Run Your Own Race

 I’ll never forget watching the Women’s 2004 Olympic Marathon. It was the first Olympic marathon I’d ever seen, and it was even more special to me as I had run my first marathon not long before. I got up early that morning to watch it live. Two of my running idols, Deena Kastor and Paula Radcliffe, were in the race.

Watching that marathon was, and still is, such an emotional experience for me. I got chills watching Kastor strategically move from eighteenth place to third. As she moved from fourth to third, I jumped around my living room with joy. She ran her own race, not knowing how many women were in front of her. She didn’t even know she was in third place until she ran into the stadium. As she realized that she would be the bronze medalist, I cried.

This video is a bit long, but it’s worth watching. I still get chills, I still cry, every time I see it.

I often compare writing to running on this blog. It’s true in countless ways, and writers can take a lesson from Deena Kastor.

Like Kastor, we must run our own race. We have to focus on our pace, our course, not who is ahead of us. Kastor put in the work long before it paid off. Writers have to do the same. We must work hours, days, weeks, years, before we see the fruit. We have to do what is right for our story, our career, instead of focusing on what everyone else is doing. Stop worrying about how far behind you feel, how much faster other writers seems to be at drafting, revising, snagging book deals.

The great thing about writing is that it isn’t a competition. It doesn’t matter how many other writers have crossed their finish lines; there is room on the podium for anyone willing to put in the work.

Write a great story. Improve your craft. Learn. Create. Grow.

So many runners don't finish a race because they go out too fast. They get caught up in other runners' paces instead of their own, and eventually, their bodies can't keep up. They were running someone else's race, and it usually ends badly. I am quite certain that plenty of good writers have quit or become disillusioned because they spent too much time watching what others were doing instead of focusing on their own path. But Kastor's bronze medal just proves that great things come to those who put in the work and run their own race. You just may surprise yourself at how far you can go.

Take A Break

Take a break.

I’ve blogged about this before, but apparently it’s something that we need to hear. Or maybe it’s just something that I need to hear. Over and over again.

I’ve learned that in running, I have to take breaks. Training takes a toll both mentally and physically, so backing off is imperative if you want to be a life-long runner. And I want like hell to be a life-long runner.

So I schedule breaks of all kinds: weekly, monthly, yearly. Sundays are always my rest days. I know that I need one day a week to recoup. But within a training schedule I give myself easy days in addition to days off. Weekly.

After months of training, I schedule easy months. This gives me time to reset, to rest my legs and brain and get a few other things done.

I also schedule easy years. I train for a marathon every other year. I don’t miss training days and can become very focused while training for a marathon, so I know that I need some years where I’m just running for fun. While I love training, it can also be exhausting, and I want to make sure that running doesn’t become a chore. I love running, and I want to continue to love running.

Right now I’m training for a 10k, which I don’t normally do. I train for marathons, and when I’m not, I’m just running for fun. Training has been going well, but I was feeling pretty run-down at the beginning of the week. I pushed through a couple of runs anyway, but on Wednesday I decided to take a day off.

I hate skipping runs. Resting on scheduled rest days are fine. But skipping a scheduled run during training eats away at me. It leaves a stickerless hole in my lovely calendar, and I really hate that.

It was the right decision. My legs were feeling heavy and I took the day off. And I ran better the next day.

I took the day off writing too, and that was the right choice. I made hard decisions on my day off, but they were the right decisions, and my story will be better for it.

Just like running, just like anything, in order to continue to do the things you love to do, you have to take breaks, refresh yourself, and come back stronger.

I take breaks after a draft and after revisions, but I hate taking breaks when I’m in the middle of something. Like running, it makes me feel like a quitter, and I am not a quitter.

But I’ve got to keep telling myself that taking time away is not quitting. It’s just refueling. It’s just refreshing. It’s just necessary.

