I was reading an article on the NBA. It had to do with the players filing a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board about the way that the NBA has treated its players, violating the CBA with its draconian methods of bypassing the player's organization. I find it interesting how the players only decide to go on strike before or after a season. But, if they were smart, wouldn't they decide to go on strike during the season?
Right now is the highest point of interest in the NBA. During the playoffs. There are currently four teams involved in the quest for a championship. In a week, there will be two. That means there are 30 total players that you would have to convince of what I am suggesting. It doesn't take much to get 30 total players to do the same thing, especially if the owners are going to do it to those 30 players, plus 400 more, in about 3 weeks after the NBA season is over.
My suggestion: Have those players from two teams, 30 total players, perform a walk-out during Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
That's right. If they don't show up, with fans in the seats, owners sitting back waiting to collect paychecks, it will have an immediate affect on the bottom line.
Imagine how effective that would be. The players would be in the driver's seat. If the NBA wants its Finals played, its games in which the championship is decided (and the most money is made via television and rights, etc), then they had better get in a room and negotiate a deal with the players.
Maybe I'm tipping my hand at my employment, but I see the bottom line here. The owners overspend, then expect the players to make up the difference. No one but the team decided that Kwame Brown was a good asset. Same with some of the bench guys earning $5 million cap exception deals.
That is the problem. The players are playing into the owners hands by playing. Just don't play, see how much money they make.
The NFL players had the same advantage. Just don't play the SuperBowl, see how long it takes the NFL to come back to the table. Instead, they played the game, expecting a different outcome from the owners. And that ain't happening, is it?
Showing posts with label NBA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NBA. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Springer's Final Thought... On writing...
Self editing, which I mentioned in a previous post, is something that I am doing currently for the follow-up novel to Crunk. I do this immediately after writing the final draft before submitting it to my readers. What this does is keep it fresh in my mind, any changes or alterations that I have to ensure are made or smoothed out. Plus, it gets me going to cut through all of the nonsense in terms of sentence reduction.
Sentences and paragraphs always can be reduced. I enjoy cutting them because it means them lean and mean. Blog posts, to me, are the only first draftish stuff I publish, mainly because it is a free-flowing thought process. Sure, I check for spelling, but the rest is about it. What you see is what you get. Otherwise it would take about forty years to produce one month's worth of blog posts. And who wants that?
This does not mean that I don't write 5,000 words or could any of the edits that I do to the finished edition as part of my 5,000 word count. That ain't really rewriting at that point, so I can't defend it as part of my writing regime. While working on the edits for the final draft, I also write or rewrite other stories. It develops my skill while attempting to enhance the presentation of each story.
Imagine you are a basketball player. You play NBA games every night. You still have to shoot practice shots. If you notice, NBA players have warm-up shots before each game. They also have other practice shots, informal or formal. They shoot probably a 1,000 shots per day. And still, guys in the NBA shoot 50 percent on average over a season. That was the problem with Allen Iverson. He didn't like to practice. He scored a lot, on a lot of attempts, but eventually, as his attempts averaged out, his skills diminished and so did his ability to score. He got washed-out of the league, and is playing in Turkey somewhere, riding some broken down bus with roosters and chickens on the cages.
That's why the 5,000 words per day is important. It builds you ability to write, anything.
If you don't put in the work, it doesn't happen. And whatever you've written is garbage compared to what you have to the opportunity to write next. It will be garbage until you have the guts to have someone who doesn't like or is indifferent to you who says that it is good enough to publish. I believe ex-girlfriends work best in this model (not as big of a joke as you would think).
You need someone who will tell you what sucks.
That person who tells you they don't get it (character, plot, entire episodes of scenes).
You need that in order to understand how to build a great story, character arch, etc.
Comedians called it "stage time."
It can't be taught as much as earned. You have to keep writing, waiting until it is good enough to publish. Your first idea for a book is going to the best right at the moment, however, in five years, you will shake your head that you ever thought it was good enough for a story. Trust me, this happens more than you think.
