Travis Mewhirter's Blog, page 18

Laguna Beach Open delivers yet again

For the 63 rd year in a row, Laguna Beach played host to the biggest event on the California Beach Volleyball Association (CBVA) schedule, the Laguna Beach Open.

As always, it attracted Olympians and AVP Tour champions, main-draw regulars and legends of years past. After two days, navigating a field of 33 teams, playing in front of a crowd well more than 1,000, two-time Olympian Sean Rosenthal and Trevor Crabb beat Eric Zaun and Ed Ratledge in three sets to win the tournament. 

Mike Brunsting hit a skyball.

It was innocuous, totally meaningless, and also entirely ineffective. It was hardly any higher than a loopy jump serve, so comically futile that his own fans cracked, “We’ll work on that one, Mike.”

Nobody will remember that skyball, yet it also spoke volumes to the atmosphere of the Laguna Beach Open.

Here was Brunsting, in the middle of a tight second set in the quarterfinals against Mike Boag and Mark Burik, hitting a serve he would otherwise never hit. Here was Burik, an ultra-competitor, joking along, chanting “sky-ball, sky-ball” when Frishman approached to serve a few moments later.

There’s something ineluctably fun about watching professional athletes just have plain old … fun.

If anybody is interested in watching me lose, here’s Ty Tramblie and Avery Drost and Raffe Paulis and Robbie Page taking me down in three sets each:

Preview of the 2017 Laguna Beach Open

Perhaps it would be most appropriate to begin with the finals.

But that isn’t what I remember most about the 2016 Laguna Open. I doubt it’s what anybody remembers most about the 2016 Laguna Open. (If we’re all being honest, free chocolate milk from the angels at Yoo-hoo might actually be what I remember the most).

In much the same way that the Olympic Games delivered its most memorable matches in the quarterfinals – Dalhausser and Lucena vs. Alison and Bruno; the unforgettable marathon between Cuba and Russia – so, too, did Laguna.

Skyler McCoy and Jon Mesko played Chase Frishman and Mike Brunsting in one of those weirdly indelible matches where nothing was on the line – they were both in the winner’s bracket – and yet everything, it seemed, was on the line.

Laguna, of course, cooperated perfectly.

Read the rest at VolleyballMag.com!

Life is short: Get a dog

We got a dog on Saturday. Maybe it was Sunday. Honestly, I don’t know – time flies when you’re picking up shit.

Did I plan on getting a dog? Not really, no. But I got a text late on Saturday – or maybe Sunday – explaining that a German shepherd husky mix needed a home by the end of the night, or she’d be going to a shelter.

My heart has always been far bigger than my brain – most things are bigger than my brain – so I took the dog. We didn’t have food, toys, treats, leash, collar, anything. Lola, the roughly 5-month-old pup, came with a ridiculous, bedazzled collar, a chain – literally a rusted metal chain – for a leash with a carabiner to hook on her collar. It was awful. As you could have guessed, she had been abused. Skittish around guys. Stairs are, weirdly, a trigger for her. I don’t know why. I suppose I don’t want to.

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I’ve always loved dogs. We had a yellow lab named Jasmine growing up, and she was a mischievous, troublesome miscreant with a knack for infuriating my mother and escaping our fence. Unfortunately, my favorite mischief maker was also the leading cause for my little brother’s asthma attacks. He was allergic. We had to give her up.

My older brother and I tried to negotiate trades – our inconveniently asthmatic brother for a dog – but my parents didn’t see it as quite the steal we did.

I didn’t have another dog in my life until I moved to Florida. I had taken in a pit bull off of the streets in Baltimore. Well, I guess I should say that she took herself off the streets. She was a stray and was sitting on our doorstep in the freezing cold. When I opened my car door, she catapulted into the passenger seat.

Naturally she slept at the foot of my bed that night.

Ferocious creatures, pit bulls.