Running on Empty

I am currently in between revisions and feeling a bit antsy without something to work on. I must do more research before I start revisions on my most current draft, so I’ve been reading and thinking and pacing and wallowing for the last week or so. And then on a whim, I picked up an old copy of The Southern Review and read a few poems.

And the words flowed. I grabbed the closest notebook I could find and started writing. Within ten minutes, I felt better than I have in weeks. I remembered why I love writing so much. My pen couldn’t fly across the paper fast enough. The words weren’t beautiful (yet), but they were quick and easy and focused. In ten minutes I had added depth to a character that had, at times, felt flat in my draft.

And I realized that during the last six months, I had completely emptied myself out during revisions and hadn’t devoted enough time to filling back up.

As a runner, I know better. During long runs I take in extra calories in order to replenish what is lost. If I don't, I crash and burn. I would never run eighteen miles or more without fueling properly before, during, and after.

The same should be true for my writing. Writing empties us. As we write, we pour ourselves onto the page, wringing out like a dishrag. After doing that for months, I was dry.

In order to create, to empty out our souls, and to do it continuously over a long period of time, we must fuel properly. Read. Don’t just read in your genre, either. Read outside your comfort zone. Read poetry and absorb its music. Listen to its cadence so that your prose will have rhythm and beauty. Get drunk on someone else’s words.

And observe. Sit in the silence and enjoy a sunset. Take a walk and notice that which you bustled past only the day before. Breathe the world in so you can exhale it onto the page at just the right moment.

Listen. Watch. Absorb. You can’t run on empty forever.

I Love My Body

Me, seconds before crossing the finish line
of my seventh marathon. See that crazy
look in my eye?

I’ve sat on this post a while, knowing that many people would judge me for it. But many people judge me anyway, so what the hell.

I love my body.
 

This is not something most people say out loud. We’re supposed to hate our bodies, right? Or at least tolerate them? We’re not supposed to tell others that we like the way we look. This makes us vain, egotistical, prideful.

I didn’t always appreciate my body. I was very skinny when I was younger, all knees and elbows, and my extremely long legs looked like toothpicks. Or chicken legs. At least, that’s what everyone told me. It came as quite a shock. I’d always liked the way I looked. But when I was twelve years old, I went to high school. (Our high school was 7^th-12^th grades.) Once I got there, I found out I was gross to look at because I was thin and bony. The older boys teased me to tears. I’m not sure I slept through the night during junior high. I would wake up in horrible pain as both my calves seized up with muscle cramps, due to the 200-300 calf raises I did almost every day. Maybe if my calf muscles were bigger, they would leave me alone.

But these legs have endured a lot. I tore my muscle where the hamstring attaches to the glute. At the time I thought it was just a pull, so I didn’t go to the doctor. Now I know it was a significant injury, one that still causes me daily pain. Because of that tear, six months later I tore my ACL. Then I tore it again two years later and had to have reconstruction surgery.

After all that, my body still works hard. It’s propelled me through thousands of miles, seven marathons, and countless half-marathons, 5ks, and 10ks.

It kept me running through the heartache when my husband and I learned we probably wouldn’t have children.

It taught me to keep going even when things hurt, which made me not only a better writer, but a better person.

I overheard a student say the other day that she didn’t love anything about herself. This broke my heart. I couldn’t be sure whether or not she didn’t love things about herself because she truly didn’t see her own worth, or because society had taught her at least to pretend she didn't see her own worth. Either way, it’s unacceptable.

I am a flawed, fallible human being. I make mistakes daily. But despite those things, I am also loyal, and compassionate, and hopefully, kind.

My body creaks. I’m starting to get a few creases around my eyes. My calves are still skinny. I do not have a daughter, so I will never be able to teach her to love herself, to appreciate her body, no matter what shape it may take.

But I will say the words, so that when my students and other young girls in my neighborhood see my legs pounding the asphalt, they won’t note their size, but rather their strength.

I love my body. It is strong.

