15 Ways to Survive as a Freelancer

 

1)  Get up early and write first. Don't let the day get in the way of what you have to do, and by getting up early,  if someone asks you to do something later in the day, you can, because you've already done your other work -- you don't have to say you'll get to it tomorow. And if you have a day job, do your freelance work first - if your day job starts at 8 AM, start writing at 5 AM. The romantic notion of a writing lifestyle is meaningless unless you do the work.

 

2) At the start, and for a long, long time after, say “yes” to almost everything. You never know where that might lead, and if you're any good, you can learn from just about any assignment. Example: I was once asked to write one little work-for-hire book.  I sorta didn’t want to, but I said yes. Over the next decade that turned into another 38 titles. 

 

3)  Ass in chair.  Let me say this again: ASS IN CHAIR. You don’t get anything done going for coffee every hour. Most of the time, this isn’t easy or fun. The job is ass in chair, alone for hours. It’s cool to say you’re a writer when asked at the bar, but the rest of the time, it’s ass in chair. You’re not a tortured artist, you’re a day laborer, like the people waiting for assignments from Manpower.

 

4)  You never "make it." Every time you kick down one door, there is another one, and life is spitting out new writers every day. Some will work harder than you will, some are better than you are, and some will have better connections. You can only control your own effort, so make sure that’s not the problem. It’s hard to make it, and I know writers that have “made it” then got lazy and watched it fritter away. It’s hard to get back in, so don’t relax.  

 

5)  Hit deadlines. Don't ever give anyone a chance to dump you based on this, because that reputation lingers. I’ve hit tight deadlines while writing the morning of a funeral, taking care of an infant full-time, and writing with a broken finger before getting it stitched – real blood on the keyboard that day. Make a personal deadline in advance of the real one, so you don’t turn things in rushed and unfinished. Recent lesson: I was asked to write an essay, one of about a dozen writers asked to do so - 500 words – and given two weeks. I wrote a draft that day, then finished it and turned it in the next day, before anyone else did.  That allowed me to stake out my approach before another writer wrote something similar, or got the editor’s ear. My essay ended up leading the piece, and setting the theme.

 

6)  Learn to re-package, to write the same basic topic, in different ways for different markets. Easier than you think, but don’t self-plagiarize, or ever even get close to that. When I re-package, I also re-research, and then, at the end, compare with what I’ve written earlier and make sure that language and quotes are not duplicated

 

7)  Always be ready to write, and always be on the lookout for a story. I was on vacation once, running on the beach, and something strange happened. I knew it was a story before I’d finished the run.

 

8)  Don't be obnoxious, glib, or too familiar with an editor, particularly at the start. Be committed, and have an idea, but don't give them a reason to call someone else, or to conclude you’re more trouble than you're worth. And don’t blow them off, or otherwise waste their time. I’ve seen this from the other side, assigning stories and even issuing contracts only to have writers disappear, or quit on the story. I won’t ask them for work again.

 

9)  Fulfill the assignment, then do a bit more, then ask if there's anything more you can do.

 

10)  Social media may make you more popular but it won’t make you a better writer -- you only have so many words -- don’t waste them and don’t let social media suck time and energy better spent writing. Think about this: All of Shakespeare would fit on about 70,000 tweets.

 

11) Check facts, spelling, and grammar. Don't make avoidable dumbass mistarkes – er mistakes.

 

12)  If asked what you charge, ask for more money than you think you're worth. Sometimes they say yes – I once sold a poem I’d have given away for free for $350, just because someone asked me how much I wanted for it. But also be prepared to accept less than what you think you’re worth if there’s a chance it could lead to something more. Waiting for the big payday is playing the lottery and about as likely. Careers are built from the accumulation and momentum of many assignments.

 

13)  Try to work in a day a week without words, and find something you like to do that doesn’t involve looking at a screen at all.  

 

14)  Pay your quarterly taxes, and if you don’t know what these are, learn. Set aside 1/3 of all you make to account for this, and learn all about “Business Use of Home” and “Expense Deductions” on your taxes. Expect your income to vary wildly month to month, year to year. That’s a given. If you can’t live that way, don’t try this.

 

15)  Lastly, no excuses. Not the economy, not your relationship, not your day job, not your upbringing, not your education, not anything. The “free” in freelance refers to your time - you control that, something most people can’t say, and that’s extremely valuable.

 

People who don’t write have excuses. And the only real difference between people who write for a living and those wanted to write for a living but don’t, is that at some point those people lifted their ass out of the chair, walked away and quit.

