My Writing Marathon

An old man locks himself up in a room with a laptop and a bottle of whiskey, and types until he can't stay awake anymore, or gets so drunk he starts typing in Russian.

A woman parachutes onto a deserted island, carrying nothing but her writing journals and laptop computer, determined to finish that book.

An eighteen-year-old babysitter sells the kids to the circus, grabs her diary, and walks off, never to be seen again; that is until her young adult novel of juicy rumors is written out for the whole world to see.

Seriously though, reaching our end goal need not be things that only nightmares are made of. On the contrary it can and should be rewarding.

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This morning, I woke up early, same as I always do. Had to, or so my pet finches told me so, in their chirping tweets. No, the sun wasn’t up yet, but they didn’t know that, because I have them under a timed light. What made this morning different, from, say my normal routine during a work week, is that I didn’t meander at the coffee pot, or dawdle at deciding what to wear for the day. I didn’t check my online banking. Nor did I go Black Friday Shopping (two days after, I’d think sales are still going strong). Instead, I headed straight away to my writing space at 5:30 a.m.

With four days off from my library job, my completed second draft in hand, and revisions needed, I didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth. Since Thursday morning, I’ve been in my writing marathon. I can imagine countless die-hards at NaNoWriMo could be doing the same. And earlier in November, more than 51,000 people ran the New York marathon, breaking the all-time high record for the completion rate of those 26 miles.

Writing a book, is much the same as showing up to run the New York Marathon. People lined the sidewalks and cheered for them. So, too, am I grateful for my supporting writer friends who, in a never-ending way, keep asking me, “How’s your book coming?” or “When will you be finished?” For more than a year, I’ve been at the receiving end of those questions. For more than a year, I’ve been, even if only one paragraph at a time, writing my book.

Whether running or writing, it’s a matter of showing up each and every day to plough through the hurdle, with the finish line on the horizon. We need to push through emotional resistance rather than allow second thoughts to seep in. We have to conquer the tough spots to resolve where to break chapters, and how best to convey our poetic message. We must or we will die (as writers, that is.) We must write in order to achieve our goals.

It’s not easy. In life, many tasks and obligations invade our time. Other things could seem important, yet are only justifications without priority. Time with friends, and making our boss proud may be satisfying, but in the end, they are but morsels. Like running a marathon, there are always excuses not to do it. Setting excuses aside, I have to write because the rewards are great; too great to not write.

To prepare for the marathon, a runner eats healthy, exercises daily, and well, gets into shape. Same thing goes for a writing marathon. These are some tools I recommend to help you get in shape:

A COMPLETED ROUGH DRAFT Messiness doesn’t matter. Words on paper; lots of words, to be dug and sifted through matter.

An OUTLINE By filling in each of the acts, assigning story points, and knowing how your supporting characters fit into your story, you can find and fix the mess of a rough draft. When we write mindlessly, we may get lost in our race. But, with an outline, we can build a well-constructed vision to our story arch.

An EXCEL SPREADSHEET to keep tally on your word count. At each milestone, give yourself a pat on the back and a reason to keep going. No cheating though. This isn’t a time to add “and”, “the”, “a couple of”, “the color of”, “very”, or any other useless words or phrases (just) to add to your word count.

My Excel skills are not advanced by any means, but I have figured out how to build a table with a formula of “this chapter plus that chapter equals this many words.”

Draft one was not at all lucid writing. It lacked clarity, direction, and any point to be made. Draft 2 was my attempt to make it lucid, yet lacked letting go of many flaws. However, its story line prevailed, thus Draft 2 was advanced enough to deserve an Excel sheet. It topped out at 26 chapters and 188,900 words.

Draft 3, with its own Excel sheet, began 11 months ago, January. (Again, I had to fit my much needed full-time job and my much loved friendships into my schedule) Since Thursday, I have tweaked a few of those chapters, plus completely revised four Draft 2 chapters, from start to finish Today, my Excel sheet shows 22 out of 26 chapters are completed, with a tightened word count thus far at 131,000.

Dually of importance, here are two more tools of the trade:

POSITIVE THOUGHTS Believing in ourselves. Bring our vision alive, as if our characters walk right into our writing space, sit on our desk, and tell us what to do next.

CAFFEINE Well, for me, coffee. Any nutritional energy to keep you physically running, er writing, will work. Peanuts, chocolate, or raisins, trail mix, or a bottomless six pack of your favorite soda.

With those tools, should you try your skills at a writing marathon, I hope you too can have a whirlwind high.

Only now, as my pet finches go to sleep from a full 12-hour day,  my four-day writing marathon is over. Four chapters’ shy of completion, I see an end to this sheer thrill of happy-madness in sight. I’ll keep you posted. Feel free to drop me a line to share how your writing goals are unfolding.

And I hope you also had a happy Thanksgiving, full of love for life.

-Elle-