As I sit here in front of my steam driven computer (it needs upgrading - I think), I was wondering about my latest story.
Opening up a PM from one of my dear friends over the pond, she was aghast that I was actually posting on Thanksgiving Day, then realising her mistake (I'm from the UK) she backtracked slightly.
That wasn't really the point of this post, but it did make me think once again about differences in culture and in particular sports.
My latest story has football (soccer) element in it. After sending the first chapter to Gabi, my wunderbar editor, I mentioned that the story would probably have a limited appeal because of the fact that it had chunks of football in it.
When I read stories with baseball or American football, I tend to skip over the sporty bits as I don't really understand the games.
I was wondering whether anyone else does that and if a sports oriented story puts people off reading or not.
Anyway, for my American friends, I hope that you had a nice thanksgiving and didn't get too stuffed with pumpkin pie (sounds revolting, but I love pie, mash and liquor* so who am I to talk).
Hugs
Sue
Comments
Pie and Mash...
Not so bad. I'm half Danish, and you should see some of the disgusting things they call food. Green parsley sauce stirred up with mashed potatoes? Ha ha, the rugged Danes laugh at such children's porridge. Eels? Piffle. try lutefisk and gammel Ole, a nasty sort of cheese which comes in levels of stinkiness right up to "run screaming out into the street and burn down the house immediately after serving." Of course, after a whiff of gammel Ole, even lutefisk tastes good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk
And gammel Ole afficionados --- hardy souls all --- have been known to keep skunks around to freshen up the air.
Cheers,
Puddin'
P.S. I loathe all types of sport involving teams, although I do enjoy sailing, but I'd rather do it than watch it. I crewed on a racing yacht for a while. They kept me around because I was the lightest, and so very handy for working the bow clearing jenny sheets and the like, but I usually had the best and most exciting views...
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Keep it coming
As long as it is comfortable for you, please write about the football. I love the club stuff. I just got my copy of Worldwide Soccer Manager (Football Manager) 2009 and so I am thinking of creating a Melchester United. They sound better than Manchester United anyways *grins*.
Samirah M. Johnstone
Sublime and the Inane
As a sports fan in general, I think all sports (and some games) consist of the sublime and the inane. Yet the rhythm and flow, the history and the personal connection make most of us enjoy one above all others. For me, the sport that is closest to meshing with my soul is hockey, with it's connotations of locker rooms, the rink, trips, shinny on the lake, joy, and heartbreak (or bone break).
WALL -E
Your soccer story, like most stories, appeals to different people for different reasons.
I recently watched the computer animated full-length feature "WALL -E". It is a facsinating film about romance between two robots in the far off future. Pixar pulls out all the stops on the animation so that when a real person is interjected into the movie it isn't at all jarring. Of course, the character is played by the cartoonish Fred Willard, which helps.
The film seeemingly is aimed toward a younger audience, but relies heavily on sophiticated jokes. For example: the only "living" things that survived the ravished Earth are cockroaches and Twinkies. What chance would anyone under twelve have in perceiving the humor in chemical preservative base of a Twinkie? Yet, that part of the story seemingly doesn't detract from the wonder of this film for a young child.
When I wrote "Baseball Annie" I was faced with the spectrum of audience -- from those who had only heard about baseball, to the baseball fanatic. The comments I received ranged from "I didn't understand a word of the baseball jargon, but it didn't stop me from reading the story" to a long letter picking apart the baseball minutiae to a level that redefines the term "fanatic".
The real danger in writing a story like yours is that you will have to be quite disciplined when it comes time to "kill your darlings". This editing process is attributed by some to Twain and by others to Faulkner. Simply put, you are meant to take out anything in your story that draws attention to the writer -- and away from your story. If your details about soccer break the suspended disbelief by causing the reader to think of the author -- it should be cut -- if it adds to the texture of the story, for even just a few, and doesn't disturb the story for the majority, it should be kept.
So far your soccer story has done a wonderful job of walking the line.
One other point. What fun is it to read, even fiction, if you're not learning something along the way?
By the way -- aren't all computers used for writing fueled by hot air?
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Part of life
Sports are a part of life and it does add another dimension to the character and story. Also it gives me a little more insight to people or characters. Especially when their choices are based on emotional responses. That allows me to see the "true" person rather than the "mask" that they present. Although the inner workings of professional sports is over my head, I can understand the passion to excel. Hugs and love, Cindy
T-Giving Day & Sports
Why not post on Thanksgiving Day? Not everybody is wrapped up with families on holidays, and some who are might like a break. I'm glad you posted, Sue, it gave me something new to look at.
