times, Greg has pointed out where those spur-of-the-moment inclusions didn’t make contextual sense, and we then corrected those mistakes, but most of them add value to the story so I’m always willing to follow those tangents when they seem important.

Chapters 2 through 6 took me all the way up to the end of high school, so as much as all of that is still etched in my memory, I still had plenty of research to do in order to make it all correct, and I still had lots of thinking to do in order to get the very best stories into words. Chapter 7, however, is about my college years and at this point I’ve got almost all of it right up here (points at his head) and the stories are just begging to be written.

From Monday though Wednesday this week, I’ve done more writing than I’ve ever done in a three-day period. And here we are on Thursday doing more writing, but in blog style.

College was a major turning point in my life in many ways. I fell in love with learning, I became a much better baseball player, and I made most of the best friends any guy could ever have. There’s just SO MUCH to write about.

So here’s another snippet just to give you a peek at how this is coming together. I make it clear in the book that I was mostly a disinterested student in grade school, and then once I moved on to a very fast-track high school (St. Louis University High) a lot of the math and science classes weren’t just over my head, they were incomprehensible to me. It wasn’t until I got to college that I discovered a real thirst for learning, and that was eye-opening for me. It goes a little something like this…

———–

The biggest adjustment for me, in terms of school, was comprehending the fact that I now somehow loved learning so much it was as if a long-overlooked switch had suddenly been flipped to the “On” position. Instead of feeling like my instructors were force-feeding me ridiculously complicated nuggets of stuff I’d never again need, I realized my college teachers were simply offering me the opportunity to widen my horizons and learn new things. I had a ravenous appetite for what they were serving, and I raced through my classes with pure joy, practically giddy each time I entered a classroom at my beautiful new campus.

———-

So far, I’m not done with it yet but Chapter 7 already is made up of 11,000 words and 20+ pages. I suspect it will end up somewhere around 25 pages by the time I’m done, but the writing about college won’t be over. I’ve already made an adjustment to my outline, and Chapter 8 will now be about college, as well, but more about the people than about the events. I originally planned to make it all one chapter, but by Wednesday, when my back was sore and my neck was buzzing, I realized there was just way too much material to do that. So Chapter 7 focuses mainly on things that happened, while introducing many of the main characters from that part of my life, and Chapter 8 will flesh out those characters while it tells many of the tales of college life off the baseball field, and yes that has to include my introduction to beer. That’s the plan, anyway. Always subject to change.

One thing I’m dealing with is a lousy office chair. I mean, that’s a problem for everyone, right? I’ve had this chair for at least five years and frankly it’s worn out. But, we hope to be moving back to Minnesota soon and it seems ridiculous to buy a new one out here in Washington, so I’m dealing with it despite the fact that my neck buzzes, my lower back is stiff, and my butt hurts. Maybe I need a Snickers bar right about now. I sound like a diva…

I’m not digging ditches here, but if typing creates pain I’m in trouble, so I have to take my time, not overdo it, and get up and walk around regularly. It doesn’t help that my laptop is on a desk so I have to look down at it all the time, either. Yesterday, I was typing so fast and so furiously, it was like the words were pouring out of my brain and my fingers could hardly keep up. It’s an amazing thing, really, to just think of these stories and see them pop up on the screen, letter by letter, in a torrent of writing.

Around 3:00 yesterday afternoon, the stories were still flowing and I was finally up to my junior year at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville, but my hands, neck, and back had reached a point where I needed a break. I looked to my left and saw Boofus sitting on my printer, staring at me, and that’s all I needed to figure out that a quick trip to PetSmart to get these wonderful boyz some new treats was just what the writing doctor ordered. I did that, and then came back home and wrote another 1,000 words.

Today is blog day, though, so Chapter 7 will most likely take a seat on the bench for this day. We’ll see how I feel a little later on.

I know I’ve mentioned Kelly Topolinski more than a few times in my blog, and today is another day for me to do that. Kelly and I spent many years together in the NHRA public relations universe, and we simultaneously made the hard decision to leave that world behind at the end of the 2015 season, in order to follow our greater dreams of being writers. We stay in touch a lot, and motivate each other enormously, but what’s so inspiring to me is that she’s going a far more difficult route. Kelly is writing a novel, a very personal and very deep novel about life, and love, and relationships with a working title of “Baby Love.” I don’t know if I could do that. I’m simply writing about my life, so the whole story is written in my head and my job now is to get my fingers to type it all in the correct order. Kelly is creating art out of thin air. There’s clearly a difference between being an author and being a writer, and I’m so impressed by what she’s doing.

