It’s baseball season again, a fact which really wouldn’t affect my life in any way except that I’m married to someone for whom baseball makes the world go ‘round. Even though in general, I still really don’t care about baseball (or any sport, to be honest, although sometimes certain events at the Olympics can be kind of exciting), I do like that baseball makes my husband so happy—almost giddy, sometimes—and when he really gets caught up in the heat of it, he tends to share with me all kinds of anecdotes about the game and its players, which I enjoy hearing.

He told me a story this morning that I think is the perfect metaphor for what it takes to be a writer (or to be good at any kind of artistic or sporty endeavor). It came up because we were talking about him playing catch with a friend of his; it’s an activity he loves to do, but it always leaves his body sore. “I’m no pro,” he said. “I can’t do anything athletic without getting sore.” But then we realized that probably pro players get sore too; they just power through it. They do it anyway because they love the game so much (I’m sure the fact that they make tons of money off of doing it doesn’t hurt their motivation, either).

Then he told me the story of Andre Dawson, a professional baseball player who had to have his trainers break his scar tissue before every game so that he could play. He said Dawson would excuse himself into a private room and close the door, but the other players still saw the tears streaming down his cheeks when he would come back out again. Breaking that tissue before every game must have caused incredible pain, but he had to do it if he wanted to be flexible enough to play. 

I’m sure if you want to go pro, some genetic issues have to line up just right, but I imagine there are a lot of people who genetically have what it takes to play. The real difference, I think, between the people who go pro and the people who play catch once or twice a week with a friend comes down to much more than just genetics. Part of it, obviously, is that you have to want to be a baseball player to begin with (my husband, and many others like him, don’t really want that—they want to watch and sometimes throw the ball around with friends, but they don’t really want it to be their careers). But even wanting to play is not enough; you have to want it bad. You have to want it so bad you’re willing to do it even when it hurts. You have to want it so bad you give up other things you’d rather be doing because you have to practice. You have to want it so bad that you intentionally inflict pain on yourself if it means you’ll be able to play.

Okay, maybe writing doesn’t require physical pain to get good. We writers don’t have to break our fingers every morning in order to be able to type fast enough or anything like that. But we do have to sacrifice. We do have to write even when we don’t feel like it, or even when there is something else going on that we feel like doing instead. We have to pick apart our own abilities, recognize our flaws and learn to overcome them. We have to understand that being sufficiently intelligent and wanting to be a writer are not enough. What it really takes is that extra effort, that drive to power through the pain, that will to get up an hour earlier than you have to in order to make sure you get at least an hour of writing time in every single day.

One of my husband’s peers in his MA program out here—a lit student, not creative writing—once told us that he used to want to be a writer, but then he realized that being a real writer took more than just writing a first draft of a story when he felt inspired. If he really wanted to be a writer, he would have to dedicate his life to it; he would have to push himself hard at it and make real sacrifices. So he decided not to pursue it. “I like the idea of being a writer,” he said, “but I don’t actually want to do the things it would take to be a writer, so I think I’ll stick to lit.” Not many would-be writers are that cool, I have to tell you. Not many hobbyists really understand that they are not putting in the same effort as the writers who are having consistent publication success.

This all doesn’t mean that people who don’t have that drive can’t dabble. There’s nothing wrong with being a now-and-then sort of writer, a hobbyist, and in fact, I think it’s a healthy way to get in touch with your creative side and explore the world around you, and it can be very rewarding. I think everybody who wants to write should do it, even if nobody but they themselves will ever read what they’ve written. But if you really want a shot at the big game, or even just consistent success in the minor leagues (since after all, let’s be honest, the big game takes more than genetics and wanting it bad enough; the big game takes a heavy dose of pure, unadulterated luck), I think you need to be pushing yourself harder than just writing when you feel like it or when you feel inspired.