TONY ROMO WRITNG COACH

via nwscholasticpress.org

Tony Romo is getting great press as an NFL color commentator. His MVP showing in the AFC title game earned him the sort of career extension anyone would hope for.

And he’s a second year guy in the booth.

What if Tony Romo was a writing coach, as good a writing coach as he is football analyst?

If you had a guy like this for back up, what would you ask him, because he’d know the answers?

Dear Tony,

I’m a memoir writer. Once I was a screen writer. Before that I was a micro-fiction guy, then an essay guy. Now it’s all non-fiction blogger stuff.

Here’s my question: Is it important to focus on one thing? You were a football guy, a quarterback. Did you play other positions, other sports? And did they help you become the best quarterback you could be?

I’ll wait for an answer, but while I’m waiting, here’s one more.

I got this thing in my neck two years ago. It was a tongue deal but way back so they called it neck. At least that’s what the Ear, Neck, and Throat guy said. And since the tongue is in the neighborhood that’s who found it.

It, the it we’re talking about, was cancer. The bad cell activity jumped from tongue to neck, or at least more neck, which created a lump, and that’s how I saw an ENT.

I like your enthusiasm in the broadcast booth, Tony, you do it right. I like to think I brought the same enthusiasm to cancer and the treatment to beat it back. The waiting rooms were my team meetings where I tried pumping up my teammates.

Can you imagine a pep talk in a cancer waiting room? Neither could they, they people waiting, but that’s sort of how it works most of the time. Show up, shut up, stand up, go home.

Was that the right thing to do to cancer patients? By infusing them with the sort of go go it takes to win any contest, I was doing them all a favor. That was the idea and it made me feel like I was doing something for someone besides me.

If you’ve been around the hard process of cancer treatment then you know what it means to see people retreat into themselves. In some places it called quitting and it’s what quitters do best.

My goal in my book is to prevent cancer people from quitting on themselves. To that end I’m trying to shed better light in a dark place.

Can you tell me how I’m doing so far?

Sincerely,

boomerpdx

Who better to ask than Tony Romo, the only man to call a game before it happened?