The Nose Knows

Two competitive sports have dominated my life since I was in college - one is fencing and the other is rugby. They are what I am made of and they define me in ways that continue to surprise and enlighten me.

What have I learned from fencing that I can apply to my writing? Today I fence more competitively than I did twenty-four years ago, when I first picked up a blade. Fencing has more texture in it now. I'm more present, less overwhelmed with performance anxiety - less in a rush to simply play and more able to notice the nuances of the game. It is a pleasure of individual moments - the scoring of a touch from a parry riposté, the aching in my legs from muscles that are exhausted from extended bouts, the locker-room smell of my uniform when it has been soaked with sweat, the feel of the blade's grip against my wrist as I strap it down.

I used to play almost exclusively team sports, first football, then rugby. These days I don't need to be surrounded by a team. I have found that, having both failed and succeeded on my own many times over the years, I am not as afraid of failing by myself as I used to be. For a good part of my life the pressure of competing individually has been overwhelming. I competed in Judo and fencing and did not do well in either of them so I exited the competitive lists after short careers. I can still hear the audience chanting, "Choke, choke, choke," during my first and only Judo bout, as the pressure of my opponent's arm on my windpipe tightened and I started to see stars. Today I am no longer struck dumb by the pressure. I learned how to make peace with it through my work as a public speaker and as an actor doing improv work for five years where the pressure to come up with wit (something I'm not especially good at) was as intense as any stress I've ever experienced. And of course playing rugby - attempting to catch a ball as 250 pound forwards careen down field looking to separate you from the ball the moment you touch it - well, that's helped too.

I fence épée. It's been called an older man's weapon, and a thinking man's weapon. It's also a direct descendant of the weapon used in a duel, unlike both foil and sabre, which are far removed from their ancestors. I've never credited myself with being a thinker, but part of the joy of fencing for me now is that I do think when I fence. I study my opponents and try to apply what I can do, to what I know about them.

I think of each story I write as a puzzle that I have to solve. Novels, essays, short stories, plays - each is a puzzle of some kind that I have to play with, probe, attack and defend against, until I find its heart and pierce it. What I love about writing is my knowledge of and awareness of its texture - it's plot, it's structure, its story arc, the creation of characters through words. It's one thing to write and another to have some level of awareness of the process of writing, to feel poised over the discovery of a plot point that has eluded me for three drafts, or to be aware of the idea for a new novel and watch it percolate for a full year while I work on other projects because ithis one is not yet ready to be born.

What did I take from playing rugby for sixteen years? The ability to bludgeon myself time and time again in the hopes of scoring - even when the opposition is bigger, faster, and tougher - even when my nose has been broken and bloodied. My list of injuries stacks up pretty handily against the number of rejections I've received. Times my nose has been broken - twelve (hence my nickname - Joe Nose). Times I was rejected by agents before I signed with my first one - seventy-four. Number of stitches in my head - last count, over thirty. Number of short story rejections - over two hundred and fifty and counting. Number of other broken and dislocated bones - twelve. Number of times I've come home and checked phone, email, and snail-mail hoping to hear about a publication offer - five-thousand eight-hundred and forty-one - more or less.

If you've scored even one try playing rugby you'd understand why you keep chasing after the white ball - because you must. It's been said, writers write because they have to, but to succeed in writing you need something more. Sure, luck never hurt anybody but it doesn't keep you in the game year after year. Persistence is key. So is a nose for the try-line. Know when you're close and don't give up until you place the ball on the ground beneath the goalposts. As my rugby-mates used to say, "The nose knows."