All I Needed to Know About Memoir Writing I Learned Playing Ball by Pat McKinzie
Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Pat McKinzie/@PattyMacKZ
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pat McKinzie is a trailblazer. She defied the rules and broke down barriers for all women by playing in the first US women’s professional basketball league in the 1970s.
Pat and I met in Dan Blank’s Build Your Author Platform Course in 2011 and have been online friends ever since. She inspires me with her feisty determination to face her life challenges with style, grace and a healthy dose of humor. Her ability to balance drama and humor amazes me. Her storytelling captivates me. From the Midwest to D.C. to Paris to Marburg to Geneva, she moved 12 times in 18 years. From the hard courts of Illinois to the classrooms of Switzerland, she has lived in four different countries, speaks three languages, and raised two bi-cultural kids.
From this lifetime of experiences, she crafts the most delightful stories on her weekly blog complete with beautiful photos. I often feel like I am accompanying her on a tour, whether it be to her family cabin in Wisconsin or to the Swiss Alps. And I don’t even need a passport.
Pat’s memoir Home Sweet Hardwood: A Title IX Trailblazer Breaks Barriers Through Basketball is about breaking down gender barriers in sports in the seventies, earning the first women’s basketball scholarship in Illinois and playing in the first women’s professional league in the United States. When that went bankrupt, she headed overseas to Paris. When the French Federation banned foreigners, she moved across the border to Germany. When a car accident ended her career, she became a writer. But first she had to learn to hold a pen again.
My reviews can be found on Amazon, Goodreads, Shelfari , LibraryThing and Riffle.
March Madness–for both men and women– is a perfect time to welcome Pat back!
Memoir Author Pat McKinzie-LeChault
Pat was the keynote speaker at NCAA , Div III Final Four Women’s Basketball Tournament , 2014
Everything I Learned About Writing I Learned Playing Ball
No kidding! I was a feisty in-your-face kid who defied society and refused to take no for an answer. I insisted girls could play basketball, too, even during the era when women’s participation in sport was taboo. I showed those naysayers and became one of the first female professional globetrotters, fighting the status quo every step of the way. What an arduous journey it has been from battling to be allowed on the court in the early infancy of Title IX (1972) to becoming a keynote speaker at an NCAA Final Four basketball tournament (2014.)
NCAA Speaker
So how do the skills developed playing sports transfer to the craft of putting words on paper? Writing requires tremendous self-discipline, a lot like mastering a sport.
You need to warm up. Just like a pre game jog and stretch, it is beneficial to drop into downward dog or Pilates push up to get the creative juices flowing.
You have to practice when no one is looking. I often shot baskets alone for hours and have kept a journal since childhood, just because putting words on paper was the only way I could make sense of the world. Journaling hones the craft and helps recapture those moments of the past, which is especially useful in memoir writing.
You need a team. There will be days you feel like quitting. That is when your network of family, friends, and cyber writing buddies inspire you to go on in the face of rejection. You will need feedback from readers and editing tips from others with more experience than you, so you must learn to humbly accept criticism. Yeah, and sometimes the coach must yell at you!
You don’t get to choose your opponent. You will meet unimaginable obstacles in your writing journey. Editors will reject your work, agents will be interested then back out, book deals will fall through, the entire publishing industry will be turned upside down in the internet age, but though the venues for sharing your work will change, the stories remain the same… timeless.
You play hard every day (even when you know you might not win the big one.) Go into the competition knowing you will have bad games and days where shots will fall short and words will fail. And let’s face it, chances of publishing a best seller are even less likely than signing that billion dollar pro athlete contract. BUT just like participating in sports, you don’t have to have elite status to make a difference.
You will learn more about yourself than you ever imagined. Some of those lessons will hurt. The disappointment can be devastating. But like the best lesson learned from sport you will develop perseverance…against all odds, especially in defeat.
Your statistics really don’t matter. In sports, records are made to be broken. In the long run of life, who is counting? Is it really that important to keep track of how many Twitter followers, Google+ friends or Facebook fans you have? In the end you realize writing is a lot like participating in your favorite sport, it is not really about notching up those stats, it is about staying in the game.
The most important prerequisite to writing a memoir is believing in YOU.
Ironically, to perfect your craft as a writer you need to isolate, but to share your story you must find an audience, a reader at a time.
My advice from a lifetime of hard hits and setback:
Show up on the page. Everyday.
Put your soul on the line.
Believe you have a story to tell.
Trust you are making a difference.
Go on! I double dare you.
Inspire courage, break barriers, create connections.
One word at a time.
Write your heart out, dear friends of the feather.
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Pat, I feel like I have participated in a pep rally for writing! Thank you for infusing us with your passion, persistence and courage that you displayed on the court and continue to display off the court. I also want to personally thank you for being a trailblazer for women’s sports. My own daughter, Leigh Ann and many other young women for generations to come have benefitted and will continue to benefit greatly from your “in-your-face” determination to break down the barriers. High Five!
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Author’s Bio:
As a pioneer in women’s basketball, Pat McKinzie is the first female athletic scholarship recipient in Illinois and first female player to score 1,000 points at ISU. She is one of the first Women’s Professional Basketball League draftees and female inductees in the Hall of Fame at Illinois State. After a 1983 car accident in France ended her playing career, McKinzie began to focus her energy on coaching. With thirty years of experience in coaching, teaching, and writing, she has cultivated an impressive career from hall-of-fame coach to basketball agent, student adviser, columnist, and blogger. McKinzie has a bachelor’s degree in education from Illinois State University. She is married to a Frenchman with whom she raised two Third Culture Kids, and currently resides in Switzerland. Keynote speaker at the NCAA Final Four 2014 and the Senior National Games 2013.
Author Contact Information:
Website/blog: X-Pat From Overseas
Twitter: @PattyMacKZ
Facebook: Pat McKinzie
Book Synopsis:
If you deny a woman’s history, you erase her identity. For the first time, I reveal the athlete’s story, from a female perspective, during forty years of rapid social change since the passage of Title IX. What makes it different from other sport biographies is the voice, of a woman who walks the talk, who dribbled the ball and tells the story. This is the book I longed to read when I was I coming of age. It is a tribute to my mother, my sisters, my coaches, my players and teammates, and all those who fought before me and along side me, so that today no female ever questions her right to be all that she can be. It speaks for the silent pioneers of the past and salutes our highflying daughters of today. So what? Who cares? Anyone coaching an athlete. Anyone playing ball. Anyone loving a game. Anyone raising a daughter. Anyone chasing a dream.
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How about you? Where have you learned lessons that have helped you in your writing?
Pat has graciously offered to give away an eBook of Home Sweet Hardwood to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.
We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~
Reminder: I am on a Lenten Sabbatical from my own blog posts and social media until 4/13/15. However, I will be available for comments and sharing of all guest posts.
Next Week:
Monday, 3/16/15:
Memoir Author and Coach Denis Ledoux on “Writing to the End.”
