Some stories write themselves, or so some writers claim. Just maybe the one that Robert Mays III wrote about Missouri star Jeremy Maclin for The Missourian fit into the write-themselves category. Then again, I doubt it.

I have a hunch that Mays had some restless nights as he cobbled together this wonderful profile — it appeared on this site yesterday — with the skill of a sportswriter with far more experience than he has.

Robert Mays III might be young, but he’s one talented writer.

His profile of Maclin, a story that finished second in the Profile category in the 2009-10 Hearst competition, shows the depth of his writing talent. Mays did an extraordinary job of getting inside Maclin’s life. He didn’t let obstacles get in the way; he seemed to know he had a good story to tell if he could build a trust with Maclin.

Well, this story is the result of what trust can do for a writer. It allowed Mays, who interned this summer at The Boston Globe, to share details about Maclin’s private life that flushed out what is Maclin’s public life. He made readers see the whole of Maclin, not just a mug shot.

Stories of this quality are always instructive for an aspiring sportswriter, because they offer plenty of teachable moments about the craft of writing well. Just as instructive are the insights a writer like Mays can provide about the process that led him to this finished work of art.

So thanks to an introduction from his Missouri classmate Andrew Astleford, I was able to ask Mays a series of questions about how he wrote the story. Here is what Mays had to say:

Question: Earlier, I talked to your friend Andrew Astleford about his award-winning story I showcased on my website. One question I posed to Andrew centered on his literary influences — in the journalistic sense. He had some writers whose work I’ve long respected. HIs list had great choices on it. So I’m curious about your list, Robert: What writers make your list, and can you talk about how reading these “influences” has shaped your nonfiction style?

Robert Mays III: Oh, jeez. Coming up with a list that stacks up to Andrew’s might be a problem, but let’s see.

I guess I would have to start with Chris Jones. I’m just so envious of how understated his work is. The piece that comes to mind right now is the profile he wrote of Roger Ebert in Esquire a couple of months ago, probably because it’s the most recent. His ability to bring emotions through in a story in a subtle way is amazing. It’s the skill I’d most like to have.

I also love Wright Thompson’s work, and not because he’s a Missouri guy. Wright’s so talented in so many ways, but as much as anything I try to pay attention to the way he uses his scenes. Not only the way he presents each individual one in terms of the amount of detail or their self-contained arc, but the way he chooses and organizes them as a part of the whole.

There are plenty of others. J.R. Moehringer is great with dialogue. Joe Posnanski writes with such a distinct voice. Mike Sager. Bill Reiter. Skip Hollandsworth. Gene Weingarten. Tom Friend. Charles Pierce. Gary Smith. Tom Junod. S.L. Price. I’m starting to look back at some of Michael Paterniti’s stories from the late ’90s. I feel very green in terms of the amount of great work I’ve read. I have a lot of learning to do.

Q: Not to compare you and Andrew, but in his story, he also used quotes sparingly — none in the last section of your piece. Is that something you learned at the University of Missouri? I mean, a lot of young sportswriters lard their writing with direct quotes. You didn’t. Why?

Mays: Don’t worry about the comparisons. I’ve worked in the same newsroom with the guy and been friends with him for long enough that I’m used to feeling bad about myself.

All kidding aside, the use of quotes is something that Jacqui Banaszynski harped on in our work with her. She talked a lot about how quotes as typically used can really slow down a story. The message was essentially that halting a 4,000-word story to use a quote that doesn’t add personality or voice does a piece no favors. With the story about Jeremy, I tried to be conscious of why I was using each quote. If I didn’t think it added voice or added to the scene, I didn’t use it.

Also, both Jacqui and another one of my professors at Missouri — Berkley Hudson — did a great job of stressing the distinction between quotes and dialogue. While quotes can slow down a story, dialogue can be a driving force. It can give a sense to the scene like a lot of visual details can’t.

Q: Writing is such a solitary act. How do you approach it? Do you write in quiet? Do you listen to music? Is the TV blaring in the background? How do you set yourself up for the actual task of writing?

Mays: I don’t think I do anything too special. I’m often in an environment that’s pretty quiet, such as one of the school’s libraries or the lounge in the same building as the newsroom. Both of those places also have ottomans, and I usually have my feet up. I’ve never really thought of that before.

I always listen to music when I write, but it’s never anything with lyrics — Miles Davis. Explosions in the Sky. Nine Inch Nails instrumentals. I usually write best in the afternoon, and it will often involve a cup or three of coffee.

In terms of the actual story itself, I try to work in pieces. Each time I sit down I don’t try to do more than what I feel is working. Sometimes that means a few paragraphs. Sometimes it means a scene. Sometimes it means two. I get up and walk around when I feel like I’m hitting a wall or getting worn out. Jacqui was big on making sure that we knew that procrastination was actually a form of routine. It can have a productive purpose. Obviously, with beat work and daily journalism that isn’t a luxury that people are often afforded, but when I wrote the Maclin story and the other longer pieces that I’ve written, that was my routine.

Q: As you know, a lead has to invite a reader into your story. I think yours does. Where did the idea for that descriptive opening come from? Did you worry that those details might drive some readers away early?

Mays: I actually worked on the story about Jeremy at the same time that another reporter was working on a series of videos documenting Jeremy’s preparation for the draft, and we were both at Jeremy’s surrogate parents’ house in Chesterfield when I saw the stack of helmets. I was in the middle of my reporting for the story, but as soon as I saw them I told Brian, the videographer, that I was probably going to lead with that scene. There are so many defining moments of Jeremy’s career at Missouri, but the story was about the evolution of a game and how he was forced to change along with it. I thought that the helmets were a clear representation of that progression. They alluded to each of the stops along the way, and to the uncertainty that the draft brought.