Please Step Away from the Manuscript

I have to be pretty disciplined, as everything I do requires it. I have a poster in my classroom that reads “You can’t built a reputation on what you’re going to do.” That is sort of a philosophy I live by. I always tell my students I made good grades in college not because I was all that smart, but because I worked hard. The same goes for running. I finish marathons because I’m disciplined. Anyone who wants to complete 26.2 miles has to be, but especially me, since I’m not talented, only stubborn. I once ran twenty miles in the pouring rain. That isn’t a brag. Most people aren’t impressed. I always get very strange looks from people when I’m running in the rain. They think I’m crazy, and maybe I am. But if I had skipped that twenty miler, then I wouldn’t have been ready for the race. Of course, if you don’t take rest days, you become over-trained and never make it to the race in the first place. It's a delicate balance.

I’m fairly disciplined in my writing as well. When I’m working on a WIP, I write at least 1,000 words a day. When I start revisions, I work at least an hour after work. If it’s in the summer and I’m off work, I spend more time. Since I’ve been working on revisions under a deadline, it’s been more like four hours a day. So after teaching school all day, I’ve been coming home and editing until bedtime with only a break for dinner. That’s like a twelve-hour work day.

These are not brags, because these things are not always good.

This weekend I was nearing the end of my edits. There were a few things I still wanted to tweak, and even though I knew what and where I needed to do it, I couldn’t figure out how. The words weren’t coming. So I sat and tried to force them. I worked on four pages for over an hour, only adding a few sentences here and there. When I finally had it where I could live with it, I allowed myself to go to the movies. It was absolutely the right thing to do. I should have done it sooner.

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Dumbledore, as always, has a memorable quote. “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Being a writer has been a dream of mine for a very long time. But somewhere in the middle of edits, I forgot to live. I became a robot: get up, run, teach school, edit, eat dinner, edit, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Sometimes you have to step away and live life. How else can you write it? I knew this intellectually, but when it came down to putting it into practice, I failed. Getting out and going to the movies was the best thing I could have done, both for myself and for my writing. Stepping away gave me perspective, as well as the few sentences I still needed.

I have a tendency to get very focused, whether it’s when I’m writing, reading, or running. That’s why my word for the year is BALANCE. I have to learn how to balance life with work, so that I can live life and put truth in my words. Wearing sweats and slaving away in my writing cave is wonderful, and I love pretty much every single minute of it. But sometimes, you just have to put on pants and see the world.

Are You a Writer?

I always find it interesting when two of my worlds collide, which often happens with my running and writing life. I have seen the need for names or labels divide both runners and writers, and I wanted to address this. In the running world, there is a debate about the right to be called a runner verses a jogger. Some runners feel that you only earn the right to call yourself a runner if you run a certain mile split. Others feel it has to do with the amount of races you do. Me? I believe you earn the title of runner, and likewise writer, through consistency and commitment.

 

I am a runner.  Six days a week, I lace up my running shoes and hit the road.  Sometimes I run twenty-two miles; sometimes I run only four.  I run in the humidity, in the dark, in the rain.  Sometimes I can’t wait to get out there and fly over the ground, and sometimes I slog through the run, looking forward to the shower at the end.  There are even some days when I sleep in and miss the run completely, though that doesn’t happen that often.  I’ve never won a race.  I've placed in my age-group.  I’ve seen my marathon times get better and better, I’ve seen my mile splits get smaller, and I’ve set goals and crashed through them.  But I’ve never won a race, and I probably never will.  I’m okay with that.  I’m a solid mid-packer.  I am close to Boston qualifying, which I am quite proud of, but I've never broken through that tape.  But I am still a runner.

I don’t know why that lesson was so hard for me to learn when it came to writing.  At first, I never told anyone that I wrote.  It was a hobby that was just mine, an indulgence that was too sacred to share.  Then, when I finally got the courage, I told people that I liked to write.  I wrote almost every day, most often meeting and exceeding my goal of 1,000 words, but I could not call myself a writer.  I liked to write.  Because in my mind, until I was published, and published more than once, I was not a writer.

