Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Ernie Clement was devastated after his team’s stunning Game 7 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2025 World Series. But it wasn’t because of the loss. 

“The only thing I can think of right now is spending this last night with all the boys … I’m just going to miss them in the off-season. I couldn’t wait to come to the field every day and just hang with everybody. I’ve been crying for probably an hour. I thought I was done with the tears, but I just love these guys so much. It was just so much fun coming to work every day and battling with these guys. We have so much to be proud of, even if it didn’t go our way.”

Sports quotes are rarely genuine, often relying on hyperbole or cliche. But this was as real as it gets. Even in agonizing defeat, Clement was raving about the daily monotonous grind of baseball. The aspiration to marginally improve every day from April to October. And he loved doing it with his teammates. This is baseball. 

This is also writing. It’s best done every day, with a community that is passionate about the process. 

Managing the count. Line-level edits. Making contact. Tense agreements. Threatening to steal third. Shifts in point-of-view. These efforts improve essential details that complete a season or story. Making the right decisions on the page or the field doesn’t guarantee victory. Losing is still the likely outcome. The Blue Jays tragically lost. Writers constantly lose when their pitches or stories are rejected. It’s hard to predict wins or publications, but you can always find joy in the pursuit, as Clement lamented after a historic heartbreaking loss. 

In some ways, losses are more memorable than wins because they force you to revisit the process, home in on your habits, and lock into the details. Losing is agony and regret forever. There’s endless joy and conversation in revisiting what went wrong or revising a story until it screams off the page.

Winning, or publication, is a release or ending. Countless times I’ve workshopped stories or books with friends. We talk about the stories for hours and months. Then they get published and we never talk about them again. There’s nothing left to debate or revise. This is both necessary and sad, because like my dear friend Tim Loperfido says about the agonizing writing process: “this is as fun as it will ever get.”

It did get a little more fun for me last week when I received the review copies of my short story collection, HANDS. It was an actual book. I held it in my hands. Flipped through the pages. I could see the words, but, overcome by emotion, I was scared to read them. A book is something that I imagined would forever be stuck in the endless writing process. There would always be more revisions to make, more swings for the characters, and an endless effort to heighten the stakes. Yet, here it was, in my hands, nearly at the end of the process. 

The feeling was surreal. The first thing I thought about was all the 5 a.m. alarms so I could work on the stories before work, the middle of the night emails to myself when an idea appeared in my semi-sleepy state, and all the workshops and conversations through the years. I can identify individual sentences in the book that were the result of specific feedback from a trusted reader. Even in victory, flashbacks of the process dominated my emotional reflection. The book is a collective effort of so many folks who contributed to the words on the page or provided immense emotional support throughout the writing process. The greatest lie of every published book is that only one byline appears on the front cover. In my case, the front cover should name countless teammates who contributed immensely to the final product. I can’t believe it’s almost finished. 

Before Game 7 versus the Dodgers, Clement said:

“You know, no matter how tonight goes, this is the most fun I’ve ever had playing baseball … So you know, in a way, you don’t want it to end, but we’re just going to enjoy it. It’s one last game with my favorite team I’ve ever been a part of. So you know, win or lose, it’s been a hell of a year.”

I second everything Clement said. Writing this collection has been a hell of a journey. I’m excited to finish this run with all of you.

Hands (Cornerstone Press) will be published on April 21, 2026. Subscribe to this website for more updates!