Some links may be affiliate links. I may earn money if you buy something or take an action after clicking one of these links on this site.
Rob Knowlan is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
National Gymnastics Day 2025
Today is National Gymnastics Day, so let’s have a look at this exhilarating sport on this 🍂almost–Fall🍂 Saturday.
🤸🏼♂️ Reach For The Stars 🤸🏻
Jump off the beam, flip off the bars, follow your dreams and reach for the stars. ~Nadia Comăneci
I remember gymnastics from gym class in high school.
I wasn’t great. I did alright. I kinda-sorta did the rings, the pommel horse and parallel bars.
Certainly nowhere near performance level, but I have actually done the things.
Long ago and far away…
My most gymnastic thing these days is crouching down to pull something out of the dryer.
That doesn’t sound like much, but with a permanent case of costochondritis it hurts like a mofo.
In addition to having done it in some rudimentary fashion, I quite enjoyed watching it.
Back in the day when we had ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and a few UHF channels, the Olympics were something people actually wanted to watch.
One of my favorite Olympic events was gymnastics. The floor routines were spectacular. Balance beam, uneven bars, all the techniques were riveting.
You can’t, in good conscience, admit to watching just to see them faceplant or generally wipe out. That’s not nice.
It’s a lot better when they pulled off a flawless performance and to jeer the judges for giving dreadfully low scores.
The best thing was when you could root for all the gymnasts simply because they were amazing.
Soviets, ChiComms, friendly countries or neutrals, it was just kids trying their best at their chosen disciplines and it was spectacular.
It would be nice to get back to that sense of world unity.
Despite the politics of the day, we could celebrate kids doing well and representing their homelands.
🤸🏼 Winning Routines 🤸🏿♂️
2025 US Gymnastics National Championship Winning Routines
Watching this brings me back to the Saturdays when I’d sit with my parents and sister watching Olympic or divisional gymnastic competitions.
What I don’t recall is the “wolf turns“.
If you watch the video above, the section with the balance beam routines features each of the girls performing a technique in which they assume the “wolf” position and then spin on the foot of their bent legs while the extended legs whirl around. You’ll also see it in the floor routines.
I’m not familiar with that move, so I’m glad to see the sport continues evolving.
I’m also glad to see something that looks so familiar.
The video above is from this year, but it could have been any of the events I watched with my family way back when.
That sort of continuity makes me feel nostalgic and reassured.
In an increasingly crazy world, that’s something nice to be able to hold onto.
🤸🏽 Try Again 🤸🏻♂️
Everyone gets scared, and everyone falls. The key is to get back up and try again. ~Shannon Miller
As with the gymnastics, when you fall off the writing wagon the key is to get back up and try again.
I was having some problems getting fingers to keyboard lately, but I got back up and spent some time developing the story with Mr. McChatsky.
Shock! Horror!
There’s a stigma associated with using AI in your writing that, in my opinion, is entirely undeserved.
If you use AI for your writing, that’s one thing; but even that is not as bad as people make it out to be.
Let me do some mental gymnastics to try to explain.
Let’s start with the notion of using AI for your writing.
If you want to have it crank out some social media post ideas or even fully formed posts, I don’t really see a problem with it.
Frankly, social media posts, email list sequences, stuff that has a rapidly evolving set of best practices is all well and good if you’re into that.
Thing is, if you’re really into that, you’re probably not into writing prose fiction.
Everything has to be pithy, economical and follow the latest trends.
That is literally the opposite of trying to produce something passing for literature.
Even if you only want to write hot genre, on trend, to-market short and midrange fiction, that’s still a different skill set than managing social media.
If you hire it out, either they’re using AI and essentially ripping you off or they’re super-duper prodigies and they’re charging you more than you can reasonably afford.
If you’ve got a traditional publisher’s budget, you can have the whole team in play. They’ll have a department for all the stuff that prose writers consider busywork.
Even something as substantial as a press release for your latest book or an interview template to send to podcasters who might think to interview you about new releases can be cranked out by an AI following latest and greatest forms of art.
To me, those are very specific skill sets that I don’t feel the need to learn mastery of.
I don’t change my own oil. I don’t do my own carpentry or plumbing. I don’t do stuff I’m not good at. I hire it out.
Since I’m already paying for a ChatGPT subscription, I consider it ROI to let it be good at what I’m not.
On the other hand, using AI in writing is beyond invaluable.
I constantly use it as a spell-checker, quick research assistant, translator, list generator, idea perculator.
That last one might rankle some old-school writers, so let me delve into that one.
I have extensive conversations with Mr. McChatsky on any number of subjects.
Typically, they revolve around what ifs.
What if a cop encountered this situation? How would a prosecutor react if the cop did this or that? How does the defense use that to their advantage?
Naturally, I’ll have to find actual SMEs to run the semi-final version past to ensure that the AI wasn’t hallucinating or just feeding me theoretical nonsense.
I can usually spot that and get it back on track, but it is a concern.
What concerns me most is that it keeps asking me if I want a sample scene or whatever.
NO! No, dammit. I want to do the writing. I’m the writer, and it is the assistant.
Jeez.
That is something I’m hoping to correct soon, but I’ve got a lot on my plate these days.
I have an arc I want to finish up in The Sentinels: New Blood before I switch over to working on 💡🎄🌟 Goodness & Lights 🌟🎄💡.
So, my 🍂favorite season🍂 begins on Monday at 2:19PM Eastern Time and it was my intention to begin working in earnest on this year’s Holiday Season Serial Romance as of the kickoff of 🍁🧸☕ Cozy Season ☺️🥧🍂.
But Rob, you told us that 🍁🧸☕ Cozy Season ☺️🥧🍂 began in tandem with the –ber months and the passing of Labor Day.
That’s true, but part of writing a Holiday Season Serial Romance involves figuring out the story.
I did that. I’ve got the characters and the basic plot figured out already.
As soon as I figured out the basics of the story, I planted it in the fertile soil of my subconscious to germinate while I finished up an arc I’m working on in the main series.
We’re in the last few days of my least favorite season, and I’m working hot and hard to get this piece finished up before I switch gears into the Christmas RomCom.
That’s all for today. See you back on Wednesday for some punctuation…