TRIPLE PLAY

I am pleased to announce the near simultaneous publication of my next three books:
The Best American Sports Writing 2011, guest edited by Jane Leavy, series editor Glenn Stout, FENWAY 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Seasons and Fenway’s Remarkable First Year by Glenn Stout, and book three in my juvenile series "Good Sports" entitled Soldier Athletes, a Junior Library Guild selection (for more see www.goodsportsbyglennstout.com). I am proud to say that beginning in 1991 I have now written, edited or ghostwritten more than eighty books with sales in excess of two million copies.

Personally, I am most excited by FENWAY 1912, the definitive story of the building of Fenway Park the 1912 season and the 1912 World Series.[PS to Sox fans: In this book, they win.]

Three years ago I set out to write the definitive account of the creation, design, and building of Fenway Park and to allow the reader to experience Fenway Park in its first year and the Red Sox championship season of 1912. I make use of sources utilized by no other purported history of either Fenway Park or the 1912 season or World Series. I promise that this book will prove to be a revelation for even the most hard core fan of either the Red Sox or Fenway Park and makes all previous histories of the park completely obsolete. Fenway 1912 includes:

-Period architectural drawings dating from 1912 that have NEVER been used elsewhere or been reproduced. To my knowledge these are the only period drawings known to exist.

-A detailed construction history of the ballpark that includes not only the schedule of the construction, but a full explication of the construction methods used and how that impacted the 1912 season and the park you see today.

- A biography of Fenway architect James E. McLaughlin and builder Charles Logue.

- A discussion of the architectural influences that are the reason Fenway Park looks the way it does today.

- Detailed discussions on how the new ballpark affected the Red Sox and the 1912 World Series, and a dramatic and lively reconstruction of both the season and the Series, including the infamous contest between Joe Wood and Walter Johnson on September 4, 1912, perhaps the greatest pitching matchup in baseball history.

- Why the Green Monster exists, why it was built the way that it was, and why and when the name "Green Monster" came into use.

- How changes made to the ballpark over the course of the 1912 season determined the future evolution of Fenway.

- Detailed analysis of the 1912 season, including Joe Wood's remarkable 34-5 pitching campaign, and how two changes - one to his windup, and one an injury to another player - resulted in one of the greatest pitching performances in baseball history.

What the critics are saying:

“Best Baseball Book Ever. If you are a lifelong Red Sox fan, a lifelong Red Sox hater, a rabid baseballholic or merely a casual baseball fan, Glenn Stout's new book, Fenway 1912, is an amazing read into the birth of a ballpark, the 1912 Red Sox and the transition to the modern baseball era. His ability to weave together the tiniest detail and apparent minutiae into a rip-roaring page-turner that is hard to put down is simply amazing.

In the capable hands of Stout, Fenway 1912 promises to make all other books about Fenway’s construction and first season obsolete. While some sports histories are bone-dry and distant, Stout imbues his account with a unique vibrancy and a razor-sharp intelligence. I am amazed at the research that must have gone into this. Anyone involved in this project is discussed: groundskeeper, architect, coaches, owners, players. Even at 416 pages, this wasn’t boring and kept me reading even though I don’t follow baseball. This has got to be THE definitive work on this subject. I can’t imagine even a dissertation that could be more complete.

Fenway 1912 is a book that everyone who covers this team has to buy, and read, and keep handy, so that when people ask us where the bones are buried, we can look wise and have the answer at our fingertips. The author’s meticulous approach makes the book a valuable addition to baseball history. Stout does an excellent job of portraying the differences in the game between that era—when “the owners were the kings and the players lowly serfs”—and today. Throughout, Fenway Park, “a ballpark for the heart and soul,” shines as a beacon for America’s game.

Baseball diehards and historians, and of course Red Sox fans, will find much of interest in this paean to one of sport’s most famous venues. Stout’s knowledge of the sport and passion for the game certainly comes across in his writing, especially when he is uncovering little known details of this bygone era of baseball. The book is full of fun and informative anecdotes about Fenway’s past and present.

Stout has done the impossible: he has put an end to the seemingly bottomless genre that is Fenway Park books. We now need no more. We get not pomp and circumstance, but the bones and blueprint of a legendary ballpark, topped with a star-filled World Series that still endures. He doesn’t pretend history is straw hats and cigars, but gives you real people, real baseball and (the best part) real Boston, the way any real writer should. This is a book for all of us, a wonderful sports book.”