We fostered Charlie — named, I think, after the Graceland character — the pit bull until we found her a home, and when I moved to Florida I took in a Timberwolf-malamute mix that was as badass and awesome as it sounds. To my profound sadness, I couldn’t bring him with me to California. I loved that dog, but apartment complexes weren’t overly thrilled at the idea of taking in a wolf. Even though I didn’t want to admit it, I knew that finding him a home with a farm and space to run around was a much better life than being cooped up in a studio in Newport Beach, in which I’d have to somehow try to sneak him around without the complex knowing.

So for more than a year I’ve desperately needed a dog in my life.

As essentially every dog in my life has, this one, Lola, the lovely, fox-colored German shepherd husky, sort of appeared, unplanned.

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At this point, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When you don’t have a dog, you forget what it’s like to walk in the door and be greeted by a living being that is literally so happy you’re home she pees on the carpet.

A dog thinks you’re so awesome that her bladder is rendered uncontrollable.

Dogs. Can’t beat ‘em.

I think humans can learn some valuable lessons from dogs, mostly that you really don’t need much, aside from some food and love from another living being to be absolutely, totally, ecstatically fine with life.

The little wins make your day with a dog. No poop on the carpet automatically makes the morning phenomenal. No chewing is an added bonus. If she makes a friend at the dog park that wears her out enough that she sleeps while you’re at work, well, you’ve found the holy grail, my friend.

Lola will be an interesting case. All dogs are.

The only fact I can tell you about dogs is this: Life is better with one.

Imposter syndrome: An author or a guy who wrote a book

For the past two years, I have waged war with one of the most common psychological – what to call it? – “conditions” I guess will work: Imposter Syndrome.

You’ve likely had it.

According to Forbes, 75 percent of Americans feel a sense of imposter syndrome when they are promoted or hired. Basically, it’s a sense that you don’t deserve that promotion, or that somebody else should have been hired, that you don’t belong.

That you’re an imposter.

It’s not serious. Just is what it is. If you have an ounce of humility, I’d expect you’ve likely experienced this.

When my first book, The Last 18, was published, I had a severe case of imposter syndrome, more so than when I was hired for any of my previous jobs.

My good friend Alex Cook saw me open my edited manuscript in our house in Baltimore and said “Holy shit! One of my best friends is an author!”

An author?

Me?

Naw, I was just some guy who wrote a book. I wasn’t an author.

J.K. Rowling is an author.

Mitch Albom is an author.

Paulo Coelho is an author.

I wasn’t an author.

Sure, I wrote a book. I guess that technically made me an author. I don’t know. I still didn’t embrace it.

I can’t pinpoint a single moment when I finally kicked imposter syndrome to the side. I just had a series of minor epiphanies along the way to publishing my second book, More Than a Game, while simultaneously working on my third.

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One of my favorite little epiphany moments is thanks to my best friend since I could walk, Jason Wheatley. We work together at an educational consulting company called Admission Masters. He tells students that I’m an author, a phenomenal writer, blah blah blah. He talks me up far too much, I can promise you that.

But whenever I would have a meeting with a student who had previously met with Jason, they would say “I’ve heard of you. You’re the author.”

And when you hear that four days a week for more than a year, you begin to believe it.

Maybe I am an author. That’s what they think, at least.

My other favorite epiphany came on the beach not too long ago. I was playing in a beach volleyball tournament in Manhattan Beach, and I went to introduce myself to a player I had seen but not yet formally met. He said “Oh, I know who you are. You’re the writer guy.”

I smiled.

Yes. Hell yes.

I’m the writer guy.

I’m not an imposter.

I’m an author.

GoodReads giveaway for More Than a Game

Let me tell you one thing I know to be true about human beings: Nothing gets a person, no matter the age or size or demographic, so fired up as the possibility of winning free shit.

It makes perfect sense – who doesn’t want free stuff? I know I do. I take advantage of every birthday giveaway and coupon known to mankind.

Which is why I’ve decided to run a giveaway for my new book, More Than a Game, through GoodReads.

