Writing your Book is an Endurance Sport

Build your Stamina

I have written stories and essays my whole life. For years, I’ve journaled and blogged regularly. I’ve established a small daily writing habit, so my goal for this year was to get my idea for a novel written.

On Halloween 2018, I saw a young woman dressed in an elf costume and ever since I’ve wanted to write a story involving elves. The idea has been kicking around my head for years and for my writing goals for 2022, I put down writing my elf novel.

Warming up

For Christmas Eve, in my family, we each get a book to read. My book was Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. Starting in January, I used the book to block out the storyline, and it took me until August to write the first draft.

Getting to the end of the first draft was an amazing feeling, but then it was time to revise. I knew the first draft wasn’t the end of my work, but I didn’t comprehend the amount of work that came after writing “The End.”

The next big slog

Even though I had been building my writing stamina for years, I was not ready for the amount of patience and slogging the revision process would take. The first draft of my story is building cardboard cutouts of my fictional world. The first revision is starting over and reforming the world in 3D. It still needs a lot of work to bring the story to life and sparkle.

Writing is an Endurance Sport

The novel writing process feels very similar to the stamina needed in endurance sports. I do triathlons and the day-by-day training is the bridge from where you are today to race-ready. It can feel like a slog, but one day at a time leads to amazing gains.

Here are the similarities that I see:

1) Daily consistent training is more important and healthier than fits and starts.

If you do too much too soon or sporadically in sports, you’ll injure yourself and not end up completing anything. I’ve found that small daily goals for my writing work better than dreaming of a weekend-long writer’s retreat alone in a cabin in the wood.

2) Sometimes, things get boring, and you need music or podcasts for motivation.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and music on long runs. Sometimes when I’m slogging away with sticky sentence edits in ProWritingAid, I need to put on some music to keep my morale up.

3) The training is 99% of the work. The race is just one day.

Sometimes people jump into running a marathon without wanting to do the work day by day to prepare. For me, the training is the reason for the race. So most fitness comes from your everyday training. Race day is just one hard workout. For me, I need to find enjoyment in the writing process every step of the way, because 99% of my time will be spent deep in the writing trenches. Opening my freshly published proof copy of the novel is just one day.

4) Try to learn from the experts, there’s a lot of free info out there.

When I was learning how to compete in triathlon, I used books and YouTube videos to learn the basics and improve my readiness. Authors love to create content in many forms, so there are tons of blogs, YouTube videos, and podcasts to help you improve your writing. My personal favorites for podcasts are The Creative Penn and Savannah Gilbo’s podcast. (My favorite triathlon podcast is The Purple Patch podcast.)

5) Sometimes, you need to hire a professional to help.

In sports, hiring a coach can help you move forward much faster than training alone. The same thing is true in the writing world. I just hired a professional editor for my first novel. It’s expensive, but I’m going to use that investment as a motivator to make my manuscript the best it can be before I hand it over to her. I’m hoping it will be a step out in faith for the future of my writing career.

I want my manuscript to be the absolute best I can make it. I told Sage, my editor, that I will hand her my “Sparkle Manuscript” by January 1st. The thing is, even that draft will come back with a zillion things to improve.

Consistent progress growth and constant improvement

It’s about the process and constant improvement. I’m about competing with no one but myself. When I get to the finish line, I will take a short break and move on to the next big thing.

Join Us!

Are you looking for an accountability group for your writing or other creative endeavors? Join us on FB in the Creative Collaborative for peer coaching and accountability. We can support each other through our creative projects piece by piece.