The Longest Thing I’ve Ever Written: Coach Van
About a month ago I started writing a scene in a notebook about an assistant basketball coach who was obsessively watching tape of a loss she’d just suffered on the biggest stage of her career.
I had no plans past that scene, but today I finished typing word 26,714 of the second draft of that story. That’s the most words I’ve ever written about anything!
For a lot of years, a lot of people have told me “You should write a book.” Oftentimes that felt encouraging because it meant they thought I could do it. Most of the time it felt intimidating because I had no idea how to do it.
I don’t know if this story is a book, because having a story finished and having it published are very different things. But I do think it’s worth sharing, and getting feedback, and seeing what happens from there, and so I’m doing that and celebrating it.
Here’s the pitch:
A former basketball star, her career derailed by injuries, is given a life-changing opportunity to coach at the highest level. Can she overcome self-doubt and bring her team together to compete for a championship?
I kind of think of it as a basketball “Ted Lasso” / grown-up Matt Christopher story (he wrote books I loved as a kid like “The Kid Who Only Hit Homers”).
If you’re interested in reading it and letting me know what you think, please email me at jed@kindandfunny.com and I’ll send you a link.
And if you’re interested in hearing about why I think this happened now, here are three reasons:
Writing a lot
I started this blog with the express purpose of writing more without (my own) judgment, and I took that concept to the next level recently by embracing “Morning Pages,” a practice from the book The Artist’s Way that recommends writing three pages every morning of whatever you want, without stopping yourself, and then moving on and never looking back to judge them. I think this story started in the Morning Pages, and then flowed from there.
I will say that writing a lot is pretty time consuming. Like, Kelly would ask me if I was having fun writing this story and I would usually answer, “I don’t know, I just sat in one spot for a few hours and a bunch of pages came out, I don’t even know if they are good or what they are for.” I’ve heard people say that a first draft is just you telling yourself the story, and that makes a lot of sense to me now.
But getting used to writing down words and not worrying why was a big step in the process for me.
Getting poetic license from F1: The Movie
In the new F1 movie they go to a bunch of continents and a ton of locations, and the only thing someone eats or drinks is a little bit of one beer. (One person holds a coffee cup for a minute, but it’s clearly empty.)
I don’t say that as criticism—I really enjoyed the movie, and I think the camera work and stunts were a huge evolution in filmmaking. I say this to say that I used to struggle with figuring out all the little details of how things happened, but I realized that writing about sports allows you to skip over a bunch of that and just rely on the internal logic of a game or a season to carry the plot.
We don’t need to see Brad Pitt eat a sandwich, or even drive in qualifying heats. We just need to see him on race day, and only maybe a little part of it. Giving myself that same permission allowed me to get through a story without stopping myself.
Borrowing personal details from Kelly
You know the disclaimer in movies where they say something to the effect of “Any similarity to actual persons is a coincidence”? Well, even though this is a fictional book, lots of the specific details of the main character’s injuries and even a couple of specific stories I’ve just ripped off imported from Kelly’s actual life.
So far Kel seems flattered, but I still wanted to acknowledge how grateful I am, because while the main character is an invention, it’s built on a backstory that I actually know.
If you don’t know, Kelly can ball, and also one of her college coaches Lindsay Gottlieb did coach in the NBA, and also Kelly had ankle injuries that cut her career short. Maybe other writers are able to make up everything—good for them! I borrowed a lot from this cool person:
Still interested? Here’s the prologue:
Pregame
“Jackson has it on the right side, with Diambe down in the post …”
Again.
“Jackson has it on the right side …”
Again.
“Jackson has it …”
She’d been in the video room for hours, which wasn’t out of the ordinary for Vanessa, though usually it was because she had work tomorrow. Thanks to the clip she was studying obsessively, work had ended today.
Was she studying it, Van thought (everyone but her grandmother called her Van), or was she punishing herself with it? She hoped it was at least both, mostly because Van wanted the pain she was feeling right now to mean something, to teach her a lesson like a hot stove, a lesson she’d only have to learn once and then she’d never have to feel the pain again.
“Five on the shot clock. Jackson rises up …”
It wasn’t so much about watching what happened anymore. Van could see the play with her eyes closed. Jackson shoots, the ball caroms awkwardly, and Diambe …
No, she wasn’t looking at the play anymore. Well, she was looking at it, over and over and over again, but she wasn’t seeing it, was instead seeing all that didn’t happen, all that should have happened, and everything she could and should have done during the season to make sure those things happened.
Somehow, though she wasn’t on the court for even a second, Van felt sure this loss was her fault. She was convinced she should have seen something earlier, something that could have prevented Seattle from being up only one with eleven seconds left so they didn’t have to chance a lucky rebound. Something she could have told Coach …
Where was Coach, Van thought to herself.
As late as Van usually stayed in the film room, Coach Stiller was still always the last one to leave, but tonight his office was dark already.
Already. What time was it, exactly? Van wasn’t sure. For her it was still the fourth quarter with 2.6 seconds left in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, and Mo Diambe was about to tip in the game-winning basket.
Van hit play.
Want to read the rest and give me some feedback? jed@kindandfunny.com.