I know her book isn’t exactly aimed at a demographic of 59-year old males, but I also know I’ll have to ravenously read every word of it once it’s published, because my friend created it. And, because all the greatest authors need pen names, she’s created a fabulous one for herself. As an author, she’s Natalie Novak. If you’re on Facebook and you want to follow an artist at work, just search for Natalie Novak and follow her page.

And speaking of Facebook, I’m never hesitant to decry what it does so poorly while I also recognize what it does so well. What it does best is allow you to reconnect with old friends in ways we could never have done before. And lately I’ve reconnected with Stan Osterbur, who I was coincidentally writing about yesterday.

Stan was a great left-handed pitcher for the SIUE Cougars, and we became good friends while playing together. So much so that we’d often room together on road trips. He was a year older than me, and the story of him not getting to pitch in the 1977 NCAA Div. II World Series, despite the fact he was our best pitcher, was a key part of what I was writing about yesterday.

Not getting to make that appearance in front of so many MLB scouts probably cost him a chance to get drafted, but he went off to Beeville, Texas to play for an independent team that summer. The next summer, when the Detroit Tigers signed me and sent me to Paintsville, Kentucky in the appropriately named Appalachian League, we needed a lefty and I talked the manager and owner into bringing Stan to town. Therefore, Stan Osterbur was the only baseball player I ever played with, on the same team, in both college and professional ball.

He was the subject of my Throwback Thursday post on Facebook today. And thanks to Facebook, he and other teammates have all had reason to smile looking at the photo I posted. My gosh we had fun.

For the record, it’s exactly 1:02 p.m. Pacific Time and Buster is still in bed. Even Boofus thinks that’s crazy.

Also for the record, it’s past lunch time and I haven’t eaten yet. These are important facts to bring up here, folks. Jimmy John’s might be in my near future.

As for the Kickstarter deal in support of my book, yesterday marked an important final milestone in two ways. First, the funds from Kickstarter were finally direct-deposited in my bank account, so that’s a good thing. I was thinking of putting it all on one spin of the roulette wheel in Vegas but I figured I probably ought to save it for the publishing costs. Or to buy a big flashy Rolex.

Secondly, the final three reward items for the generous folks who backed me finally went out. I had three packages heading to international destinations (two to Australia and one to some hip cat named Kim The Lawyer up in Vancouver) and I didn’t have all the customs forms filled out in time to ship them from Minnesota last week. So, I brought them back here with me and then Monday was a holiday and the Post Office was closed. Tuesday was too rainy and full of too much writing, so yesterday I finally got them out. But not before I found out the packaging I’d used for one of them was going to double the shipping cost to Down Under. After a quick trip back home (and fortunately, here in cozy Liberty Lake we live about a mile from the Post Office and no more than two miles from anywhere else in this town) I repacked the item (a vintage embroidered crew shirt from the CSK days) and now everything is on its way.

My final bit of rambling here today is about something else that showed up in the mail this week, and when I opened the envelope I had a tinge of both sadness and relief. I got my Delta credential and bag tags as a Diamond Medallion member of the Sky Miles program. You have to fly 125,000 miles in a calendar year to accomplish that, and I’m sure that does a guy’s neck and back no favors either, but the upgrades are fantastic and the service is outstanding when you’re Diamond, so it’s always been worth shooting for.

As much as the backbreaking travel was a motivation to get off the road, it was still a privilege to be Diamond and it was something I always worked toward attaining every year. I get to be Diamond again, for the next 12 months, but I’d be quite shocked and astonished if I’m ever Diamond again. I’d be stunned if I’m ever Platinum again. From next year on out, I’m just another schlub on an airplane…  But I am officially a Million Miler now, so I’m at least Silver for life. That and a dollar will get you something off the McDonald’s “Dollar Menu”.

So… I guess that’s it for today. Chapter 7 will be completed tomorrow, and after that we’ll be nearing the halfway point in this writing process. That’s a pretty cool thing to contemplate.

See you here next week.

Bob Wilber, at your service!