As for the sports, I glaze over any descriptions of sports, be it American or U.K. or Mexican, or Canadian or whatever. If the story plot hinges on a sports detail, I'll probably give up eventually. But that's me, others no doubt feel differently.
KJT
"Being a girl is wonderful and to torture someone into that would be like the exact opposite of what it's like. I don’t know how anyone could act that way." College Girl - poetheather
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
I started playing 'soccer' my first year in school, i
in California, in 1951before moving to a less enlightened part of the state, where they said 'soccer@ What's that?'
After that it was hit or miss. I next played it 5 years later in a private school, and then another 5 years later in my firs two years of college.
Other than that, though, it has been watching it as a spectator, and unfortunately, most of what we can get is broadcasts only in foreign languages I do not understand.
I used to watch the English leagues, and enjoyed it, but we no longer get the broadcasts.
But, I like your story, and that includes the condensed descriptions of the game. It is not only necessary to your story, but enjoyable.
We didn't have any pumpkin pie with our Turkey dinner, either, though that is because 2 of the 3 of us BC/TS authors are diabetic. I love it. It is one of my 3 favorite dessert pies, after Cherry and Apple, which are even more sugary, boo hoo.
We just had Turkey, Roasted red potatoes, and a second veggie dish of Zucchini, and Crookneck Squashes, with Mushrooms and lots of garlic.
One of the most difficult things to give away is kindness.
It usually comes back to you.
Holly
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Holly
Border Ball
I grew up on the California-Baja California border and soccer was a popular game there. Also popular was a variant called Speedball, basically soccer with a few Rugby-style rules added. In junior high, the girls played soccer during P.E. while the boys played basketball and the boys played Speedball while the girls played volleyball. In high school, the boys switched to gridiron flag football instead of Speedball. This was in the 50s and 60s.
Soccer is now much more common in the US with Youth Soccer replacing Baseball and Softball as the predominant organized sport for pre-teens, except in areas where outside temps lend themselves to playing hockey on ponds and lakes. Especially for boys because hockey is cool, it involves long sticks and sharp objects. :) Girls in those areas often play Lacrosse which is a Native American game a lot like weaponized-soccer. :)
Soccer was always popular as an unorganized sport among kids along the Mexican border, parts of Florida, New York and New Jersey and in and around St.Louis, Missouri.
The only real problem for most Americans with stories involving UK football is that the terms used are not as familiar. Americans may know how to play soccer but they don't much know how to talk about it. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Not Unknown, But Forgotten
Soccer(football) is a very common activity in American school physical education classes, for the same reason it's a very popular sport elsewhere in the world. All you need to play is a ball and a bunch of people who want to play. Well, in phys ed class, one out of two is usually all you get, the wanting replaced by an instructor with a whistle and the power to mess up your ability to graduate school.
So, a lot of Americans get hands-on experience (which is unfortunate, because it's hard to learn to avoid the reflex to block passes with your hands) in school, not for the love of the game, but because an instructor mostly is trying to get you to run up and down a field for exercise, and it's an easier way to keep a bunch of kids doing unsupervised aerobic exercise than some other methods. But, as far as learning the fine points of the game, or developing any skills, or even learning what anything is called, for 99% of the students forced to run around outside during gym period, that's not part of it. Blame the instructors for not caring, or for not being fans, or blame soccer for never developing a foothold in American professional sports, unable to compete with baseball, American football, or even ice hockey. For the latter, you can also blame American commercial television. Advertising is so much easier to do effectively when you have natural interruptions in a sporting event. Soccer is continuous. Baseball has seventeen intervals (each ideally suited to broadcasting a few adverts) between inning halves, and additional ones every time a pitcher is substituted. American Football has more interruption than play. A game with one hour of "clock" time runs at least 3 hours in the real world, four if it's the hype-itudininous Super Bowl.
Without commercial sponsorship, team television contracts suffer, and without that income stream, it's very hard to build first-class stadiums, attract first-class talent and develop a first-class audience. And, it's very hard to get kids to care about the sport in the first place in school, when they're being given the chance to actually play it for the first time.
