Why Writing is Like Golfing…

I’m a writer, and I’m a golfer. Are there any two activities as far apart as writing and golfing are? And yet, they are so close to each other when what matters is having success with them.

I throw it here and now: golfing and writing have so many things in common that I believe I’m writing when I’m out on the fairway, and I’m golfing when I leave that perfect line on the screen, like the perfect divot of a perfect shot. Everything has to do with visualization and sensations.

Be aware of as many tiny details as possible

When you’re golfing, these details will inform the way your shot might come out of the turf; when you’re writing, they will inform you about how your character might react in certain situations. It might even be a very tiny thing, the direction the grass blades are along the path your club will travel, or where the light in your scene comes from, the smell and odours, the sounds reflecting between the walls of a deserted corridor, even though no one is going to hear it, because that’s what affect us in real life. You will absorb these details and they can have a powerful effect on your performance, on your shot, or your written words.

For Hemingway, details were crucial, even if you omitted most of them. That’s what he called The Iceberg Theory (the 1/8 of an iceberg that we see is supported by the 7/8 we don’t). If you know a lot about a subject, you may leave things out, but the reader will feel their presence nonetheless. But if a writer doesn’t know much about a topic, and leaves certain things out, there’s a hollowness to the work; if you disregards where the rough and where the tall grass point to, your shot will miss the target.


Live in the world of your story and be part of the golf course

Don’t think of yourself as an external observer, be in that world. Absorb the character and imagine you’re him or her. Don’t think about the words. Be present in that world, not this one. For golfers it means forget the rest, it is you and the ball, the turf, the club, and there’s a connecting line between the ball and where you want it to land. You have to see it, you have to feel the ball enter in that particular grove in the air and follow it until it lands exactly where it has to land.

For writers, it means being more than narrating their story as if they’re watching a movie. It means being in that world, notebook in hand, chronicling what you see, dodging bullets, freezing in the snow, shooting at spaceships and gasping for air when the hull breaks, smelling the blasters shots and the ozone that burns your throat.

If you can immerse yourself in that world, you will see more details, the experience becomes fuller, and you’ll able to deliver a better golf shot, or a better story to your readership. If you can immerse yourself in the golf course, you’ll be part of it, you will not fight it and the ball will fly where it has to, naturally, effortlessly.


Create a back story for your character; know how your ball got there and why

Write scenes and short stories about characters. In your mind, make your character real, know what he did for work, why he was single, or married, or living with a partners in a union.

Too often, when readers say characters are flat it is because they are: they don’t come with back stories. They don’t have relationships spelled out in the mind of the writer. Did the protagonist have friends? Why isn’t he with them? Does he get along with his mother? What kind of job does he have? Writers have to answer those questions themselves for each character that will enter the scene.

Writers could spell out character back stories, small details, likes and dislikes, and anything that might become important later on. They’ll write out scenes between characters that will never see the light of day, just to know how they would act and react, just to know them.

If you can know why your characters are made the way they are, who influenced them, and why they like or don’t like other people, this becomes one of those very important iceberg details that shape your writing.
In golf, it is true that overanalyzing can destroy your shot, but it is not true that every shot is independent from the previous one, and the previous one, and the previous one. All is connected, you score a birdie on hole 7 because you had a great start on hole 2. Are you flirting with the ball, or are you hitting it fiercely: they don’t like that. Why the grass is shinier on that area and drier on another, is there a wind that gets into play? What were your sensations when the ball flew just right, and how did you feel before sinking your club and slicing that ball. Again details, visualize the next shot using the story of the previous ones, how missing a certain detail altered your shot, visualize shots that you’ll never hit just to immerse yourself with confidence in the one that you will hit with a clear mind.


Base characters on yourself and real people, and your next shot on past ones

When Hemingway created characters for his stories, he modeled them after people he actually knew. He just changed their names. By using real people, he already had the back story written, he knew the tiny details, and he could more easily inhabit their world.

In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway said:

“Goddamn it you took liberties with peoples’ pasts and futures that produced not people but damned marvellously faked case histories. . . You could write a fine book about Gerald and Sara for instance if you knew enough about them and they would not have any feeling, except passing, if it were true.”

In essence, don’t just make up people, because the characters will be fake. Instead, write about real people and make minor changes.

By using real people, you can create real characters who are emotionally rich and deep, not shallow caricatures or archetypes. Or, you have to be prepared to create their backstory iceberg and never show it to your readers. Well, at least 7/8 of it.
You played in thousand different situations, you know what happened then and there, you have memorized the place, the slope, the grass, the temperature, the divot you took, and the humidity of the air, the lie of the ball, and whether the grass was tall or smooth like silk. When you go for a shot, hit again that successful shot you had in the same conditions, base your golf on the successes, feel them so real that you will be able to repeat them again and again and again.


Listen carefully and react to what the characters tell you. Before hitting the ball, listens to your instincts more than your rationality

Sometimes fiction writers “let the characters take over.” The characters act and react to what’s happening on the page and claim their free will. I’ve written scenes where I had a basic idea of what should happen, only to have the characters take the story in a completely different direction, and I felt blessed.

What’s really happening is the writer imagines how the characters would react in certain situations, and writes that down rather than forcing actions and conversations to reach a certain preconceived end. The writer holds on and goes along with the free will of the characters. This can only happen when writers live in the world of their story, know their characters and what drives them, and has them in their mind more real than real people they know.

In golf “you” are the person you should listen to. Imagine yourself delivering the shot, lifting the club and traverse the ball. Fell how it should feel. Build on knowledge, feeding one idea into the next, one gesture into the next one, seamlessly.

When you get a chance to meet someone whose work inspires you, take it. When you get a chance to talk about the creative process with other creative people, take it. With a little lateral thinking, you never know what you might learn, and you’ll never know how beautifully the ball will soar.

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