[Review mash-up courtesy Amazon, Kirkus, Booklist [starred review], Publisher's Weekly, Larry Tye, Mike Rutstein, Howard Bryant, Netgalley]

For more about Fenway 1912 or The Best American Sports Writing 2011, see www.glennstout.net All three books are now available for order through any online source in or in e-book editions and are shipping to bookstores now.

My Breakfasts with George

I knew George Kimball through his work for more than thirty years but I met him only three times. It is perhaps some measure of the man that each was unforgettable.

The first time was in the early 1980s, shortly after I moved to Boston after graduating from Bard College. I wasn’t a writer yet – at least I wasn’t published. But I knew I liked poetry and I knew I liked baseball, so each Opening Day I donned an old baseball uniform, parked myself on the sidewalk beneath Fenway Park’s Green Monster and read baseball poetry for two or three hours to the drunks standing in line for the bleachers. The first year a few newspaper reporters looking for local color stumbled upon me so the second year I sent out press releases. George Kimball called me and asked to meet him late one morning at the Eliot Lounge, the legendary Boston marathon bar. I didn’t know what he looked like. “Just ask for me,’ he said. “They know me there.”

I knew Kimball as a writer, both from the Boston Herald and from a story he’d written in 1971 while working for the Boston Phoenix called “Opening Day at Fenway,” which had been re-printed in the fine baseball literary anthology, Baseball I Gave You all the Best Years of My Life, edited by Richard Grossinger and Kevin Kerrane, a source I mined for baseball poetry. The story is more a sketch of characters, about Fat Howie and three cab drivers from Chelsea, and not a game story at all. I figured Kimball might be a kindred spirit.

I walked into the Eliot Lounge for the first time early the next afternoon, a day or two before opening day. I was the only customer and asked the bartender, who I now know was the legendary Tommy Leonard, if he had seen George Kimball. “Not yet,” he said, ‘But he’ll be around.”

As I nursed a beer a figure suddenly loomed nearby, all shoulders and shadow and spoke: “Hi Glenn, I’m George Kimball.”

He was wearing a ratty Army fatigue jacket, boots and a pair of blue jeans, his hair was uncombed and wild. He squinted at me with his one good eye and his face wore something approaching a beard. In short, he looked the way I was trying look. I knew of only two other one-eyed writers and they were both personal; heroes, the poets Robert Creeley and Jim Harrison. I figured I was in good hands.

I was. We talked for the next hour, half an interview and half just a conversation, and Kimball learned I had attended Bard and studied with the prolific poet Robert Kelly. He not only knew Bard, but he knew Kelly. A lifetime before they had both been part of the post-Beat literary scene in New York. As we talked it rapidly became obvious that Kimball had read everything I had and a whole lot more, that he had already lived the kind of life I had only read about, a life full of writing, and writers.

And now he was a sports writer. I couldn’t believe it. After getting out of school with a degree in writing poetry I was unemployable, a security guard and a library aide, but, rather remarkably, I had actually been interviewed twice for jobs as a sportswriter, once at a county weekly in Ohio, and by the Poughkeepsie Journal. Neither had hired me. Yet here was a living example that perhaps those efforts weren’t in vain. Here was someone who, like me, loved sports and literature and, I could tell, was exactly who he was and no one else. It was good to know there was a place for that. And maybe there was a place for me.

He wrote a nice column on me and I read poetry on Opening Day for another seven or eight years. By the time I stopped I had, improbably, become a sports writer for Boston Magazine, and was just beginning my tour of duty as series editor for The Best American Sport Writing and was working on my first book, while working at the Boston Public Library. In a funny way, none of that might have happened had I not started reading baseball poetry outside Fenway Park and been interviewed by George; people remembered the story, and I remembered his example.

I don’t remember meeting George again but we did speak a few times when he called the library for some research help, where I was the defacto go-to-guy for sports reference questions. And on a visit back to Bard once I had run into Robert Kelly and mentioned that I had met Kimball. He had just responded with a smile that told me the memory of their friendship was still real and treasured and told me “Give my love to Brother George.” The next time we spoke, I did.

I met George for the second time a couple years ago. Out of nowhere he sent me an e-mail that he was going to be passing through close to where I live in northwestern Vermont and he wanted to have lunch. I wasn’t going to be around so I had to pass, but a few weeks later he contacted me again. He was on his way to visit his kids, Teddy and Darcy, both of who lived and worked around the Jay Peak ski hill.