So, don't assume that we have no idea at all what the sport is, but do assume that 99% of us have never seen a professional-caliber game played.
Soccer Soapbox
Okay I tried not to get up here and rant, but I can't hold back.
There are many differences between European football and U.S. soccer, but most of them are in how we train our players.
Manchester United's u-19 team will play one game a week during its season which last more than two thirds of the year. USA u-19 soccer players will play two to three seasons a year and an average of 2-3 games a week. So the European players play about as third as many games as the US players and get ten times as many ball touches. US coaches can't get it through their heads that there's only one ball on the pitch during games for 22 players to share, whereas in practice good coaches run drills where every player has a ball.
US soccer seems to be more about providing entertainment for parents than it is about player development.
Only the exceptionally motivated US players can sustain a game day edge when "game day" is every other day. And, the number of injuries goes up dramatically when players take part in weekend soccer tournaments that have them playing five and six games in three days.
Clubs need revenue so they can afford to send players to tournaments, which are put on to create that revenue. It is a woeful tiger devouring the players along with its tail. A pitiful outgrowth of the too many games is the low quality of available officials. Anyone with a whistle can officiate because clubs are begging for them.
The answer is simple. Clubs need to stick to a ratio of one game for every three practices. Laughably simple and NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.
End of rant.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Soccer vs. Softball
I think this is related to the way softball developed in the US. Softball originally was a player-organized sport, and frequent games instead of frequent practices were the norm. After softball got organized, this proportion continued. After soccer replaced softball as the most common organized youth sport in America, the same proportion was also realized.
Softball is a less strenuous and less aggressive sport than soccer. Playing everyday or every other day in softball is doable without major risk of injury. Not true of soccer or even basketball (which also spread as a mostly player-organized game). Softball takes much more equipment and a much more prepared field than soccer, so it has lost out in areas where cities have cut back on expenditures to maintain public playing areas. Softball also requires the teaching of many more skill sets than soccer and more obviously requires a trained umpire rather than a referee who is mainly on the field to prevent mayhem. :)
Everyone thinks they can coach or ref soccer, it looks like such a simple game. Like Go. :)
Gridiron football is a much more dangerous game and obviously so and has mostly throughout its history been organized top-down, even before it split off from rugby. My father had never even seen an American football before he turned fourteen and made a trip to Witchita, Kansas.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Soccer Is Strenuous
I've been told that a player who plays the entire soccer game puts out effort the equivalent of running a 10K.
Who would ever think of running 2 - 3 10Ks a week?
By the way, I coached soccer and US football and officiated US football for many years. Soccer is now much more dangerous to play than football based on the number of injuries -- per participant -- that require a visit to an emergency room. Snowboarduing and biking seem to be more dangerous than either football or soccer.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Equipment
Yeah, gridiron football is usually played with at least a good grade of protective equipment and some decent supervision. Soccer, less so. Snowboarding and biking, similarly, are engaged in with less equipment than they should be and without someone properly in charge.
I actually do know some runners who would think that two 10ks in a week is about right. :) I'd have to say though, that very few players and very few games of soccer involve that much effort.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Gymnastics
I think gymnastics is the most insane sport as far as injuries are concerned. The stresses that competitors place upon their often tiny bodies, the damage that will hurt in the long run, is darn close to child abuse as far as I am concerned.
But I am not surprised by soccer having as many injuries as you state, particularly since many games are played on poor quality pitches. However, I would guess that football (and other physical sports, like hockey) is prone to more catastrophic injuries.
No Such Thing As An Old NFL Player
The average age of death for American males is 78 and the average age of death for those who played three years or more in the NFL is 57.
Gymnasts are the root of all evil according to a sports medicine expert I know. He said the roof blew off the top when Bela Karoyli's eight hour a day training camps and 900 calorie per day diets became the standard. It all depends if you value self-esteem and a lack of eating disorders over Olympic medals. Thanks to fools like him female gymansts rank #1 in ACL injuries per 1000 participants.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Except for the fact
Yes, people think that it is easy to referee soccer. But when I challenge loudmouth parents to actually do it, 99% fail miserably. For one, it is extremely physically demanding to referee. Almost as much as players get per game and referees almost never have less than 2 or three matches in a day compared to one for players.
That being said, I agree in many ways with what you are saying (along with Angela). There needs to be more skill-building and less play for the teams to develop. That is one thing the Federation has been working on for players lately. The youths that are chosen to the National Team program will practice more and play less honestly. And we are slowly getting there.
