Writing as “Rotisserie” Fantasy Baseball
Baseball season is upon us here in the United States. With it, (often) is my jump into fantasy baseball.
For those unfamiliar with fantasy sports, (into which I never sink any money), the concept is simple enough. You join a league, usually online these days. You draft real Major League players onto your team as does everyone else in your league. You score fantasy points based on what your players do in real life, vs what the players “owned” by your opponents do.
That, in essence, is all there is to it.
How does one win?
That depends on the format you’ve selected. There is no need to get into detail about that here. In the broadest of terms, some formats emphasize what happens week-to-week against a single opponent. Others, like the format I am trying for the first time this year, emphasis an entire season’s performance of your players. Whoever accumulates the most points by the end of the real-life season is the winner. “Rotisserie” they call it, having nothing at all to do with seasoned chicken.
It is early yet, but I think I may already enjoy this marathon approach as opposed to the sprint approach.
Most writing is like this rotisserie style fantasy baseball. Accumulative. Slow. Deliberate. Plenty of time to make course corrections if things start to go South.
True, not everything we write gives us the luxury of such a distant deadline. But even shorter works, outside of daily journalism which is indeed a sprint, can benefit from this marathon approach.
We set a goal, brainstorm how to obtain it. Some of us outline at some of us don’t, but then we move into first drafts. Round of revisions. Edits. Next draft, and so on. Perhaps a beta reader or two for some of us that offers thoughts. More revisions. Your milage will vary but that’s the gist of it.
You can have a bad day or even a bad week or two in “roto” fantasy baseball and still end up on top by October. You just have to be willing to look at who/what is not working, and adjust accordingly. No need to rush or panic. Like a manager look at the big picture and do what you think it best to fix things.
Writers have the advantage over the fantasy baseball manager in one key aspect at least; there is no time table by which to perfect the work. Again, there are deadline-based exceptions, naturally. Yet writers, especially indie-authors such as myself have the luxury of moving the “season” into November, December, the following January, however long it takes to pace the marathon of our writing to get it to its best possible outcome.
Fantasy football is almost always a week to week battle with little room for error. I hate it and love it for that. As far as writing analogy goes though, roto fantasy baseball is most applicable.
There is plenty of time for you to write the best version of what you want written. Use all of it.
- Posted in: Miscellany
- Tagged: analogy, fiction, non-fiction, writing
Ty Unglebower 