I’m not sporty. I got tennis elbow after one tennis lesson. I shut my eyes when a ball comes towards me. And so it pains me to write my second “What I learnt” with a sporting theme.
But here we are.
While I’m not sporty, I do run. And for some reason that now escapes me, I signed up for a marathon last year, and I have to be ready for it, in about a month. Towards that end, I headed out for a 36km run last week.
I left at 5.15am, after waiting out some rain. And I ran out the door to a headwind. I run along the road along the beach, so that wind is extreme. 18km as if I was on a treadmill. Pushing hard, but it felt like I was getting nowhere. For 2 hours. 18km later I turned around and started running home.
Tailwind!
I was so excited, I texted my trainer. The last 18km were forgotten like that, and I turned and ran with the full force of mother nature behind me. The universe wanted me to get home. I was tired, exhausted, running out of the will to run, but I had the wind on my side and that was enough.
And it got me thinking about how this is just like writing. On the way in to a story, it can be like everything is against you. Running on a treadmill, getting nowhere. And so often I give in there. But I’ve realised this is where you just have to keep pushing. Because if the wind is in your face now, it’s going to be on your back soon enough.
Which is so true, right? All of a sudden you find this point where the words are flowing, the pen is moving, the ideas are working. Often in this mode, I also stop too early. When I hit the milestone I was aiming for. Maybe a 30 minute time limit, the halfway point of a picture book, a certain word count. I stop. Everything is working, the wind is on my back. And I stop.
And this is my learning for the week. If the universe is helping me out, stay on it. Keep writing until the tailwind runs out.
