Writing Is a Marathon and You Get to Decide If That’s a Good Thing
In his book Perennial Seller, author Ryan Holiday says:
"Art is the kind of marathon where you cross the finish line and instead of getting a medal placed around your neck, the volunteers roughly grab you by the shoulders and walk you over to the starting line of another marathon."
I don’t know the author’s intentions behind this statement, and perhaps because I see a lot of folks in the writing community complaining about their craft and the work involved in writing and publishing consistently.
Writing takes so long.
Deadlines. Wahhh!!!
Due dates.
Crappy reviews.
Crickets.
This is one reason I created a writing community where there’s literally NO complaining. I set that expectation from day one. Complainers either don’t join or they don’t stick around long. Yes, there are challenging aspects of the writing process and running a business, and we all have a lot of empathy for each other.
What we don’t do: Sit around and bitch about the work, blame outside conditions for why we can’t write/edit/focus/publish. We’re no BS, no excuses, and no playing victim. Doing so is a shitty place to create from.
Sure, someone might join a writing community session teetering on the edge of burnout, questioning everything they’ve ever written and even considering burning it all down. But with a safe space, we can alchemize that negative energy into creative fuel.
In my work with copy coaching clients and my writing community, I set out to change how business owners see the writing process.
Our writing work isn’t there to create torment.
Writing is a nurturing practice.
Writing supports the healing process and it’s healing in itself.
There are no shortcuts to writing marathons.
Lazy content creators hopping on the ChatGPT train for some generative text are trading short-term gain for long-term sustainable writing practice (a writing routine that not only feels good but creates your legacy). Using AI to generate more content than they could humanly create (obviously, and why do content creators think this was a good idea?) makes them feel more productive when, really, they're only following a shortcut.
When you finish a writing marathon and complete a piece of work — launch your website, publish your book, finish a blog, there’s a celebration, yes, and then you head straight back to work. We know the work is never finished.
And I don’t want to ever be done the work, do you?
Most marathon runners don’t dash into the running life to merely run one marathon. They want to do lots of marathons. I know plenty of runners who run in races across the country and even all over the world just for the adventure.
Business owners go into business to keep creating.
Perhaps that’s the distinction. Because I work primarily with business owners, we’re used to that one foot in front of the other tempo until we finish.
And the finish line? Well, it keeps moving. Or there are multiple mini-finish lines before we get to the big one. And the major finish line morphs before our eyes. We THINK we’re working to serve 1,000 people or make $500,000, but what are we really doing it for?
I wondered if my conditioning leads me to think that the author is saying that hitting writing marathon after writing marathon is daunting.
I’ve held those beliefs about writing as a marathon for so long that I began to adopt them.
But who decided marathons were a BAD thing?
I’ve run a few half-marathons, and as I finished each one, I’d get home and get to planning my next one. Injuries kept me from training for the full 26.2 miles.
And sure — I appreciate the feeling of limping across the finish line, feet thumping like concrete blocks on the pavement, and stabbing pains in muscles I didn’t know I had. But the more races I ran, the more my body knew what to do. It approaches the starting line knowing what’s coming, so there’s less limping at the end. And the same for writing. My body knows what to do now that I’ve been blogging for a decade, published two books, and am working on a third.
The first marathon is more demanding than the fifth.
What if you cross the finish line and there's no medal? There was always a medal. And bananas and bagels. There was also beer at some races and wine at that race I did through southern Ontario’s wine region, but I digress 🤮.
If someone had walked me to another starting line and had me do it all over again, I might have gotten in my car and driven home.
But, if I had time to rest, go inward, and nourish my tired body, I’d be back and ready at the starting line in a week.
What kind of writing marathon medal are we seeking anyway? External validation, likes, praise, and comments? Do we need the hardware to snap a selfie to share on social media to prove we did it? No. This is all ego. We think we need these things to make ourselves feel worthy and whole.
Would you want to start a writing marathon each week?
Maybe not. But would you like to if you felt good at the end of your last race? And if instead of forcing and pushing just for the hope of achieving a medal at the next race, you simply wrote for the joy of it?
And then, if we’re taking the time to honor nature’s rhythms — like the moon, seasons, and menstrual cycle (if you have one) — taking to the page would feel more like flow and less like a slog.
When I finish a big writing project, I’ll rest.
After completing a book, it’s more akin to a triathlon where I cross the finish line on foot and then change into my biking shoes to bike the next leg (marketing).
If it’s a website, the rest will involve switching gears to editing, reworking, or blogging.
It might look like a few days of doing nothing.
That week of rest for me would fall around the new moon phase (and I’d do my best to plan it that way).
The energy of the new moon is much like the energy of winter and a menstrual cycle. Get quiet, retreat, reflect, and make new intentions for the next phase (or race).
The new moon is an excellent time to go slow because there’s not a lot of light being reflected from the moon. It’s dark out there, so we need to look inward for light. It can be a highly intuitive time and great for making decisions. Maybe I’d use that week to decide which marathon to run next or revise my training plan. Or if I want to swim, in-line skate or ice skate for my next adventure.
When writing both Unfussy Life and Intuitive Writing, my next book idea dropped in as I neared the finish line. Now if I were to chase shiny objects, I could have diverted my attention to starting the next sparkly new and exciting project and put my almost-done project on the shelf. Shiny-object chasing has its time and place — and if I constantly did that, I couldn’t call myself an author.
Instead, what I do is write that idea down. I see creatives bounce to the latest idea so frequently because they get bored with the tediousness of finishing a project and seeing it through to the end. All those unfinished projects turn into energy leaks that keep you staring at the ceiling at 2:00 a.m.
Your brilliant ideas need a place to go. When you honor them and give them a proper home, you can trust that it'll be there waiting when the timing is aligned to pick up that new project.
I had the idea for Intuitive Writing (though that's not what I was going to title it) before beginning Unfussy Life. But it wasn’t time for that project. Memoir needed to come out first.
I had to finish the memoir marathon before the business writing marathon. I felt antsy with Unfussy Life taking me three and a half years to complete. I was ready to be done, to just get it finished and out in the world so I could move on. Still, I recommitted to myself and my writing project again and again and finished it — making it the best damn book I could at that time.
Same with Intuitive Writing. I published it eight months later than I had planned. And if I hadn’t trusted God’s divine timing, I might have forced a not-ready book with wobbly legs to the start of another marathon.
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