The Bread Loaf Tennis Tournament was created so that the students and the teachers could take a break from the serious work in the classroom and have a little fun. I had played college tennis and had proudly left that part of my life behind me. I entered the tournament as an attempt to make connections with new people and to get my nose out of a book for a while.

            As the luck of the draw would have it, I was to play a teacher named Ken Macrorie. Many times I would be in the library trying to write a paper, and I would hear the distinctive “pock” (silence) “pock” of tennis balls being hit and the occasional exclamation or expletive at the conclusion of a point. The red clay courts were right next to the Davidson Library, and students and teachers would play in their afternoons and do their reading and writing at night. They simply were on a different schedule than I was on.

            Ken, who was in his late sixties at this point, would wear his terrycloth hat to soak up the sweat generated by his movements on the court. He was an avid tennis player who revealed his passion for the game by his continual presence on the red clay.

            I knew it was going to be a mismatch from the start. I was in my twenties and had grown up playing junior tennis, so I borrowed a strategy from another important mentor, Thay Butchee. At his club was a man by the name of Joe Davis who had won SEC Championships several times for Vanderbilt University in the forties. Since Joe was in his early sixties or early seventies and Thay was in his forties, Thay would hit every ball down the middle of the court and wait until Joe made a mistake. Thay later told me it was a way he could make the game competitive and at the same time work on being more consistent.

            I adopted the same strategy with Ken. After the match, he came up to net, saying, “That was a real pleasure, and you are a real gentleman.” He was a bright man. He quickly figured out my strategy. At that point, I decided to take Ken’s class the next summer.

            The next summer radically changed the way I taught students how to write because of the many gems of wisdom Ken bestowed upon his students. At one point, he came up to me and said, “Bobby, you need to write a book called “The Inner Game of Writing.” At first I was confused. Me write a book on how to write? But then I saw what he was getting at.

            In the mid-seventies, a man named Timothy Gallwey published a book called the Inner Game of Tennis.  Gallwey had reached an important round at Kalamazoo, the National Championships for the 18 and under Boys, and had choked on a big point to lose the match. He went on to Yale and played tennis there, and after college he became a teaching pro. He directly addressed the relationship between the teaching of technique and playing the game of tennis. At the time he was teaching tennis, the philosophy of teaching centered on the idea that the student break down the components of his shots intellectually, and then he will be able to put the components back together to create better shots and then hopefully win more tennis matches.

            What Gallwey noticed is that players could drill well but couldn’t necessarily win tennis matches and that players became incredibly self-conscious and paralyzed when they played because they “thought too much.”  In The Inner Game of Tennis, Gallwey described the battle between what he called Self One and Self Two.  Self One is the doer or actor while Self Two is the critic. As Self One performs an action, Self Two will provide a critical judgment. After a tennis player loses a point, he or she will hear the sometimes harsh condemnation of Self Two.  The next time the player is involved in a point, he or she might move slower if Self Two is not in its place.

            Well, what has this to do with writing? When you write, do you notice the presence of Self Two ready to pounce on every mistake? Does this slow your writing down? Does this interaction prevent you from writing?  If it does, there is a problem.

            I would argue that Self Two comes from the voices of your well-intentioned English teachers and parents. They wanted you to perform up to certain standards, and they wanted you to do the best you could. (I have learned that many of the so-called standards are bogus and many have interesting stories in themselves. Another topic for a Hub page?) Should we attempt to eradicate the voice of Self Two from the picture?  I would argue that in tennis it should place a lesser role than it should in the game of writing.

            The process writing approach to writing that evolved in the seventies and eighties, roughly the same time as the publication of Gallwey’s book, stresses that there is a place for Self One and Self Two. The act of free-writing where one might write for a certain amount of time with out correcting any errors, is an attempt to place Self Two on the sidelines and allow Self One to do his job. There are some writing theorists who argue that anyone who can talk to himself or herself can write. Most of us have a Niagra Falls of thoughts flowing through our brains at any moment.  At this point, the act of writing becomes an act of transcription.

            During the act of revision is the right opportunity for Self Two to emerge. The English language can be a squirrel darting from one place to another. The best of writers are guilty of wordiness, use of the passive voice, redundancies or weak language in their first drafts. It is the job of Self Two to polish up the language and help the writer put his best foot forward.

            For many people the problem with writing as students was not that these people couldn’t write; the problem was that they were adolescents who had difficulty with time management and prioritizing tasks.  The reason many high school students turn in shoddy work is that either they didn’t have ownership of the piece of writing because they were writing for someone else or that they quickly got this task out of the way because they wanted to practice their sport, listen to their music or neck with their girlfriend.

            “Okay I have a new strategy” you might be saying to yourself.

            Well, yes and no.  I had a girlfriend who played hockey at Harvard (When we would fight, she would check me against the wall!) and was a much better writer than I. She used the approach of stringing together a series of well-crafted sentences in a disciplined approach.  I used to joke that because I had attended a rigorous Southern prep school, I taught her the difference between who and whom, and because she came from a progressive innovative school in Vermont, she taught me how to write. However, after some reflection, I realized that she attended a prestigious Northern prep school. Isn’t it funny how the act of writing creates wonderful revelations?

            So which is the best approach? I think you have to make this decision on your own. What approach works best for you?  I think it takes a certain amount of courage to write, and the approach that helps you to get words on a page… or on a screen is the best one for you. However, I am a firm believer in separating Self One and Self Two when one writes.