Writing Challenge #4

          This week's writing challenge was: Respond to a quote from the Inspirational Quotes gadget in 500 words or less.

          On Thursday night, I logged on and wrote down the quote from the Inspirational Quotes gadget:

"When you do the best you can, you never know what miracle is wrought in your life, or in the life of another" (Helen Keller).

The Spark

The team is down 0-3 by the end of the first half. With thirty-five minutes left, it is understandable that the team is discouraged, but all it takes is one player to go out there and win every ball. You could be the best player or the worst, but regardless you have the power to turn this game around. So you jog out there, are on your toes as the ref checks the goalies, and on the whistle, your head is in the game. You are there to attack, you are there to tackle, and you are there to win. You are the spark.

As Helen Keller once wrote, “When you do the best you can, you never know what miracle is wrought in your life, or in the life of another.” To settle is to accept, and to accept is to give up. It’s like booting the ball up the field and thinking, “Well, I did my part. I’m done.” But why stop there? Chase after that ball! Offer support! Follow through.  

Success should always be one step ahead of us; we take one step, it takes two. Otherwise our stopwatch comes to a halt, and until we press “Resume” we are stuck in that time. And sure maybe we’re scared of what might happen but who cares? As my coach always says, “It’s never a loss if you take something from every game.” So we mess up. That’s life! We’re human! But with every mistake comes a lesson, and perhaps losing is even greater than winning because it gives us something to work towards.

But it isn’t always about us, either. We have a team to make proud, and for our team we must be strong. Maybe we don’t care about the glory after scoring a goal, but think about it as for our team. Determination is easily shed once loosened out of us, and it catches like that one line from that song on the radio. “Go...Go...Go.” Can you hear it? Kinda makes you want to join along, huh? “Yes...Yes...Yes.” Soon the whole field is chanting the chorus. “We can...We can...We can.” All it takes is one spark to light a fire.

          On Friday in class, I started out with answering the question, "What does this quote mean?", basically summarizing the quote in my own words. Then, I did a free-write where I jotted down whatever came to mind when I heard that quote. This was a bit of a challenge for me because sometimes I want to make it perfect the first time, but this time I didn't cross anything out; I just wrote non-stop until I thought necessary. I suggest putting a time limit on yourself. For example, write down whatever comes to mind for 10 minutes straight, non-stop writing.

          After I completed my brainstorm, I read over my ideas and started formulating them into a paragraph. As I got to the end of my list, I got hooked on one idea I had jotted down: on the soccer field: all is takes is one payer to go out there and win every ball, be there at every throw-in. It's contagious.

That idea stuck. Instead of trying to weave in all these different ideas I thought: why don't I just stick with this one? After all, I had a lot to say about it considering my soccer coach reminded my team of this every game. In fact, it was he who called this player the "spark", and I expanded on it to make the metaphor, "All it takes is one spark to light a fire."

          I pressed "Enter" a couple times and then started to re-write. ( NEVER DELETE YOUR WORK! YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU MIGHT USE IT. IF NOT FOR ONE PARTICULAR PIECE, MOST LIKEY ANOTHER LATER ON.) This proves that nothing is ever perfect the first time. I was already about half-way done and I started over. The famous poet Mary Oliver says that she will rewrite a poem about 50 times before she's finally content.

         However, the two versions were still very much the same, just with different focuses and in a different order. At first, the first and second paragraph you see now were reversed, with the quote being the first line of the free-write. However, I switched them to change the focus from all about the quote to soccer, and the spark player. Also, I thought that this organized the free-write more because it wasn't just scattered thoughts forced together, which it somewhat was at first.

          The ending line, "All is takes is one spark to light a fire," was originally the last line in the first paragraph at first, but I moved it to the final line in the entire free-write because I thought it was a great way to sum it all up. The "chorus" in the last paragraph used to be the same every time repeated, "Determination...Determination...Determination." But I thought this was too repetitive, and the word "determination" had too many syllables to be repeated so many times. At first the first paragraph was in the general sense, but I changed it to the "you" sense because my mom and I agreed it sounded more powerful. (PEER EDITING IS REALLYYYY HELPFUL!!!)

          This was a great challenge for me. When I first decided upon this challenge, I thought I would have to do a great deal of editing to get the free-write down to 500 words, but I actually found myself trying to add things because it was originally only about 350 words! In the end I was able to get it to 412. However, an important thing I had to remember was NOT TO MAKE THE ADDITIONS FORCED, because otherwise they would be like aliens compared to all the other lines. I had to RE-READ it multiple times to see what could be expanded on a bit, but if there was nothing then I would've just left it because that was obviously all I had to say to that quote! This is what made this challenge a free-write; because I just wrote what came to mind and tweaked it later.

Yours,

Megan ;)