Golf and Writing: How Do They Relate?

It is no surprise by now that I love to golf; anyone who knows me will agree to that.  Golf is not a challenging game physically, but it is mentally.  It takes a lot of practice and persistence to even be able to hack yourself around the golf course, while praying to God that you don't take a ten on the hole.  But once you become good at golf, it's a lot of fun, and as you look back on all of the hardships that you had faced to get there, you realize that it was all worth it and that you had learned valuable life lessons along the way.


Obviously it is a little hard to golf up here in Wisconsin in the wintertime due to the snow and the ice.  There are heated driving ranges which golfers can use, but they are just not the same as hitting off grass.  Often I find myself struggling in the spring to find my swing; I'm out of practice, and I have lost the rhythm and tempo of how I usually swing a golf club.  If you're not a golfer, it is hard to identify with that, but to a golfer, losing your swing is like losing your left arm -- you'd give anything to get it back.  As the spring turns into summer, my swing usually comes back, and I am able to shoot my usual scores which makes the game a lot more fun again.  I can only find my swing through practice and persistence though.


I compare this to writing.  When I was little, I LOVED to write -- I even wrote a twenty-four chapter "novel" when I was ten.  After I had finished that massive amount of writing, I was so pleased with myself and so happy with how it turned out.  As I read through it now, I find grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, fragments and run-on sentences, but I realize that I would not be able to write as well as I can today if I had never made those mistakes in my adolescence.  Writing takes practice, just like golf.


I still love to write now, but now I find that I only write for school, I never write for fun.  Right now I'm out of practice for writing poetry and short stories, all I know how to write is reports and essays.  I feel like if I can get a chance to  write and compose creatively again like I used to, I would enjoy writing a lot more than I do.  I feel like if I just practice and keep going, I will find the creative voice that I had as a child.