I waited for George at a small diner and when he lumbered out of the car, still smoking a cigarette, and I was both happy and sad to see him. Happy to see that he was the same unkempt, distracted wreck of a guy and sad to see that he was so sick. I had known he was ill but it was still a shock to see the shrunken figure of his face and his clothes hanging so loosely.

He just started talking, like we’d talked a hundred times before, and we ordered breakfast. Actually, George ordered twice, a massive pile of pancakes, extra butter, double butter, double toast, and I got it; he knew he was going to die, but damned if he was going to act like he was dying. This was a not a man who was going to go quietly.

Nominally, he wanted to talk about this boxing collection he and John Schulian were putting together, and wanted to know if I thought my editor at Houghton Mifflin might be interested. I gave him her information, but told him it was unlikely, as the book business was bad and anthologies a hard sell even in good times. But mostly I think he just wanted to talk, and as sick as he was he probably needed to take a break from the long drive, and he gave me a copy of Four Kings, his fine book on Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler, and I gave him a copy of the latest edition of The Best American Sports Writing, and we talked about books and writing and writers until the coffee was cold and the last of the melted butter had congealed on his plate. I didn’t expect to see him again.

A few months later, however, I heard from him once more, this time an invitation to meet for breakfast again at a Bistro in Burlington. I walked in and didn’t see George, so I asked a staff person if they had a table for “Kimball” and then I heard a familiar voice say “Are you here to meet George?”

Beer in hand, it was Bill Lee, the former Red Sox pitcher and his wife. I knew Bill a little and we started talking about George and how sick he was, but before we got too far, in he came, with several friends and his son and daughter and their partners and before I knew it I was swept up in the entourage sitting at huge table with about twelve other people all talking at once.

I hardly talked to George at all, but that didn’t really matter. He hadn’t wanted anything but was just being nice and wanted me in the mix. I spent most of the next two hours and two Bloody Marys talking to Bill Lee, not about baseball and not as a writer, but like a neighbor about the kind of things people our age who live in Vermont talk about; cutting wood, making syrup, crossing the border, aging parents and dying friends.

I didn’t see George after that, but I heard from him once in a while on Facebook, and I was thrilled when At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing was picked up by the Library of America, and some friends who knew him better than I kept telling me how he was doing, which was not well, physically, but fabulously otherwise. For as his former colleague at the Boston Herald wrote in his terrific appreciation for that paper yesterday * , “George didn’t ‘fight’ cancer, as is the meaningless cliché. He did something better. He ignored it.”

That he did, writing and writing and writing, to the last second of the last round. I’m just happy to have witnessed a small part of that, which was much more than a legacy, but a lasting lesson.

So today I think I’ll read “Opening Day at Fenway” and all about Fat Howie and three cab drivers from Chelsea one more time. And then get to work. There's alot of things I still have to say.


* http://bostonherald.com/sports/other_sports/general/view.bg?articleid=1350253&position=1

Ten Cents on the Nest of Snakes

Weighing in lightly on the nest of snakes debate raging over over Chris Jones's latest posting over at his always worth reading blog, http://sonofboldventure.blogspot.com/2011/04/absolute-truth.html all I have to say is this:

As writers, I think most of us are motivated by either being for or against something, and that we write either "because of" or "in spite of." I've usually been an "against" and "in spite of" writer, but have recently trended more toward the "for" and "because of," but . . . whatever. The key for all of us is to find the reason to do this, and to keep down the distractions that prevent that from happening, because any time we're not focusing on the work, we're not focusing on the work.

How we reach that place is very personal, and perhaps unknowable, even to ourselves. That, in and of itself, can at times be a distraction, so tred carefully.

The Book and the Plow

When do you know it is time to write a book?

For any non-fiction writer, that question actually represents two questions. For the writer who has not written a book, the question concerns ambition. For the writer who already has, it is a question of craft. In this case, I’m considering ambition.

Whether he or she will admit it or not, most writers, in any genre, and at every level, from the writer who toils on in secret to the newspaper columnist or the magazine feature writer, wants to write a book. Having people read your work is like giving a performance, but having your work appear in book form is like making a recording. Even the best deadline based journalism can be swallowed up in the undergrowth, but books are trees.

Apart from the obvious – you write a book when you have something to say – and the practical – you write a book when you have a contract to do so - the best reason to write that first book is that it will help you grow as a writer. I believe writing a book is about the best lesson in writing any working writer can have. Writing is, in itself, essentially an act of learning and writing a book takes that to a completely new level, both in terms of what can be learned about a subject and what you learn about writing itself.

