The other night I settled back into my recliner (or life-chair given the time I’m forced to spend in it) to watch an N.B.A. play-off basketball game.  My hound was in the hunt, though the legitimate underdog for multiple reasons.  The game see-sawed back and forth and even went into overtime.

My team lost but I turned the television off with a huge sense of pride and satisfaction, despite the point differential. It got me thinking about what winning and losing really are.  My team had played with heart, had left nothing in the locker room.  They never quit, never stopped trying.

I just couldn’t see them as losers.  And given my propensity for (often neurotic) perseveration and self-centeredness, I began to apply the question to my own life.

Music rushed through the door.  It’s an area where I confront the sense of failure more often than not.  The excuses came hard and fast: I never learned to play an instrument or even had a music lesson as a kid.  Didn’t try the art until I was past fifty.  Muscle memory is really difficult at my age, music is math and I count on my hands, everybody has more experience than I–but all the rationalizations rang hollow.  And while I can play some, the truth is, after the first six or seven years I stopped giving it everything I have.  Stopped spending the long hours woodshedding necessary to become adept at what I knew was going to be a really difficult do.

I wish I could explain why that occurred, but it did.  Perhaps I couldn’t hear the musical “voice” like the writing voice that came naturally to me.  Or the honest realization that I’d never be able to move my fingers fast enough no matter how hard I tried, or my inability to place the upbeat where it belonged despite my daily work with the metronome.  Maybe I found my limitations too painful because I truly love music.  Love a musician’s ability to move me, to make me feel.  And it’s frustrating because I actually know the difference between plowing everything I got into something or not.

Writing is a perfect counterpoint.  Never made a best seller list.  Never had more than 40 people attend a reading.  Still, there wasn’t a moment I doubted that my books were better than good.  Had I, I wouldn’t be working to digitalize them.

Of course, some of that belief came from critical acclaim.  You can’t be a Times Notable and get other good reviews without reinforcing your own positive feelings.  But the sense of pride I have in the work actually comes from within.  I know the energy and effort I gave.  I’d wake up in the mornings with my characters whispering in my ear, I’d struggle a day or more to write a paragraph exactly the way I wanted it to sound in the reader’s ear.  If called for, I spent holidays at my desk, gave up vacations, and virtually lived inside my head until the book became what I wanted, needed it to be.

After I left Random House, I worked with a different agent who suggested I stop writing Matt Jacob novels. At that time, mysteries were dominated by woman writers (a super good thing since they had been barred since dirt) and detectives entering into one sort or another of rehab programs. I’d have better sales if I created a whole new set of characters and milieu. So I worked on a different kind of novel for nine or ten months but it just wasn’t there.  The characters didn’t talk to me, I was loathe to go into my office, give up weekends, or live in my mind.  Called the agent, thanked him, and quit writing.

When I look back at my writing life, despite the anguished period of it, I feel as I did after that basketball game.  I’d given it everything I had.  The points weren’t there, but I was a winner.

And when I start a new Matt Jacob novel after all the previous ones are up and running,  I’ll need to have close  to the same desire and commitment  ’cause if I don’t, the quality I strive for will be missing and, if it is missing, I’ll just walk away again.

But I’ll have to find a way to do this without giving up all my time because I plan to press ahead with music in a far different way than before.  I haven’t been allowed to lift any of my saxophones for months and it’s amazing how much I miss it.  Though I simply don’t have the natural talent that I do as an author, so what?  I’m not going to become another Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Hank my cousin, or Bob my teacher.  But I can work harder, practice more, become the best that I can.  I don’t have to compete with Ben, Dex, Hank, or Bob to win.

Last Saturday and Sunday night the two teams played again.  Both times my team won–once in another overtime.  It pleased me as a fan, but the game I’ll remember will be the game that we lost.

“Inspiration exists , But it has to find you working.” Pablo Picasso