A lot of people can sell you on a pitch. This amazes me because the pitch has superseded the prose in some cases. Just write the damn thing, get it out of your system, and go to the next story. If you can't think up a new story, you are screwed. Because each story gets you closer to your goal.
The NBA players were in AAU basketball (kid club teams), then they went to high school, then they did college. Then some of them went to the NBA Development League. Most went to the NBA. Only about ten percent are all-stars. You may not have the skills to be an all-star outright. But here's the deal, some of the NBA's good players are not their all-stars.
Give you an example: Rodney Rogers. Rex Chapman. Terry Porter. These guys weren't dominating the league. They were just consistently good. They wanted it more than anyone else. They were gym rats who clawed and scratched for everything they ever got.
Here's some bad ones: Kwame Brown. Darius Miles. Shawn Bradley. Guys thought to be can't miss because of the talent. But they failed. Why? Because they didn't have or do what it took to survive. They didn't fit beyond themselves to improve themselves day after day. That's why they are collecting unemployment checks rather than having their jerseys sell in the league.
In this life, you get one chance (thank you, eminem). That means that you either work on your skills or you become the person who suggests "there's no money in it." Tell that to the people who have continued to hone their skills. They tend to be the people who when asked to put up or shut up have definitely done the former, not the later.
This is where self-editing comes into the mix. A lot of people don't want to go over their revisions. They want to write three drafts, give it to an editor, then makes some superficial changes before publishing. If you want to do that, you are not honing your skills. This is the part where people say "in my opinion" to keep people from jumping down their throats. Of course it's my opinion, it's my blog.
I think that by self-editing and delving deep into your book, after a long period in which you've likely forgotten why the hell you liked the idea in the first place. After you've already decided that some of the issues are past, that you can't recall what made the character do this or that. Those are the times that you need to self-edit your work. It makes it more personal and allows you to build.
Are you catching this? This is the key, so you might want to listen up. (That's my Darryl Hannah impression from Kill Bill Vol. 2).
Just do it.
Flush the issues at home.
Flush the kids (feed them, put them to bed, but write if that's really what you want out of life).
Be a little more selfish.
This is your life, do what you want with it.
You know what? During that meeting at the office where you don't really say anything anyway, why not sketch out a storyline? Why not develop a real writing form?
Wake up at 6:30 a.m. if you have to in order to have a half hour to yourself.
Just get your 5,000 words in. Develop what you want.
Or don't write. Just forget it.
And that includes refusing to really self-edit your work. Because you'd rather do something else. If that's what is important to you, then you need to do that, instead of writing. It's up to you what you want out of this world. You get to chose. But chose wisely, my friend.
William Falkner worked as a postman his entire life. But he found time to write.
Others have worked day jobs. Charles Bukowski worked randomly, but made it work because what he wanted to do was write. More than anything else.
Great, see, you made me go off into a tangent. And here I thought it was going to be about self-editing. Maybe that's the point. It's not where you start, it's where you finish. And maybe that's the best way to end this blog post.
Sentences and paragraphs always can be reduced. I enjoy cutting them because it means them lean and mean. Blog posts, to me, are the only first draftish stuff I publish, mainly because it is a free-flowing thought process. Sure, I check for spelling, but the rest is about it. What you see is what you get. Otherwise it would take about forty years to produce one month's worth of blog posts. And who wants that?
This does not mean that I don't write 5,000 words or could any of the edits that I do to the finished edition as part of my 5,000 word count. That ain't really rewriting at that point, so I can't defend it as part of my writing regime. While working on the edits for the final draft, I also write or rewrite other stories. It develops my skill while attempting to enhance the presentation of each story.
Imagine you are a basketball player. You play NBA games every night. You still have to shoot practice shots. If you notice, NBA players have warm-up shots before each game. They also have other practice shots, informal or formal. They shoot probably a 1,000 shots per day. And still, guys in the NBA shoot 50 percent on average over a season. That was the problem with Allen Iverson. He didn't like to practice. He scored a lot, on a lot of attempts, but eventually, as his attempts averaged out, his skills diminished and so did his ability to score. He got washed-out of the league, and is playing in Turkey somewhere, riding some broken down bus with roosters and chickens on the cages.