The transition for any short-form writer – by “short-form” I mean anyone who generally writes pieces under ten thousand words – into writing book length is dramatic, like going from prose to poetry. The tricks and patterns of writing you can get away with while writing in short-form can trip you up in a book.

I might be more sensitive to this than most people. As series editor of The Best American Sports Writing, I read a great deal of longer feature writing both about sports and about anything else that catches my eye. After doing this for twenty years there are many writers now whose work and style I can recognize within just a few sentences and who have produced significant and lasting work. Yet many of these writers have either not written books or done so with only tepid success. What makes their work so affecting when read in six or eight thousand word bursts four or five times a year often doesn’t work in a book. The style that captivates for eight or ten pages can become redundant and tired when spread across 200 pages, the method of transmission formulaic, and the level of observation predictable. There is a reason so few character actors successfully transition to leading roles – the shtick becomes wearisome – and why leading men and women often seem awkward in small parts. Accustomed to playing a large room, when confined they seem to shrink out of proportion.

This is what can happen to writers who suddenly go from writing eight thousand words to eighty thousand, or to one hundred and eighty thousand. When the writer has to inhabit the consciousness of a reader for days and not just a few minutes or perhaps an hour, that relationship changes. Another metaphor – it’s the difference between a one night stand and a relationship, a date and a life.

Not all writers can make that transition. I had an agent tell me once that he rarely accepted journalists as clients for just this reason.

Writing a book changes the process in ways you cannot foresee. Here’s one example: When writing in shorter forms interview with subjects are common, but an interview of more than several hours are rare. But in a book, given the demands of those many thousands of extra words, you sometime share the opportunity – and the responsibility - to go much farther. On at least three occasions while working on book projects I have ended up interviewing someone for upwards of twenty-five hours over a period of months. In each case I got their basic “story” early on in the process, in the first six or eight hours. But what I found remarkable (and surprising) was that each time, as the interviews continued far beyond the point at which a writer would normally interview a subject for a magazine story, right at the point that I felt there was nothing left to learn, each subject dropped down a line of defense that I hadn’t even known was there and gave me something absolutely essential. I’ve had the same experience while doing research. After spending a year or more accumulating material at a level far beyond what I would do for an article, the transformative information that I really needed finally begins to coalesce

So when do you decide to write the book? Most writers know long before their readers when they’ve stopped growing and are writing the same way over and over. When you begin to be bored with only going so far into a subject and feel you are only driving past it - staying a couple of nights there in a motel, as opposed to actually living there - that’s the time to challenge yourself, before the self-loathing kicks in, before you are sitting there thinking “I really should write a book someday.”

How To Write Two Million Words…or so

Several months ago, in his farewell column in ESPN The Magazine, Rick Reilly noted that “My math says this column puts me over one million published words. And that doesn't count books (No. 11 coming up in May), screenplays (two), sonnets, ransom notes and quilts. This is one million too many for many citizens, but the fact remains.”

When I was younger this kind of statement that would send me into deep depression. When one wants to be a writer there is nothing more depressing than having someone quantify what you have not done. I recall being particularly dismayed when I learned that Jack Kerouac had written a million words by the age of thirty. When one has not written anything of merit - or at least published it – one million words seems like, well, one million words, a task so daunting as to be unachievable, like running around the world. One imagines that the writer of a million words must have the discipline of a monk, the typing skills of a graduate of Katie Gibbs, the supple imagination of a jazz musician, the stamina of a marathoner… and either a vow of poverty or a trust fund, because how would it ever be possible to both work and write?

I looked at myself and saw none of those qualities. I liked to have too much fun, laughing and hanging out in bars, and a small nerve problem in my hands made it impossible for me to touch type. The only thing I did every day – beyond the physical necessities - was wake up and read, probably so I would not have to confront the fact that I was not writing very much.

Despite this, in 1986 when I was in my late twenties, after writing in camera for years - mostly poetry - through some kind of dumb luck I finally started writing and publishing non-fiction. In an instant I went from “wanting to be a writer” to “being a writer” and a certain floodgate fell open.

It was not too many years later – I had just turned thirty, hence the accounting - when I sat down and discovered that, rather incredibly, almost accidentally, even I had written a million words. Now this was not a million published words, mind you – there were probably only about 100,000 of those at the time - but if I started in college and counted all the papers I had written and the notebooks I had filled up and scratched over, despite what I saw as my utter lack of discipline, a common imagination, questionable stamina, lack of a trust fund and a regular job that kept me nominally above the poverty line, even I had written a million words.

