How Noveling is Much Like Running Marathons (or at least Half-Marathons… but probably more like Full-Marathons)

You know those people who go on and on about fitness and think running forever is awesome and they can’t get enough of it and they tell you all about how running forever is like thebestthingever and you just gotta try it cuz if you try it you’ll just love it and never wanna stop???

Yeah, that’s not what this post is.  So you can relax.  Hehe.

As some of you may know, I participated in (against my better judgment) the Disney Princess Half-Marathon on February 23rd, 2014.

I was talked into this horror by my mother, who can be ludicrously annoying with her persistence. (Love ya mom! 😉 ) I guess that’s where all her daughters get it from. But with this persistence, she managed to have all four daughters in this race with her! So it ended up being a pretty cool thing, as all four sisters are rarely ever in the same place at the same time anymore.

One of my sisters, of Mandi’s Green Apple fame, has run this race three times already, along with my mother. They were the veterans of running, and Mandi became the team leader, keeping us all at-speed and together during the actual race.

I hardly trained for this half-marathon (NOT a good idea, as my right knee will attest), but faired monumentally better during the 13.1 miles than I had ever anticipated I would. We all even had the stamina and strength left to jog the final 1.1 miles, and crossed the finish line together, holding hands.

(Okay admission: I jogged the last 1.1 miles out of sheer willpower, since by that point my knee was in such agony I thought it might explode each time my right foot hit the pavement. But I did it, by god, I freakin’ did it. I.did.it. There’s that persistence showing up, I suppose, right? 😉 )

The point being that during my limited training, and during the race itself, it became necessary to narrow my awareness down to the very smallest increment. One more mile. One more lap. Just to the next corner. Just to the next street sign. Just one more step. And so on.

And I realized that this is really how a person should approach the novel. I realized that’s how I had been approaching the novel, in order to keep myself sane. In order to keep from being overwhelmed.

In fact, if you think about it, really a person’s whole life should be like that. Too often we have a habit of dwelling on the big picture and becoming daunted by the massive tasks or jobs or responsibilities set on us. Thus, we become unmotivated, depressed, we give up. We think it’s too big of a job, we could never do that, we could never finish it, it just TAKES TOO LONG. It’s too much effort. We don’t have the skill, etc.

But that is incorrect. Lao Tzu’s wise words, “Every journey of a thousand miles begins with a  single step” is so very true, but this phrase is repeated so flippantly that I feel not many people let the meaning truly sink in.

We need to narrow our focus.

Whether it’s running a half-marathon or a full marathon, writing that 150k epic fantasy novel, or learning to play the cello, it’s all possible. It’s all feasible. Just concentrate on one piece at a time. One step. One lap. One mile. One page. Five pages. One chapter. One note. One song.

If you want to do something, but feel overwhelmed by starting it – or finishing it – or feel you don’t have the time for it … break it down.

What DO you have time to accomplish in a day? Concentrate on that, and only that. Move on to the next step only after you have completed your first step. Focus on one thing at a time, one piece, and then before you know it you will have a whole, and it will not have seemed all that terrible, or difficult, or time-consuming.

My current novel WIP currently sits at about 80k words. I probably have about another 30-50k to go. But I’m not focusing on that. I’m taking it one chapter at a time, just as I’ve been doing since November 2013. The other day I happened to broaden my focus for a moment and suddenly realized how far I’d actually come on the story, and was pleasantly surprised. But looking ahead with that same broad focus, the weight of the remaining thousands and thousands of words begins bringing me down.

So I shake myself, and refocus. One chapter at a time!

Just as I managed to cross that finish line after 13.1 miles, so I will manage to finally write THE END after this monster of a book!

Whatever you are working on right now, book or not-a-book, YOU CAN DO IT!

One step at a time!