That's why the 5,000 words per day is important. It builds you ability to write, anything.
If you don't put in the work, it doesn't happen. And whatever you've written is garbage compared to what you have to the opportunity to write next. It will be garbage until you have the guts to have someone who doesn't like or is indifferent to you who says that it is good enough to publish. I believe ex-girlfriends work best in this model (not as big of a joke as you would think).
You need someone who will tell you what sucks.
That person who tells you they don't get it (character, plot, entire episodes of scenes).
You need that in order to understand how to build a great story, character arch, etc.
Comedians called it "stage time."
It can't be taught as much as earned. You have to keep writing, waiting until it is good enough to publish. Your first idea for a book is going to the best right at the moment, however, in five years, you will shake your head that you ever thought it was good enough for a story. Trust me, this happens more than you think.
A lot of people can sell you on a pitch. This amazes me because the pitch has superseded the prose in some cases. Just write the damn thing, get it out of your system, and go to the next story. If you can't think up a new story, you are screwed. Because each story gets you closer to your goal.
The NBA players were in AAU basketball (kid club teams), then they went to high school, then they did college. Then some of them went to the NBA Development League. Most went to the NBA. Only about ten percent are all-stars. You may not have the skills to be an all-star outright. But here's the deal, some of the NBA's good players are not their all-stars.
Give you an example: Rodney Rogers. Rex Chapman. Terry Porter. These guys weren't dominating the league. They were just consistently good. They wanted it more than anyone else. They were gym rats who clawed and scratched for everything they ever got.
Here's some bad ones: Kwame Brown. Darius Miles. Shawn Bradley. Guys thought to be can't miss because of the talent. But they failed. Why? Because they didn't have or do what it took to survive. They didn't fit beyond themselves to improve themselves day after day. That's why they are collecting unemployment checks rather than having their jerseys sell in the league.
In this life, you get one chance (thank you, eminem). That means that you either work on your skills or you become the person who suggests "there's no money in it." Tell that to the people who have continued to hone their skills. They tend to be the people who when asked to put up or shut up have definitely done the former, not the later.
This is where self-editing comes into the mix. A lot of people don't want to go over their revisions. They want to write three drafts, give it to an editor, then makes some superficial changes before publishing. If you want to do that, you are not honing your skills. This is the part where people say "in my opinion" to keep people from jumping down their throats. Of course it's my opinion, it's my blog.
I think that by self-editing and delving deep into your book, after a long period in which you've likely forgotten why the hell you liked the idea in the first place. After you've already decided that some of the issues are past, that you can't recall what made the character do this or that. Those are the times that you need to self-edit your work. It makes it more personal and allows you to build.
Are you catching this? This is the key, so you might want to listen up. (That's my Darryl Hannah impression from Kill Bill Vol. 2).
Just do it.
Flush the issues at home.
Flush the kids (feed them, put them to bed, but write if that's really what you want out of life).
Be a little more selfish.
This is your life, do what you want with it.
You know what? During that meeting at the office where you don't really say anything anyway, why not sketch out a storyline? Why not develop a real writing form?
Wake up at 6:30 a.m. if you have to in order to have a half hour to yourself.
Just get your 5,000 words in. Develop what you want.
Or don't write. Just forget it.
And that includes refusing to really self-edit your work. Because you'd rather do something else. If that's what is important to you, then you need to do that, instead of writing. It's up to you what you want out of this world. You get to chose. But chose wisely, my friend.
William Falkner worked as a postman his entire life. But he found time to write.
Others have worked day jobs. Charles Bukowski worked randomly, but made it work because what he wanted to do was write. More than anything else.
Great, see, you made me go off into a tangent. And here I thought it was going to be about self-editing. Maybe that's the point. It's not where you start, it's where you finish. And maybe that's the best way to end this blog post.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Dystophia in writing and life
I finished about 8,700 words into my writing tonight. That does not include this post, which will put it over 9,000 words. But I asked myself tonight what that really meant. To me, it means ability to push myself to keep writing, even when I would rather do other things. Trust me, I am a big NHL fan. Not just hockey (Go Seattle T-Birds), but the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs are special to me.