How silly.  I run every day, therefore I am a runner.  I write every day, therefore I’m a writer.  It should be that simple, but it’s not.  It took me a while to see it that way, mainly because I let other people’s perceptions color my own.  But then where is that line?  Are you only a writer if you are published?  Or are you only a writer if you can make your living that way?  Or are you only a writer if you have been validated by someone you deem worthy?

I am not a person who believes everyone deserves a trophy for participating. But I do think there are many ways to be a writer, and only some of them involve being published.  If you love words enough to craft them into sentence and story, then you are a writer. If you write consistently and hone your craft, you are a writer. To me the line between someone who writes and a writer is passion and drive. A writer works at her art and pushes herself to be better. But you don’t have to cross that finish line first to cross that finish line – you just have to meet whatever goal you set for yourself and find joy in the act of doing.  That is running. And that is writing.

Writing is Hard

I use the idea of pushing through pain a lot when I’m teaching.  Maybe it’s because so many of my students claim to experience physical pain while taking my class.  Their brain hurts when they read Julius Caesar.  Their hands hurt when they’re writing their essays.  They claim the research papers deaden their souls, which sounds pretty painful to me. But my response is always the same.  Difficult things hurt but are the most rewarding when accomplished.

I’ve run six marathons. They hurt every single time. The first time I ran twenty miles was the most painful experience I’d ever had – even more so than my knee surgery. I remember the last couple of miles feeling like there were needles embedded in my quads. I’m really not exaggerating. It was the lactic acid building up, but I didn’t care what the hell was actually causing it. I just wanted it to stop.

But I didn’t stop. So when I stepped up to the starting line of that first marathon, I was ready. Of course, I was only beginning to learn about pain. 26.2 miles is somehow infinitely more painful than 20.  It wasn’t pretty.  It hurt.  I made rookie mistakes that made it hurt worse.  At around mile twenty-three or so, I totally understood why people curled up in the snow and died. I was that tired.  I wanted to collapse on the side of the rode and sleep. But I didn’t.

I cursed myself and the distance and even the sunshine the last few miles. I vowed to never, ever run a marathon again. I made deals with God.  And I cried.  I cried even harder when I crossed the finish line.  I couldn’t walk very well and my husband was there to make sure I didn’t fall over (it was actually highly probable at that point) but once I’d wiped the tears away, before I’d even made it very far from the finish line, I was ready to sign up for another one. Because the exhilaration and pride that comes with finishing a marathon is like nothing else.  So I’ve done several more, and they’ve hurt less, but not much. And it’s worth it every single time.

Writing is painful. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe you sit down and your Muse is a unicorn who whinnies softly in your ear while the words flow like a swift stream. Not me.  If I have a Muse, she’s more the type to beat the hell out of me and leave me in some back alley, bleeding and cursing the day I was born. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I love writing more than anything.  I love taking words and creating something where there once was nothing.  I love revising too.  I love cutting and pruning until the story is what I'd envisioned.  But along the way there is doubt.  There is fear that I can’t do this story justice.  There is certainty that I’m not good enough to do this.  Sometimes it hurts like hell and I wonder why I ever thought I could do it.

So writing is like running a marathon. It hurts. Sometimes you want to quit. But if you’re lucky, there are people there to keep you from falling. And when you cross that finish line, it’s worth every painful moment. And I’m not talking about the finish line of being published. My book won’t be on shelves for another year. I’m talking about that sense of accomplishment when your own words make your heart race, when someone else loves those words and lets you know just how much, when someone else completely gets your characters.

Writing is hard. Writing is painful. But it’s so worth it.



After the finish of the 2011 RocknRoll New Orleans Marathon.
I look as rough as I felt.