I quit running marathons because I realized I was never going to run a faster one. I started a novel partly because I suddenly had so much time on my hands.
I ran my first marathon in 2004, in New York City, finishing in a fairly respectable (and bitterly disappointing) 3:48. I failed to finish my second (Blackpool), and literally limped in after nearly five hours in my third (London). I had fractured my shin. After two long years of rehabilitation I finally finished the London Marathon in my best time: 3:40. Three years of pain and frustration to shave off eight precious minutes.
So when I compare writing to running a marathon, you can be sure I'm not basing my comparison on Wikipedia.
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And it's something that afflicts writers as much as marathon runners.
It's the aforementioned 'dark, despondent place' that occupies the space between mile markers thirteen and twenty. Between 'great, I'm half way there', and 'God, where have all the mile markers gone?' Runners give up the will to finish the race just seconds after they give up the will to live.
And writers? Where is this vale of despondency for them?
I only know where it came along my writer's journey. As I said, I finished the first draft of my masterpiece completely unafflicted by existential torment. (Deep breath.) I saw that it needed rewriting, so I rewrote it. I could still see room for improvement, so I wrote it again. And again, just for the sheer bloody-mindedness of it. And I beheld my masterpiece, and I loved it so much I could have written it a Sapphic ode.
And I bagged it up and sent it with a covering letter and a kiss for luck to, well, to literary agent Lucy Luck as it happens. It was too good an omen to ignore.
I was disappointed when Ms Luck did not sign me up by return post. But not deterred. Not yet.
I wasted no time getting started on my next novel, a work of such brilliance that it put even its illustrious predecessor in the shade. As before, I immersed myself in research and plotting and drafting, night after night, agonising page after agonising page.
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This was about the time I sank into that trough, when I was tested and found myself
wanting.
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I stopped working on my follow up novel. (There was nothing to follow up.) Suddenly the next novel seemed impossible to complete. Every conceivable excuse presented itself unbidden, in the same way that minor aches and tiredness make marathon runners reappraise the gentle uphill stretch ahead. 'No way! That must be one in ten and it goes on for over a mile!'
And like Paula Radcliffe at her nadir, I sat at the roadside with my head in my hands.
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And here I am, writing.
Somewhere along the way I outran that long, cold shadow, though I can't say precisely when. I think there was one key factor in my redemption, and that is that I kept going in whatever way I could. (That's how you finish a marathon; it isn't rocket science!) I decided to beef up my skills. I'd already read just about every self-help manual I knew about, so I went out looking for guidance, for someone to take me apart and reassemble me as a writer. I applied for MAs in creative writing, and got rejected. So I signed up for an undergrad course with the Open University. I got interested once again in poetry, and became the Slush Poet. I threw myself into a writers' group, joined the Poetry Society, started performing poetry, started tweeting, got out there.
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And then a weird thing happened on the way home. I had an idea for a great new novel.
(c) 2012 Andy Hickmott
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