Writing My Ticket: Introduction
My motivation to write was simple: I wanted to go to sporting events.
Seriously, what could be better than being at games just like the writers I grew up reading? My dad’s Sports Illustrated subscription was the gateway and the sports sections in The Province, The Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail and The National Post were just as formative. As I got older, websites like ESPN.com and Grantland became my go-to sources. If writing was the ticket in, that’s what I would do, too.
My efforts began in Grade 7 when I was responsible for the sports page for my elementary school’s newspaper, The Ross Road Scoop. We published a monthly edition and I wrote capsules on the school’s sports teams (basketball, volleyball and track and field, which I competed in myself) as well as updates on the Canucks. I also included items on the Vancouver Giants, who reached the Memorial Cup that season, and the Olympics, which took place in Turin. I still have copies of every Scoop we printed, and I cherish them as a keepsake.
In high school, I did some blogging, approximating what it might’ve been like to cover games that I watched on TV or went to as a fan. Then from 2011 to 2013, I attended the College of Sports Media in Toronto to get formal training, which led to an internship with Yahoo Canada and soon after my first job.
From the outset, I snapped up media passes every chance I could get. I would happily cover anything, as long as I got a byline out of it. As it turned out, the opportunities about to come my way were well beyond my youthful imagination.
Over a few years split between Toronto and Vancouver — and with datelines from Seattle, Portland, Dunedin, Fla., Boston and Rio de Janeiro as well —I was fortunate enough to be at some of the biggest games in Canadian sports and encounter a few of the world’s most iconic athletes. It was the fulfilment of a childhood dream.
However, what I couldn’t properly anticipate before then was what actually went into being a reporter on assignment. One of the early realizations, for example? The locker room isn’t a fun place to hang out. It’s a workspace for athletes and therefore the presence of an outsider is tolerated and certainly not celebrated.
As such novelties like locker-room access became part of my reality as a sports writer, the thrill of taking in these events in person was soon relegated to a secondary consideration.
My column — the mechanism that granted me that privilege in the first place — became the priority.
Not every story requires a clever lede or an incisive conclusion that ties everything together but there is a writing standard that needs to be reached. I embraced the challenges and responsibility that came with a media pass.
In college, I had a quote printed out and posted on my dorm room wall: “It doesn’t matter what you write about. All that matters is how well you write.”
I’d read it in a profile of Frank Deford, a legendary Sports Illustrated writer, who was recounting advice from his editor, and I took it to heart.
To that end, Writing My Ticket is a collection of essays that will be published on this blog. Including this introduction, there are 30 in all, covering a wide range of assignments from my time as a sports writer.
Each experience either provided me with an important lesson or increased my confidence in my ability. My hope with these essays is to offer insight into the writing process and perhaps even some inspiration for anyone with similar aspirations to the ones I had.
These days, I apply what I’ve learned as an editor for The Athletic. I enjoy collaborating with writers and there are a number of stories we’ve published that I’m immensely proud to have worked on with them.
While my job has changed, my interest in the craft hasn’t wavered. If anything, it’s only gotten stronger.
I’ve increasingly expanded my horizons beyond sports over the last few years, reading books like Jon Franklin’s “Writing For Story,” Stephen King’s “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” and Chuck Palahniuk’s “Consider This: Moments In My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different.”
I also found books on filmmaking to be a great resource. A friend gifted me Syd Field’s “Screenplay,” which delves into “the foundations of screenwriting,” and Sidney Lumet’s “Making Movies” and William Goldman’s “Adventures in the Screen Trade” and “Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade” are compelling reads that I recommend to any creative person.
Closer to home, my mom recently self-published a travel memoir, “On Foot in France: An Unforgettable Adventure on the Camino de Santiago.” I helped edit her manuscript and in the process, I was reminded that writing is such a crucial part of my life — even if the output is modest and the subject matter is personal.
I find great power in producing a document — it can be just a few sentences, like a film review on Letterboxd— that distils connected thoughts, feelings and ideas into a coherent argument or narrative that creates emotional meaning.
There are some practical reasons for following through with my own writing project as well.
Firstly, there’s a very modern explanation: I want part of my free time to be more mentally enriching than aimlessly scrolling through the apps on my phone.
It’ll also reinforce that writing isn’t easy, and give me perspective to relate to the writers I work with in my capacity as an editor. To be honest, completing this introduction was a bit of a struggle. Compared to the rest of the essays, which focus on one day or a few days, it was difficult to decide what was most relevant in setting up the series. I certainly felt the self-conscious pangs of vulnerability about sharing stories where I’m squarely the protagonist, too.
But in the interest of instigating purpose into that habit again, whether it’s scribbling in a journal or typing on the computer, I’m heeding a tried-and-true writing prompt: start (or perhaps, in this case, restart) with what you know.
Here’s to it being the catalyst of a new journey as a writer.
The essays will be posted on this blog in the range of the 10th anniversary of that event. Only the next essay, which will go up a week from today, falls outside that window.
I’ll be publishing other essay collections on this blog as well, with more information on those to come.
Israel Fehr 
That is a fantastic post to read. I know you will enjoy revisiting the moments of your writing career And thanks for the promo for my book. I am grateful that you took the time to help with it.