Especially tonight when the Canucks attempt to stave off history. They were up 3-0 in the seven game series, lost the next three, and are fighting off the lowly defending champion Blackhawks. BTW - if you are Blackhawks fan, you must hate your team. Big Buff was a great player your GM traded away for a few rental players and some unknown rookies. Not good.
That is nonsense and vaudeville but I have to tell you, it pulls me away to want to watch that rather than write. But I sat at the bar with my IPad2 and chose writing as my outlet. If that's what I want to do, it needs to be what I do the most. It doesn't matter whether I want to screw off with friends, I need to think first and foremost about writing. It doesn't mean I can't do specific things with my time, but writing needs to be the central focus.
Tonight I drafted a short story that was pretty good. Lately, I've been in a science fiction mood, especially for dystrophia. Have no explanation for it but that I've just found my focus there. When I write something, a million more separate ideas on the same subject get compounded together as different stories. I put them as lines in my IPad2 Notepad feature and then utilize them whenever I need a new story to write. Not all of these stories are going to be winners, as I am sure that an NBA player doesn't hit every practice shot they hit. But if you don't work on it, you don't improve.
I used to avoid Dystophia stories about futuristic land because I thought that it made my writing negative. But I started to embrace it as a way to separate myself by making some type of enjoyment coming out of this type of story. There is no reason to believe that the human species would exist in a dystophia if there were no entertainment involved. Why people live in Detroit? I have no clue, but I hear its getting close to seeing an entire decay of a city. They lose 500,000 people per year and have only about three or four years to go before the entire city should be entirely empty. There won't be drug dealers or criminals, because they have to have someone to sell to or someone to rob.
Always interesting to believe in a ghost city.
Well, I've done enough tonight. Thanks to my new bluetooth keyboard, I don't have the arm aches that I had previous when typing. Yes, as my friends tell me, I should be hired to sell Apple's new IPad2. I'm just that much of an advocate of it.
Especially tonight when the Canucks attempt to stave off history. They were up 3-0 in the seven game series, lost the next three, and are fighting off the lowly defending champion Blackhawks. BTW - if you are Blackhawks fan, you must hate your team. Big Buff was a great player your GM traded away for a few rental players and some unknown rookies. Not good.
That is nonsense and vaudeville but I have to tell you, it pulls me away to want to watch that rather than write. But I sat at the bar with my IPad2 and chose writing as my outlet. If that's what I want to do, it needs to be what I do the most. It doesn't matter whether I want to screw off with friends, I need to think first and foremost about writing. It doesn't mean I can't do specific things with my time, but writing needs to be the central focus.
Tonight I drafted a short story that was pretty good. Lately, I've been in a science fiction mood, especially for dystrophia. Have no explanation for it but that I've just found my focus there. When I write something, a million more separate ideas on the same subject get compounded together as different stories. I put them as lines in my IPad2 Notepad feature and then utilize them whenever I need a new story to write. Not all of these stories are going to be winners, as I am sure that an NBA player doesn't hit every practice shot they hit. But if you don't work on it, you don't improve.
I used to avoid Dystophia stories about futuristic land because I thought that it made my writing negative. But I started to embrace it as a way to separate myself by making some type of enjoyment coming out of this type of story. There is no reason to believe that the human species would exist in a dystophia if there were no entertainment involved. Why people live in Detroit? I have no clue, but I hear its getting close to seeing an entire decay of a city. They lose 500,000 people per year and have only about three or four years to go before the entire city should be entirely empty. There won't be drug dealers or criminals, because they have to have someone to sell to or someone to rob.
Always interesting to believe in a ghost city.
Well, I've done enough tonight. Thanks to my new bluetooth keyboard, I don't have the arm aches that I had previous when typing. Yes, as my friends tell me, I should be hired to sell Apple's new IPad2. I'm just that much of an advocate of it.
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