You can enter the giveaway via this link. 

Of course, I’d much prefer you to, you know, buy the book, but I can’t blame you for waiting for the potential to win a free one. I’d do the same thing.

If you want to buy it, you can do so here. 

The beauties, and freedom, of self-publishing

This past November, I received an email from Saguaro Books, the publisher of my first book, The Last 18. They loved the draft for my second, More Than a Game, which was published earlier this week.

But it was not published by Saguaro Books.

Anyone who knows me knows that I can be hard-headed and stubborn, and when pressed to change my views on something in which I am both hard-headed and stubborn, I can be an asshole. I know it. I admit it. Anybody who has ever edited my writing and made edits I didn’t agree with know this to be true (everyone who has hired me is nodding along to this now).

Which is why I decided not to go with a traditional publisher. I appreciated Saguaro for publishing my first book. It legitimized me as an author – I didn’t have to self-publish! But, in my opinion, it cheapened the product. I thought their edits made it worse, and much different than what I had written. The average reader might not notice such subtle differences as a comma here or semicolon there, but I did, and I hated it. In the end, after several years of drafting and editing I was left…disappointed, somehow, in my first book.[image error]

Al, the finest editor in the literary field

I didn’t want that to happen with my second. I wanted complete control. Saguaro did as well. They had their styles and conventions. I had mine. We butted heads, and I have a pretty hard and thick noggin when it comes to my writing, so I didn’t budge.

I opted to publish More Than a Game on my own, through Amazon’s CreateSpace. Through CreateSpace, I “created” my own publishing company, Paper Courts, which is, as you’ll notice, the name of my website and blog. It was my girlfriend’s idea, actually. She saw how frustrated I was with the edits and wondered why I didn’t go at it alone.

I’m a kinesthetic learner, which is another way of saying I learn by doing and failing.

What an opportunity this was to do both.

Through CreateSpace, I had total creative control. I want a period here? Done. I want $13 books? Bingo. I want the cover how I want the cover? And the interior design? And the publishing date? And full marketing control?

Yesyesyes.

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My old, and current, editor, Brandon Walker knows how stubborn I am when it comes to editing…

Publishing a book really is quite easy, and I have CreateSpace – and dozens of other self-publishing avenues – to thank for that. I was initially averse to self-publishing. It doesn’t have the credibility of going through a traditional publisher, but I stopped caring about that. I cared only about the quality of the content, and I felt that self-publishing – choosing my own editors, and also choosing which editors I wanted to listen to, because I’m a stubborn, inflexible writer – was the best route to optimize my content and present it in the manner that I wanted.

I made the cover (actually, I sifted through 122 of them).

I made the edits.

If it fails, it’s on me. I love that.

Self-publishing has a bad rap, because anybody can do it. It’s really easy. In hindsight, the only reason I really wanted to go through a traditional publisher was to validate that my writing was good enough to catch a publisher’s eye. I wanted somebody else, somebody legitimate, to tell me I was good enough. It’s stupid. But it’s true.

I did that – and then I realized it was totally unnecessary. It was James Altucher who opened my eyes to how much more efficient self-publishing is. I don’t have to pay anybody – no agent, no publisher, just CreateSpace, which eats up less than a quarter of what I would have paid my agent and publisher. I have editorial control. I get to decide the cover, the interior design, the flow, the commas and periods and semi-colons.

I even get to own my mistakes, should there be a few, which there likely are.

I’d much rather look at an error and say “I did that” than fume because I paid a publisher half of my royalties to not only let that mistake slide, but create the mistake in the first place.

And besides, you know a few other books that were self-published?

50 Shades of – I can’t even finish writing the title, but you get it.

The Martian.

The Alchemist may as well have been (it was picked up by a tiny Brazilian publisher, no bigger than Saguaro Books, at first, and sold less than 1,000 copies).

50 Shades sold more copies than the entire Harry Potter series combined.

The Martian was made into a Blockbuster.