The realization was liberating beyond measure. Writers were not mysteries, and the act of writing was not some kind of secret sect to which I had no access. It did not entail following a schedule carved in stone, a muse, the ability to work until one fell asleep at the typewriter (a quaint thought…) or the proper pedigree.

No, I realized that most of writing entailed putting my ass in a chair, hitting deadlines and, most important of all, not being intimidated by the process. If I had written a million words by age thirty – and felt that I was just getting started at that – well, writing couldn’t be that hard.* This was something I could do.

I had also started running, and at about this time also realized that running around the world was also achievable as long as I did it in increments and did not let the goal overwhelm the process. For about ten years or so I probably averaged about forty miles a week, which totaled about 20,000 miles and put me on the brink of the running around the world total. And although I no longer run as far or as often, I have still kept it up for more than thirty years and at this point am probably closing in on my second global circumnavigation.

I only bring this up to underscore the point that even while writing a million words one need not stop doing everything else. In fact, I think it helps to do other things, to help turn the act of writing from something so precious that you freeze with anticipation in front of the keyboard into something as normal as brushing your teeth, a part of the daily fabric, not subject to any excuses. At the same time I continued to work full-time until 1993, helped raise my daughter from infancy (and with minimal daycare before school while my wife worked), played nearly 400 games of amateur baseball over nine seasons, learned to skate, ski, and kayak, cut my own wood, built my office, held public office, etc., etc., etc. This does not even include the vast amount of reading I have to do as part of my duties as Series Editor of The Best American Sports Writing. And I won’t even get into the amount of time I’ve spent watching baseball or sitting in bars. I still feel completely undisciplined and think I should be much more productive than I am, but now, after nearly twenty-five years as a professional writer, including the last seventeen on a full time basis, when I add up my published output since 1986, I am closing in one two and a half million words. And that doesn't even include all those poems in the bottom of a drawer somewhere.

When I write that, it does not seem possible, yet there it is. And I hope at least one young writer might find some solace in the fact that if a stiff like me could write a couple million words, well, so can you.

So sit down and get cracking. As long as you start now, there is plenty of time.

Meanwhile, I think I'll take a nap.

P.S. And I still cannot touch type. I only use my thumbs, index fingers and, occasionally, middle fingers on each hand. But I do type at the speed I think.



Word Count:

Illustrated Biographies

Ted Williams: 40,000
Joe DiMaggio: 50,000
Jackie Robinson: 40,000


Red Sox Century: 200,000
Yankees Century: 225,000
The Dodgers: 225,000
The Cubs: 225,000

Nine Months at Ground Zero: 110,000

Young Woman and the Sea: 125,000

Fenway 1912: 140,000


Matt Christopher titles (39): 720,000

Good Sports titles (2): 36,000

BASW Forewords (21): 40,000

Misc work for hire books: 100,000

Articles: 100,000

Boston Baseball Columns: 80,000

TOTAL: 2,456,000


*Understand, I am not equating quantity with quality here. Rick Reilly is not Jack Kerouac and neither am I. All we have of Sappho are a few scant fragments, a few thousand words at most, and I would gladly trade my millions for her few. Believe me, I get that. But there was a time when Sappho was probably intimidated by the act of writing as well.

CHIN MUSIC: The Neighborhood of Baseball

Whether you realize it or not, Red Sox history does not reside in Fenway Park. Red Sox history – at least Red Sox history from about 1901 thru 1980, when newspapers became available electronically – resides at the Boston Public Library, in the vast collection of Massachusetts newspapers on microfilm retained in the Microtext department.

Red Sox history – in fact the entire history of the city and the Commonwealth – are in these newspapers, in papers like the old Boston Post, where Paul Shannon was one of most colorful sportswriters the city has ever seen, in the Daily Record, where Dave “the Colonel” Egan drove Ted Williams batty and pushed for integration before it was popular, and in the Boston Chronicle, where my late, great old friend Doc Kountze covered the athletes the rest of the Boston press did not, African Americans like Malden sprinter Louise Stokes, the first African American woman to make the U.S. Olympic team, and semi-pro pitcher Will Jackman, who threw a submarine knuckleball and might have been as good as Satchel Page. That’s where the history lives, in those thousands of newspapers from every corner of the state.

