My strength is basically my get off. It is overpowering. I can get after the quarterback on first, second and third down. I pride myself on being an every down guy.
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.
I turned down the first script offered to me, and the second. I lay on my back one day under an umbrella, in the garden, reading the third, and wondered why I had turned down the first.
When people think of me, they think about me knocking catchers down and knocking second basemen down and yelling at pitchers. But when I took the spikes off after the game, I was a nice guy when I went home.
I write a very rough first draft of every chapter, then I rewrite every chapter. I try to get it down in the first rewrite, but some chapters I can't get quite right the third time. There are some I go over and over and over again.
I feel as though I'm nice and that I'm down to earth, and - people like me get taken advantage of. So by being tall and outgoing, people mistake that for being overpowering, overbearing, loud, and being a bully. No, no I'm a flower.
Everyone knows with a rookie, you're going to take lumps. Even with a first-, second-, third-year guy, you're going to take lumps until you gain that experience. But for me, it was nice to get out there and get the experience and do it. I'm a guy that has to do it.
Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you're called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can't ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn't written anything for a year.
I will only think of settling down after Salman Khan, the other most eligible bachelor, plans to settle down. We are eligible bachelors, but he's the rock star, so let him get married first; then I'll think about myself.
Every person and every team will be tested on their journey. It is part of the curriculum of life. It's just like riding a bicycle. In the beginning you're going to fall off and get knocked down but the important thing is to get back on, stay strong, and after a while once you master it you'll ride with the confidence of a champion.
I'm a Christian first. I'm a family guy second. As much as I like coaching, as much as I like basketball, it's third, fourth, or fifth down the line.
If the principle is, "Let's not get lethal substances out to the public", the first one you'd go after is tobacco. The next one you'd go after is alcohol. Way down the list you'd get to cocaine, and sort of invisibly low you'd get to marijuana.
For many women, going back to work a few months after having a baby is overwhelming and unmanageable. As strange as it may seem, things get even more difficult for a working mom after the second and third baby arrive. By that time, the romance of being a modern 'superwoman' wears off and reality sets in.
I'm usually a panster and throw ideas down on computer the second they hit my brain. I even had to get off the treadmill to write down my ideas. It's a great place to 'zone out' and think about my plots and characters.
Basically, I don't ever move too far past the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, because it's of first importance. And I make sure it's of first importance with anyone I'm talking to. It all comes down to that, really, when you get right down to it. So it's not complex. Jesus removed our sins and guarantees we can be raised from the dead.
That's something that I do pride myself on: making those tough and contested catches, whether it's in the red-zone or on third down.
The first act is the easiest to plot. The second act is always the hardest to plot. Generally a good, you know, sometimes the third act can be difficult because you can get into a rut in the third act - everybody runs to their Corvette, has a chase, and you catch the bad guy.