Listening to Veritasium on youtube I found myself falling back into the all-important idea of deliberate practice. This is something I thought about a lot as a coach. The idea is that you focus on small things in your craft and you deliberately do them minutely in order to master that part of the craft. In writing it is about pushing yourself to write outside of the box and training yourself to not fall into familiar patterns of creation. I experimented with this for a time on this blog. I would roll story dice and create a tale on the spot that included those story elements. Unfortunately, I stopped. Not only that but what I created was shaped from the style and substance of my past work with these dice-driven ideas functioning as a wrinkle. I want to get back to this core ideas of deliberate practice as part of (not so)freewrite Fridays.
Some Thoughts:
- It is Waiver Wednesday, so I’ll take the rest of the time to talk about sports. I discovered today that my boys have played with two of the Elite 11 quarterbacks dueling it out to be seen as a top prospect in the nation. One of the two they played with is considered the #1 QB prospect in the nation. Back when he ran with them, he didn’t seem to be that top dog. In truth, he didn’t actually start for our squad. To paraphrase M. Jordan, He took that personally. Now he’s the guy and his little bro is next in line to be the guy. It makes me feel like my kids, who hung with these kids in practice, might actually be legit players. It also makes me feel like these national rankings are about hype and lineage. Both of the elite 11 QBs in question come from NFL stock. We’ll see this year how all of it pans out.
- On that note, official summer 7s begin this evening for my Varsity kid while the incoming freshman gets to step on the H.S. field on Saturday to make his debut. He’s geeked about it. He’s also that shiny new(old?) type of player reminiscent of Prime time. He intends to wear a shiesty to the event. I’m sure his coach will love that.
- Speaking of coaching, PHX just hired a few. They brought in Frank Vogel who locked up a pair of all-star assistants to round out his staff. First staff order of business? Cutting Chris Paul, apparently. I’m beginning to wonder about Kevin Durant. Wherever he lands, a quick roster dissolve follows…