Today, someone asked a rhetorical question in a writing group I'm part of. Here it was:

When is it time to send out a draft for feedback?

Luckily for all of us, even though I work with words for a living, I don't understand the word rhetorical, so I decided to answer the question.

I'm not a huge baseball fan, but a few years ago, my Blue Jays were up against the Kansas City Royals . The Jays were heavy hitters that year, I don't think any other team had more home runs. But KC took us to the cleaners (in 6 games I think? though it didn't feel as close as 6 games).

Not because they hit more home runs, but because they consistently hit singles and kept putting guys on base. One single may not be a big deal. One guy on first. But get two more, and the bases are loaded. Get two more, and now you have two runs batted in. They just kept hitting singles (with the occasional double) and they ran up the score.

I learned something big while watching that series and then later while I was thinking of it when I was supposed to be writing a blog article.

I was going about it all wrong. I was aiming for home runs. ⚾

So I changed my game. Instead of aiming for home runs, I just try to aim for singles consistently.

I wrote a weekly blog for a while. I struggled with this at first and got a lot better over time. Once I realized it was never going to be a home run, I stopped aiming for the fence and I stopped being disappointed when they didn't go over.

That's a long way of setting myself up to answer a simple question: when is it time to send a draft out for feedback?

Pick a time, any time.

Whether it's next Tuesday, or whether it's after your second pass through the material, you pick the time, and you stick to it. Just show up, hit a single, and get on base. Relying on home runs could work, but may burn you in the long run.

What single do you need to be hitting right now?

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my poor blue jays ⚾⚾