This week we had the pleasure of interviewing Charles Curtis, sports reporter for USA Today’s For the Win and Middle Grade author of The Weirdo Academy series! What happens when you suddenly develop super human abilities during football tryouts? Play ball of course! Check out what Charles has to share with us about sports, journalism, and handling negative feedback.
I see that you focus on sports and entertainment. What sparked your interest in this field?
I spent a lot of my childhood and teenage years steeped in pop culture (my mom’s influence, particularly with classic movies) and sports (thanks dad!). I thought I’d want to be a screenwriter or a playwright, but when I started writing a sports column in college, I knew that’s really where I wanted to focus my professional career.
What drove you to write about sports instead of being a part of them physically?
I think my athletic prowess limited me to only playing for fun (although I did make my high school’s junior varsity tennis team, it was too much of a time commitment to do that and work on the newspaper… now there’s some foreshadowing!).
Have you ever been a part of any sports teams growing up? If so, which ones!
Just that tennis team and one basketball squad—mostly because I was tall—that played a super-intense game during my camp’s color war competition,.
You’ve written about NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, golf, tennis and NASCAR. Do you have a particular one you favor writing about?
I still love writing about the NFL, but there are a lot of negative things going on with football that make it tougher to enjoy. The NBA is probably the most fun to write about and watch. There are also some quirky things in golf that I like focusing on— strange rules, and fashions that divide old school fans and young die-hards.
What is it you strive to achieve in your writing?
I’ve always loved telling stories, whether it’s to get a laugh, to teach someone something they didn’t know or to paint a scene in great detail in the hopes the reader will feel like he or she is right there. I hope that in my writing— both journalistic and creative—I can combine all of that into one style.
How do you handle negative feedback in your writing? Do you receive a lot of flack from other sports fanatics?
I used to not have a thicker skin about critics, but I realized that was a part of writing for a large audience. I now take negative feedback or disagreement as a compliment—it means people felt so strongly about something I wrote, they took the time to talk about it. With social media, I’ve gotten a lot more flack, but I occasionally engage with some of the more constructive critiques and find people are so happy to hear a response. I also know that writing something divisive means it’s starting or advancing a conversation, something that’s vital in my line of work as a sportswriter and blogger.
How do you gather your information? Do you have a preference?
For my books, it’s mostly combining my love/expertise of sports and my knowledge of comic books (I had over 1,000 until I sold them a few years ago), science fiction and pop culture. In my day-to-day, it’s seeing what fans are talking about in the world of sports and then, as I mentioned, joining the conversation or starting one with a reported story, a collection of great/funny/weird moments on video, analysis or opinion. I do all that through keeping an eye on social media and watching the games themselves.
How long did it take you to complete your book? Do you have any advice for first-time authors?
It took me about 2 years to finish my first. I didn’t have a deadline on it since my agent told me to write it first and then he’d shop it around. So while I worked in my day job as a journalist, I took a few nights a week to write a few pages. When I finished, I did another draft and a few more polishes later, it was finally good to go.
My advice would be something I didn’t do myself but that I wished I did: Start out writing your story first as an outline, completed start to finish, with a plot. I wrote both my books without one, so there would be weeks where I’d have to stop and say, “What should happen in the next chapter?” It worked out fine, but I bet it would have been faster to take the time and work on an outline first and then jump in.
It seems like you’ve got a great start, but what’s next? Do you have any big plans for the future?
No big plans at the moment—I have thoughts on what Book 3 in the Weirdo Academy series might look like, especially because I ended the second one on a cliffhanger. But I’m focused more on my work for USA Today and parenthood at the moment.
What drives you to pursue your passion in writing?
As I kind of said above, it’s the joy I get out of entertaining people. There are times I think about how other people do much more important jobs than mine, but there is a place for giving everyone something to laugh about, cry about, learn about, or something that inspires them. If I’m able to accomplish that, it brings me pleasure too.
