You know, I don't like to shake things up, as much as people think I do. I don't sit down to my laptop and think "what's controversial?" Really, I don't. Mostly, I write because I have to. There's something vaguely cancerous about holding words back. Since I was in elementary, somehow words flowed out of me and I could usually work them together. Sometimes it was stories, songs, or even just trying to convince that girl that just because I was short (and I was up until high school) that it shouldn't mean that we couldn't be 'good friends.'

There was college, where a chance meeting with a writing teacher led me to take it seriously. Jim White saw something in me and tried to hone it, despite my best resistance and while he birthed a series of short stories from my addled brain, it was a short lived burst of wordsmithing.

I'd convinced myself that writing wasn't something I could do. It never went away. I'm proud of those stories and hope they find an outlet someday. I'll finally send my novel out into the world, finish the Dalkowski novel, the Rushford bio, and about six other projects that I have bubbling in the cauldron, but my first love is baseball.

I could write like this every day, but while I can be a little free-formish here, I'm boxed in by format and success with UTK. It's informational and that's ok. I occasionally sneak in a phrase or passage that I like, that's good work outside of the data, but of all the BP works, mine's the least readable.

But I like what I do. Love it, actually. I'll keep trying to improve while providing information, but I've also discovered something else. I love helping writers almost as much as I love writing. I'm not sure where that will lead, but I never expected to BE a writer myself. I never expected to write books or coach pitchers or get major league people on the phone at all hours.

All is good in this small part of the world. For right now, that's enough.