The Alchemist is widely regarded as one of the best literary works of all time.

Will this book be on par with those three? Of course not (though, God, if you’re reading, a little help, huh?). That was never really the aim. The aim was to write a book I think you’ll like.

It was to write a book that I would like.

Self-publishing, it turns out, was the best way to accomplish both.

 

 

More Than a Game: 218 words of thanks to dad

If you are one of the angels who have already bought my second book, More Than a Game, you may have noticed that it is dedicated to my father. His name is James Donald Mewhirter, or pops, or poops, or dad, or Jimbo.

Or Coach.

I won’t give much away about the book, but I can say that the basketball coach and the team’s point guard have an exceptional relationship. Now, I did not base the team’s point guard off of me – I didn’t base it off anybody, actually, which is odd for me, as by best fiction is typically inspired by non-fiction events or people – but in the Coach, I did my best to illuminate how much my father has taught me, and continues to teach me.

The Coach in the book is one of my favorite characters I have written, fiction or non. He’s respected, beloved, impacts everyone with whom he comes in contact. He’s tough, teaches lessons by example, is a leader of young men.

He is, in many ways, based off of my father.

Buy More Than a Game on Amazon!

Anybody who has come in contact with my dad will be able to see many similarities, particularly the dozens of young men who have been coached by him, and the parents of those young men who have probably learned a thing or two from the way he helped raise all of us.

My dad is an exceptionally modest individual. I can’t tell you the last time he bought anything for himself. He feels guilty about spending $3 a week on a new book in his Kindle, yet he’ll put my mom on a plane across the country to see me without thinking twice. He invested every last bit of himself into raising his three sons – and the dozens of other sons he unofficially adopted on his baseball, basketball and football teams.

My dad lives for the little things.

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During AAU basketball tournaments, he’d ream me out for this or that. I’d be close to tears. A lot of times I’d be legitimately crying on the court. And then afterwards we’d go to Wendy’s, and he’d explain why he was so much harder on us. He expected more. He’d demand more. He told us we’d be better for it. And we are. We all are.

The problem with society, however, is that we’d rather be raised by praise than saved by criticism.

My dad knew that early on. That was never a problem in our house. And you know what? When he gave us praise, we knew we deserved it. We cherished it.

It was earned. Deserved. Valuable.

And when he criticized us? We valued that, too, because he was helping us to grow, whether on the field or off.

Want to know how many times this book was rejected by publishers, agents, or editors? Well into triple digits.

That is, and excuse my language here, a shit ton of rejection. Think I’d be able to handle that if I had been coddled as a kid? If I had been given everything? If my dad was as soft as 99 percent of parents I see on the sidelines at high school games and matches?

Not a chance.

In being tough on us, my dad did one of the most difficult things I think a parent could do. I’d venture to guess that he wanted us to have whatever we asked for. He wanted to give us that instant gratification so many parents do these days. But he knew that wouldn’t teach us what needed to be taught. He knew that, down the road, when the real world kicked us in the teeth, as it inevitably will and has, we’d be totally fine, because he had the gall to make us work for things.

Imagine that.

Without my dad, this book would never have been written. Neither would the first one. It would be too hard. Too much rejection. Too many obstacles. No instant gratification.

Without ever knowing it, my dad prepared me for my two proudest achievements.

And he really wasn’t all tough, either. Nah, the guy is secretly a softie inside.

He’d write us hand-written notes before big golf tournaments in high school. I still have them in my scrapbook in my bookbag. I can remember one, so simple yet equally indelible: “It’s not the spectacular shots you hit, but the unspectacular ones that you don’t. Good luck, proud of you.”

Man, no words were sweeter than those three: “Proud of you.” And, of course, he was right about the golf part, too, which is a fine metaphor for life: You don’t need to do anything spectacular to succeed.

Just do you.

Now that I’ve moved roughly 3,500 miles or so across the country, I hang onto every last bit of advice I can get from the man. Because when I look back in retrospect, everything he said was, in one way or another, true. He was harder on us because he expected more of us, which made us better. We didn’t see it at the time.