To be honest, I don’t remember ever worrying that the description might deter some readers. It’s obviously not the action-packed lede, but I think it’s true to the story. I hoped that the hint to each of the different steps in his career would be attractive enough to keep people reading.

Q: Talk to me a bit about the interviewing process: How did you get Jeremy Maclin to be so forthcoming with you? Did you know Maclin before the interview? He let you into his apartment, and that shows a trust he seemed to have with you, Robert. How were you able to build that trust?

Mays: Getting Jeremy to open up wasn’t easy. I didn’t know him at all before I started to report the story, and after I got his phone number from his surrogate parents, there were a couple weeks of unanswered phone calls. I actually drove all the way to Indianapolis for the NFL Scouting Combine to tell Jeremy that I was the one leaving all those messages.

The next week I talked to the strength and conditioning coach at Missouri about tagging along for a few of Jeremy’s workouts. That’s where everything really started. I showed up for his 8 a.m. workouts almost every day for several weeks. I didn’t use a lot of the material that I got from those sessions, but they were invaluable because they just let him know that I wasn’t going away. I was going to be around for as long as he’d have me, and I think he figured out that letting me into his life would be easier than trying to ignore me. He eventually let me make the trip back to Chesterfield to visit his surrogate parents’ house with him, and he also let me spend some time at his apartment in Columbia. The entire process just taught me how important the notion of “being there” is. There were plenty of times where I wasn’t using the notebook or the recorder, but I was hanging out enough to gain the trust I needed to get the answers when I asked.

Q: Here’s a paragraph I loved in your piece: “Most are the thin, precise remnants of a helmet screw or cleat. Together, they archive a decade of contact. But on the back of his left hand, one distinguishes itself. Half an inch long, thicker than the rest and raised a bit on his skin, it’s the eldest of the group.” I like to see this kind of detail in a story. Did you have second thoughts about using it? How did you and Maclin get on the topic of his scars?

Mays: I liked the image of the scars on his arms because it’s so literal. The notion of hardship is so abstract that it can get lost, but I hoped that by using a tangible image, that idea would be easier to communicate. It was really a throwaway conversation that I was having with him. His surrogate father told me about the big one on Jeremy’s hand during an earlier conversation, but the conversation with Jeremy was about as long as it reads in the story. I pointed them out, and he told me that he got most of them during games.

I don’t remember now, but I’m sure I had some doubts about using that image as the introduction to the scene about the problems Jeremy faced early on in his life. That story is one that people who follow Missouri football have heard plenty of times, and telling it in a way that was slightly different was something I struggled with as I reported and eventually wrote the story. Again, I guess I just liked how literal the image was and how smooth the transition from physical scars to emotional scars was.

Q: How many notes did you take for this piece? Do you remember how much good stuff you were forced to discard? Any regrets with killing some of it?

Mays: I filled about two small reporter’s notebooks for that story. It was one of the first projects that I had such an extended amount of time to work on, and if anything, I wanted to take too many notes rather than too few. When I visited his surrogate parents’ house in Chesterfield I wrote for the first couple hours that I was there. I still have some trouble deciding on the spot what details are important and which aren’t, so it leads to me taking a ton of notes that I eventually won’t use in the end.

I think that with any story that involves two months of reporting, there’s going to be stuff that gets left out. I had more about his childhood and his experiences in youth football. There are a ton of stories about Jeremy’s career at Missouri that I liked but didn’t see a good place for. I like that feeling, though. When I have to leave good stuff in my notebook, it reassures me about my reporting in a way. In my very limited experience, I’ve always found that I tend to overwrite and stretch a story when I don’t trust the depth of my reporting. With the story about Jeremy, I never felt like that because I had confidence in the material that I’d worked to get.

Q: A story like this one probably didn’t come together without some restless nights. Looking back on it, what did you find to be the hardest part of making this piece work? Did you know it had the makings of a Hearst winner when you finished it?

Mays: There were certainly some sleepless nights; I promise you that. I woke up at 4 a.m. and jotted down plenty of things in the notebook I kept next to my bed. The concerns were mostly about access. Jeremy isn’t the biggest talker, and at the beginning of the process I was just really worried that I wouldn’t get the type of time with him that I needed to make the story happen. Over time though, I realized that time with him wasn’t what I really needed. A lot of people have said that writing a profile isn’t about spending time with your subject. People aren’t typically as self-aware as we’d like them to be, and because of that, profile writing often hinges on the people that surround a subject rather than the actual person whom the story is about. That isn’t a new concept by any means, but as a young reporter it was important for me to learn it on my own. As I went about reporting the story, I discovered that I didn’t need the time with him that I was hoping for at first, and when I came to that conclusion it allowed me to focus my time on more valuable tasks.

In short, the answer to your last question would be, “Hell no.” I had absolutely no idea that the story would get the sort of recognition that it got. Self-editing is important, and being able to step away from a story that I’ve written in order to make objective changes to it is something that I’m trying to get better at. And while I think I’m good at not clinging to the story as I originally wrote it, when I spend that long reporting a story I think I can a little too close to it to judge it for what it might be as a final product. I thought it was probably the best thing I had done up to that point, but I had no thoughts about awards when it was first printed.