When I watch a football game, or catch the highlights of a basketball game later that night, I find myself thinking about what kind of story I could draw from this. Yea there is the action of the game, but behind the curtain lies something far bigger. There you find the stories behind the game; the injuries, win streaks, pressure, contracts comebacks, and egos. You learn what it took for someone to get to where they are today, and how even athletes are people, incase we forgot.
A person could write about every single story, but unfortunately there isn't always that much time available. When this class first started, and I found out we were going to have to write two 2,000 word pieces, and one 5,000 word piece, I was a little nervous. I had written long pieces before for research papers. but never have I really sat down and knocked out a paper of decent length. The truth was, I had never really written something so creative. It had always been essays, but writing about sports allowed me to take a different approach. It isn't always about writing the story and putting it in perfect order, sometimes you need to move things around, pull in other stories. As fun as drawing the webs from stories in class were, at first I never really saw the point. Then as I sat down to write my first paper, I found them to be helpful as they allowed me to tell the story and not worry about losing the readers interest.
When it came time for the final piece, I was actually looking forward to getting back to work, as this was the final hurdle. As on the other two pieces I found myself in no dilemmas, and had amassed 7,000 words without even realizing. Look at that I've done it again. Overall this class has been really helpful, and I learned things in it that will certainly stay with me past my time at Cortland. Plus it helped me realize I enjoy writing more than I had thought, so that was always nice too.