We all do now.

There’s not much need for him to be tough on us anymore. We’re all grown men, or at least fairly large children masquerading around California and Baltimore as men. He dotes on our girlfriends and drinks beer with us. Our favorite nights are drinking beer with dad on the deck, or porch, or wherever.

I wrote my dad a note in a pre-released copy of the book, saying that this was the best way I knew how to thank him for 26-plus years of raising me and my two ridiculous brothers.

I’ll be forever indebted to him, but a book doesn’t seem like a bad place to start.

It wouldn’t have been possible without him, anyway.

 

Book two, More Than a Game, is out!

My second book, More Than a Game, was released today!

Here’s where you can buy it (while you’re at it, pick up a copy of my first one, The Last 18, too:

Amazon

Kindle

GoodReads

It will be available in Barnes and Noble and wherever it is you can buy books soon.

If you could do one, or all, of three things, I would be immensely appreciative:

Buy the book!
If you don’t want to buy the book, which is totally fine, you would be helping more than you know if you could at least review it on Amazon and GoodReads, taking it on faith that it’s actually somewhat decent.
Tell your friends to buy it and review it!

I’ll be doing a little blog series on how the book came to being, and on just writing books in general. It’s both for marketing purposes and because a lot of my writer friends ask about it. So here’s the first:

Writing on the shoulders of giants

I’ve been told that writing is a lonely task. I guess that makes sense to those who don’t write. On the surface, I suppose we do look like lonely creatures, burrowing into a nook at Starbucks, drowning in dark roast coffee, treating our laptops and manuscripts like they’re our children. And, in many ways, writing can be sort of solitary, but it’s good, being by yourself, getting comfortable being alone, just you and your words, spilling onto the table.

But the writing process itself? It’s an extraordinarily collaborative, team-driven effort, even if many members of the team aren’t even aware they’re on it in the first place.

Yes, it’s my name listed as the author. Yes, that’s my bio at the back of the book, and my picture, too. But I can assure you that I stood on the shoulders of my own personal giants for that to happen.

I stood on the shoulders of Alex Cook. Those who know him would think he’d be one of the last people on the planet who would be my first editor. He was a lacrosse player in college and works at T-Rowe price and hates writing and reads precisely one book every two years or so, which happen to be my books. He sees the raw, unedited, piece of garbage manuscript I send him, and he tells me it’s the greatest goddamn book he’s ever read. I guess he’s not lying. He’s only read, I don’t know, my two books and the Wolf of Wall Street (I’d venture to guess that the latter was better than both). So yes, Alex, one of the greatest people on the planet, gives me the confidence and assurance I need to move forward with it, which is more important than any grammatical fixups and technicalities the real editors look for. But he does add legitimate feedback. He tells me when the plot doesn’t make sense, or when a character isn’t fully developed, or when I misspell something a second grader would spell correctly. All of these happen often.

He’s my first line of defense. And he’s perfect.

Without him, this book does not come into being.

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We like whiskey, crabs and the state of Maryland. 

I stood on the shoulders of my brothers, Cody and Tyler, who have easily taught me more than any coach, teacher, professor, or boss I’ve ever had.

Without them, this book does not come into being.

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The Mewhirter women = stronger than the Mewhirter men

I stood on the shoulders of every editor who has dealt with my stubborn writing and ability to force a 500-word limit to 1,500 because I said so. I stood on the shoulders of Brandon Walker, who took a shot on a cocky 20-something from Maryland to cover sports in Florida and gave me free rein to write as many features as my fingers could type. I then stood on the shoulders of Seth Stringer, who took that free rein and gave me an even longer leash, forming a wonderful friendship in the process, full of nights of whisky and cigars and beers and the wonders of high school football in the South.

Without them, and every other editor and professor, this book does not come into being.