*grin* One more thing Erin, you left out Texas *wink*. There are few places as strong in soccer as the state of Texas.
Samirah M. Johnstone
No disagreement
I'm not sure what you think you're disagreeing with me on, everything you say is pretty much in line with my points. As far as Texas goes, I did say all along the Mexican border which includes Texas. Anyway, I was talking in that paragraph about where soccer was popular as an unorganized kid's game in the US decades ago, not where it is now.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Getting a kick out of reading this
No actually, like any good story there is a plot based on an anchoring theme, as pointed out it could have been baseball, or swimming just as easily, and more believable than science fiction or magic (though only those two paths would help me change.
I'm looking forward to the completion, with many chapters between now and then.
Sports and Pumpkin Pie
I have never been a fan of sports, so I'm not particularly interested in reading about any of the various competition sports.
On the other hand, I enjoy stories like The Price to Pay. Soccer is a part of story; and a part of the soul of the POV character. Removing it would diminish the story. I may not be particularly interested in sports, but the well-written accounts in that story are enjoyable, and they give me insight into the attraction to sports.
Part of the attraction of reading is the ability to experience what one would not otherwise experience.
I have read the first part of Football Girl, and I look forward to reading more. Please don't remove parts in an attempt to please others. In doing that, you would diminish the story. While there is some justification for writing for others, it's more important that you write for yourself. If you can't fall in love with your own story, you won't be able to put that indefinable extra spirit into it that makes it special.
Now... Pumpkin pie...
It's wonderful stuff. No, it isn't chunks of pumpkin shell or slices of summer squash (marrow) shoved into a pie shell. It's more of a custard flavored (flavoured?) with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger.
Do you have sweet potatoes (yams) across the pond? You can use mashed sweet potatoes instead of mashed pumpkin flesh (we often use butternut squash, BTW) to make the custard. It is essentially a mixture of the mashed orange stuff, milk, eggs, sugar, and spices (you can google for a recipe if you like) poured into a pie shell and baked. We like to top it with whipped cream before serving it.
I was going to grab the last piece, but someone (probably my teen-age son AKA bottomless pit) beat me to it.
Ray Drouillard
Pumpkin Pie
I know that a friends sister spent some time in Germany on the student exchange program, and missed Thanksgiving that year. Her hosts trying to cheer her up asked her about her tradition, and when she mentioned Pumpkin Pie they were totally grossed out. Apparently pumpkin is usually pickled over there from what she told us.
I can only imagine what the thought of a pickle pie would be like... yuck! Of course, that is not at all what Pumpkin Pie is like, as Ray points out.
Hugs,
Kristy
Sweet Potatoes...
sometimes called Yams, although only distantly related to the indigenous African yams, are grown and consumed all over the world, as are vegetable marrows, many varieties of squash, courgettes, the latter all related. The pumpkin is a variety of squash, and they too are grown and consumed all over the world, with the exception of Antarctica, not widely known for any farm crops.
All of these were the inventions of the inhabitants of the Americas, "Indians," as that idiot Columbus called them, First Nations as they're termed in Canada, or Native Americans in the USA by the politically-correct and some indigenes. In the USA, "Indian" is a legal status, along with Inuit, so the term is current among most indigenous tribal groups, although not favoured by many, some of whom prefer "First People" or First Nations, in solidarity with their cousins in Canada, and most prefer their own names for themselves when referring to local issues. Alaska, a recent purchase/conquest is a different story, and Alaska Natives have a different status under US and Alaskan law, as do Native Hawaiians, another recent conquest.
Because their importation to Europe, the UK, Ireland, and elsewhere is moderately recent, they don't have the same history of ubiquitous consumption as in the Americas, and various regions have their specialties and niche markets.
Cheers,
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
As someone who does a lot of reading...
This seems fine to me. For some examples...I regularly read a webcomic called Misfile that, in addition to TG elements, contains a lot of American Midwest Car-culture (and I know nothing about cars, and have little interest in cars). I enjoy reading Harry Potter, which manages to get people interested in a sport that doesn't even exist (Quidditch). I've read plenty of stories based in places with unfamiliar geographical references (I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I know nothing about Australian Geography).
Don't avoid putting culture into your stories. If anything I'm happy to get a fresh perspective. :)