It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint

My roommate is training for a marathon, and one night when she was talking about how many miles she was trying to run that week I realized how similar our goals for the summer were. Only, mine involves sitting in a chair and absolutely no physical activity.

See, she's never run a marathon before, and I've I'd never written a book before. The unknown of our separate treks is frightening - neither of us knows  knew what to expect. All we know are the proper steps to take. So she slowly builds up her endurance each week, and I sit sat down every night and wrote down words. Any words - not necessarily the right words, yet.

I change my present tense to past because somewhere along the way, I actually finished the novel. I kept pressing forward and when I encountered that unknown, I discovered that it wasn't really all that frightening. It was invigorating. I was happier than I had been in a very long time, and I accomplished a life-long goal.

Sometimes, when a writer is sitting at 20,000 words and has never written more than 30,000, finishing an actual novel seems impossible. Just like when you've only ever run five miles, or even 13 in a half marathon (as my roommate has), running 26 just seems like a frightening, unreachable amount. I can't tell you how many times I wrote just a few pages of a story and then stopped, thinking I didn't have it in me to write a couple of hundred pages.

So for anyone out there who is at the beginning - who has never reached the end - remember that writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint. You can't write a book in one sitting, just like you can't jump up one day and say "I'm going to go run a marathon right now." If you can't see yourself ever reaching the end, stop thinking about the end. Write a page at a time, every day. Build up your endurance. If you run one mile at a time, eventually you'll have run a marathon.