I know this because when I worked at the Boston Public Library I spent years helping to administer millions of dollars in state and federal funds to film and preserve these collections. And in those collections I found my calling as a writer and author, a career that now spans more than two decades and nearly eighty books of one kind or another that have sold a couple million copies, most of which could not have been written without the resources of the Boston Public Library’s Microtext department.

But times are tough, and as far as the City of Boston is concerned that old building in Copley Square –the one that the city has spent gazillions fixing up over the last twenty years –is a nice place for parties and things like that but all ‘dem books and ‘dat stuff are just for ‘dose eggheads, not regular people from ‘da neighba’hoods, right Mr. Mayor? What about the neighborhood of baseball? Doesn’t our vote count? Libraries and librarians are easy targets – they don’t save lives in dramatic fashion like policemen or firemen, they save one mind at a time in ways that are hard to see but just as important.

But I digress. Red Sox history is being sent in exile. The city wants to close the Microtext Department at the BPL which cares for, services and houses newspapers and other collections on microfilm, the department that literally provides access to the history of not only the Red Sox, but the Bruins, the Patriots, the Boston Marathon, the Boston Garden, Fenway Park, the old Boston Arena, the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Harvard Stadium, Boston College, … you get the idea. The city wants to close the department, move some of the film to the hard to reach City of Boston Archive Center in West Roxbury, disperse the rest to other BPL departments, can the staff, squander decades of institutional knowledge, and use the space they recently spent gazillions renovating for the department, for, oh, I don’t know, weddings or cocktail parties. Once they do that the ability to do the kind of research it takes to write a serious book about Red Sox history becomes almost impossible – having the resources you need in one place, at one time, is invaluable and irreplaceable.

I know this not just from my own experience, but because when I was at the BPL I helped local sports writers like Steve Buckley and national guys like Sports Illustrated’s Frank Deford use these resources. I remember one guy in particular I helped – named Halberstam. Won a Pulitzer Prize that helped stop the Vietnam War and wrote a really great book about the Red Sox - Summer of ’49. Ever heard of him?

He could not have written that book without the BPL, and neither could Dan Shaughnessy have written The Curse of the Bambino, Howard Bryant Shut Out, Richard Johnson and I Red Sox Century, Ed Linn Hitter, Leigh Montville The Big Bam or any other author, like Buckley or Bill Nowlin or Bill Reynolds, who have written anything worthwhile about Red Sox history. None of these books – none - could have been done without the newspapers on microfilm at the Boston Public Library. Fenway 1912, which I just finished and comes out next year, would have been impossible.

And here’s the really, really awful part. This is supposed to save the city money. But this department, like much the Library, actually earns back every dime a hundred times over. I am just one of thousands of writers who use or have used the Library, who make special trips to Boston just to use the library and end up spending money on a lot of other things, or have lived in Boston, in part, because the Library was one of the places that make Boston a place worth living. Every book written by any writer on any subject who has used the Library – we’re talking thousands of books that have sold millions and millions of copies, here – pours money right back into city coffers every day of every week.

But if they get rid of the Microtext department and exile and disperse Red Sox history, this won’t happen. All those books still waiting to be written about the Red Sox just won’t get written. The neighborhood of baseball – and the City of Boston – will be poorer for it.


To complain, email, write or call Amy Ryan, President of the Boston Public Library aeryan@bpl.org, or Jamie McGlone, Clerk to the Board of Trustees jmcglone@bpl.org, 700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116 617-536-5400, Mayor Thomas Menino,mayor@cityofboston.gov, 1 City Hall Square, Boston, MA 02201-2013 , 617.635.4500, or attend the BPL’s Annual Meeting on Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 8:30am, at the Copley Square Library.

Note: This column will appear in the May 2010 issue of Boston Baseball.

Memory of a Writer

As close readers of The Best American Sports Writing know, the Guest Editor makes the final call each year. Unless I am asked, I stay out the selection process. That keeps the book from getting stale, but sometimes one gets away. The late Jeff Felshman of the Chicago Reader wrote a story in 1994 called Blind Alley, which was cited in “Notable Sports Writing of 1994.” I went to school with Jeff many years ago, and don't recall whether I had put 2 + 2 together at the time and realized that CR's Jeff Felshman was the same guy I had known in college, although I became aware of it later. It was an empathetic, slice of life account about a group of people who bowl, despite not being able to see.

Earlier this year Jeff Felshman contacted me through some mutual friends on Facebook, and reminded me that I had selected his story on the notable list, but what he really wanted to tell me was that some years ago he had interviewed a someone who had worked with me at the Boston Public Library, and Jeff just wanted me to know that this person had spoken highly of me, a kind gesture he did not need to make, but did, and also the kind that tells you a great deal about someone.

