However great is the joy of being with your best friend, there will come a time when things are not perfect. You have to seek out smart people and you have to listen, and you have to store up all the information, as well as the thoughts and words, that come from that.Smooth sailing is always a temporary thing, even in friendship. “You’re only as smart as the people you talk to,” he said. But he also meant, you do your best every time out, don’t you ever mail it in.Īnd then there was Tony Kornheiser’s advice to me as a young writer at The Washington Post. He meant within the confines of a deadline, of course. “Don’t ever let a thing out of your hands until it’s as good as you can make it,” he said. What’s the single best piece of advice anyone ever gave you? Like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, saying, “Yeah Boss,” while I chop at the ground. I am a prisoner breaking rocks with a shovel. If you had to use a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be and why? He said, I’m paraphrasing, there’s a point where you’re stopped and scared, and you have to tell yourself, what are you so scared of, and move past it. I read something once that the songwriter Paul Simon said. If you take the chance – and revise with discipline – then the chance will reward you with quality. You’re almost never punished for taking those chances. I’m also surprised at how everlastingly scary it is, to sit there and court incompetence and to take chances with words. Because you don’t know what will happen, when the invisible thing that really holds the pen or hits the keys starts moving. That’s why you have to sit in the chair for four hours. I mean stuff just appears – and you don’t have any freaking idea why or how. I am stunned at the words that come unlooked for. What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life? I’m pretty proud of that because I know how I worked at it.” I have one strength and one strength only as a writer: I work at it. And I know that I at least worked at it, so I can hold my head up over that.Īnd then, a lot of times, it’s published and other people tell me they like it, and I re-read it, and I think, “Well that was pretty good. And after the third, I’m not happy but I’m not mortified. But at the end of the second draft, I’ve at least untangled the string. Sometimes I do cry – because I’m a cat-in-yarn incompetent who can’t organize a simple sentence. Frequently when I read over my first draft I feel like crying. Those revisions are like eating day-old oatmeal. So, if you’re doing the basic math, 70 percent of what happens comes after the initial inspiration. And the difference between the second draft and the third draft is another 35 percent of improvement. The difference between a first draft and a second draft is about a 35 percent improvement. And it’s a stunning thing: if you will do that, if you’re willing to sit there fearfully but faithfully in front of a blank white screen and just try for a few hours, then you will produce a page or a few pages that are fixable, improvable, until they become coherent.īut then you have to revise.

You have to sit in the chair for at least two to four hours for something worthwhile to happen. What makes something conveyable is the regular work. But if it’s not married to method, regimen, it’s useless, it’s just a scrap of paper floating on a breeze, flying away from you. That there is no such thing as writing without discipline and structure. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?

A native of Texas, Jenkins graduated from Stanford and lives in Sag Harbor, New York. Her work has been featured in Smithsonian, GQ and Sports Illustrated. She is also the author of “ The Real All Americans,” the historical account of how the Carlisle Indian School took on the Ivy League powers in college football at the turn of the century and won. Jenkins is the author of 12 books, four of which were New York Times bestsellers, most recently the No.1 “Sum It Up” with legendary basketball coach Pat Summitt.

She won the 2021 Red Smith Award for “major contributions to sports journalism,” the same prize her late father, sportswriter Dan Jenkins, won in 2013. In 2013, she earned a first-place AP award for “Do No Harm,” an investigative series, co-written with Rick Maese, on medical care in the National Football League. She has been named the nation’s top sports columnist by the Associated Press sports editors four times and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2019. She was previously a senior writer for Sports Illustrated.

Sally Jenkins is a sports columnist and feature writer for The Washington Post.

Evermail nude