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We took work very seriously at the Northwest Florida Daily News. Seriously, this is what we wore to work. 

I stood on the shoulders of Jason and Jenny Wheatley, who are the reason I am living in California. Without Jason, my lifelong, unbelievably loyal best friend, I wouldn’t even consider moving here. Without Jenny, his brilliant, amazingly accomplished wife and soon-to-be mother of a son I will corrupt by forcing him into fandom of awful Maryland sports, I wouldn’t have an awesome job in a field I’d have never thought to get into. Together, they’ve opened dozens upon dozens of doors, revived my love for learning to an obsessive level, and gave me a chance I don’t know if I was really qualified for.

Without them, this book does not come into being.

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Jason and Jenny: The two biggest reasons I’m in California. 

I stood on the shoulders of my girlfriend, Lakaylah, or Lake, or Pond, or By The Riverbank, or Estuary, who took a massive risk few 20-year-olds would do and moved 3,000 miles from home to come live with my goofy ass. Upon moving, she had nothing but me – no job, no friends or relationships in California, no familiarity. And she’s made it work and then some, to the point that she’s 21 going on 40 in terms of success and overall life experience.

Without her support, this book does not come into being.

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She thinks my writing and cooking is good (I’m not sure about either), so she’s ok in my book.

I stood on the shoulders of my parents, who will get their own post, and my friends’ parents, and my friends from the East Coast and the Gulf Coast and the West Coast. And yes, I stood on the shoulders of Starbucks, and large coffees with a double-shot of espresso.

Writing isn’t lonely, you see.

Writing is simply hanging amongst giants.

AVP Austin qualifier recap: The 512 represents

There’s something undeniably beautiful about watching a crowd full of wonderfully well-lubricated Texans chanting “512! 512! 512!” (the Austin area code) while an AVP volunteer runs laps around a beach volleyball court at 9:30 p.m., waving the iconic Texas flag as the local darlings of the AVP Austin Open qualifying tournament, Francisco Quesada-Paneque and Troy Schlicker, turned in one of the most impressive performances out of the 66-team beast of a qualifier.  

A group by the name of the Sand Wannabes called it. As soon as the preview for the qualifier went up, they messaged me, writing “Oh, and our local favorite Rafaa ‘The Cuban’ Quesada and Troy Schlicker are gonna surprise some teams Thursday!”

Heck. I didn’t know. I’d only been to Texas once, and that was when I drove from Florida to California and took a pit stop in El Paso, and all that pit stop did was assure me that I will never go back to El Paso.

Catch the full breakdown at VolleyballMag.com.

 

AVP Austin qualifier breakdown: It’s anybody’s bid

This is the one.

Perhaps it was surprising to scroll through the entry list for the AVP Austin Open, and then keep scrolling…and keep scrolling, all the way to 66 teams for the men.

Sixty-six teams? In Austin?

Yes. Sixty-six teams. In Austin.

There’s a reason for this. Aside from the fact that Austin is the capital of the largest state in the country and one of the greatest cities in America in terms of, well, anything – music, night life, scenery, museums, if that’s your thing – this is the qualifier that appears, on paper, somewhat reasonable.

The big dogs – Taylor Crabb and Jake Gibb, Casey Patterson and Theo Brunner, Ryan Doherty and John Hyden – are gone, off to Rio de Janeiro for a four-star FIVB event. This allowed the top three qualifying teams – Kevin McColloch and Roberto Rodriguez-Betran, Chase Frishman and Mike Brunsting, Maddison McKibbin and Reid Priddy – to slip into the main draw.

Which means the qualifier, once an indomitable affair, is wide open. Suddenly, buying that $400-plus plane ticket, and paying for a hotel, and Ubers or rental cars – unless you’re just road-dogging it, which if you are, good for you – seems like an ok investment.

So let the entries pour in, all the way to 66, five more than the Huntington Beach Open, which has annually been the site of the largest qualifier for a 16-team draw.

You can find the full preview at VolleyballMag.com.