Two days ago Jeff Felshman passed away of a heart attack. This morning, the day after Thanksgiving, I looked up the story in the Reader archives and read it again. Now I wonder how the hell it didn’t make the book. The Best American Sports Writing 1995 was the shortest edition BASW ever published, and now I wish it had included one more story.

So what am I thankful for this season? Among many things, writers like this:

"

...There's been a steady stream to the bar, but even among those who don't drink the scores drop off as the day goes on. The third game is the worst. Diane hasn't struck once since the first. Howard hasn't yelled "Mark it!" in a while, either. Beverly dropped from 104 to 46, around Andre's average. Her partner Jim Regan, the only bowler wearing shades (besides Kai Okada, who can see), rolls at the same time as Andre, who says she can't tell which pins go down "but I can hear a gutter ball pretty well." Regan's roll was his last of the day, and he says it didn't make any difference that Andre was on the line next to him at the same time. Bowling in tandem doesn't bother the blind bowlers.

"It probably bothers the sighted bowlers," Regan points out, "but they haven't said anything."

"Well, they're probably just being polite," Beverly says, "but we should watch out for that."

"If they don't say anything, how are we going to know?" There's such a thing as being polite to a fault. Regan goes on, "It's the old thing where you're sitting in a restaurant with somebody and the waitress asks, 'And what does he want?'"

"What do you mean?"

"It's like you're not there--"

"Oh yes," Beverly laughs, "I know what you mean. My daughter has a good line for that. She says, 'She's blind, not brain dead!' I like that."

"Anyway," Beverly continues, "this game, it's just luck. I'm just waiting for these lying excuses about why things went wrong. I'll hear 'em before the end."

But the end is here. Kai collects the score sheets and reads them off to Virginia, who enters the scores into a hand-held tape recorder. The bowlers gather around the bar to wait for the results. Three couples take over a table to the right of the bar. Mike and Jodi are engaged to be married. Mike, a partial who bowls with a monocular, rolled a 242 in the midwest tournement, and with Jodi is odds-on favorites to win today. Jackie and Howard are swirling their stools, hugging and laughing. Howard's in high spirits. "I've been living with this woman for ten years, and still got no piece of paper. You know why? Because I love her, that's why! We don't need no goddamn piece of paper."

To read the rest of the story, or more of Jeff Felshman, a writer worth remembering, and reading, follow the link to the Reader archives or Jeff's own site.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/blind-alley/Content?oid=884958

www.jeffreyfelshman.com

AUTHOR VISITS TO SCHOOLS

Over the past decade I've periodically made visits to schools talking about writing and motivating kids to read. There is nothing more gratifying in my line of work that to have a teacher tell you that your books have turned a non-reader into a reader, or inspired someone to study writing. Educators tell me that my presentation is unique in that it reaches students from age eight or nine thru those in high school and that it targets male students as well as females. As some teachers recently wrote me after a visit, "Thank you for emphasizing the importance of reading as well as having goals in life and working hard to achieve them. Our students really enjoyed meeting you... It was great for the students to see a real world connection to what we talk about every day... You have really inspired a great number of our students... thank you for saying ALL the right things to my students."

Next October, the first title in my new juvenile non-fiction sports series, "GOOD SPORTS," will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. After penning thirty-nine titles in the Matt Christopher sports biography series for Little Brown from 1996 thru 2006, I'm ecstatic to be writing for this market again. Each title in the GOOD SPORTS series will profile several athletes, historical and contemporary, highlighting inspirational "life lessons" in their life and career. The first title, Breaking Baseball's Barriers, profiles Hank Greenberg, Jackie Robinson, Fernando Valenzuela and Ila Borders and explores how individuals have dealt with bigotry and still pursued their dreams.

In support of this new series, I've decided to make school author visits much more regularly. I've recently sought input from educators and made several successful visits. For more information please see my website www.glennstout.net, and click on "Author Visits" on the right side of the page or follow this direct link:

http://www.indiepro.com/glenn/?page_id=58

[Note: the photo is of young Trudy Ederle]

BASW 2010 Guest Editor is...

I am pleased to announce that the guest editor for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's The Best American Sports Writing 2010, the twentieth annual edition which was first published in 1991, is noted author, baseball authority and occasional guitar hero Peter Gammons. For submission guideline and other information, see www.glennstout.net or The Best American Sports Writing on Facebook.