A Kernel on Running My Way to Writing
and finding your chunks of time
I’ve been living a lot of life lately, with an intensity that has made writing my novel difficult. Life has meant a copywriting job to leave gracefully, hormones and pains from pregnancy, a house to buy, a move to prepare for, oh and a baby, oh and a PhD program. This is not a complaint but rather an acknowledgement of the reality I am faced with everyday and a checklist that never shortens. Life is beautiful—and rife with distractions and competing values. But my novel. My novel gets pushed aside. So how do I do what so many writers say is possible: the writing on sticky notes, on random notes tabs on their phones, in between errands and kids and responsibilities?
I’ve realized recently this question is a trap and it was setting me up for stress. Making time looks different for everyone. I need chunks of time. When I am living my life, if I am honest, I am not thinking about my novel. So sticky note attempts are unconnected, fanciful, bad poetry, at best. But never useful novel ideas or work.
So what can I do when I don't have chunks of time but need them to successfully write my novel?
I run. I run two to three times on a bad week and five to six times on a good week. Each run, I reserve time with no music, or podcasts, or phone calls. Instead I think. And this thinking is the same as writing for me. Eliminating the belief that writing is limited to the actual act of creating words in text has helped, so running is my thinking time, my writing time.
Running is a bubble, a bubble I can use for writing.
When you’re running no one can come find you. You’re limited in what other things you can do at the same time. It takes up very real time during your day. It requires commitment, a change of clothes, an exit of a place you were in. Running can sound like nonsense when you’re tired and overworked and pregnant but it’s become the opposite for me. Running is a quiet, restful place of regeneration and it is inarguably a bubble, the world blurring by around you, nothing else you could be doing—except writing a novel in your head of course.
Running is embodied, an act that helps me exist in my novel and characters.
Running, feeling my body, knowing my breath, the beat of my feet, it transports me to my characters, and I am freer to think about their lives than I am about my own. I am alive and so my novel is alive and how my characters move in a space or the conversations they could have and what they feel about this or that come alive. In feeling my body, I forget my body. All of these physical realities can seem like such a great feat and yet it is easier to commit to than to sit and write because sitting and writing means easy access to email and internet and messages and books and the kitchen is so close and the laundry is waiting. Practically speaking, I'm already active (running and pushing my lungs) so it’s easy to start on the novel. Oftentimes, I come home and put to paper the thoughts, phrases, and words I ruminated on during my run before I hop in the shower.
Running is freedom. Running is time of my own.
When I run, the time is already taken up by the act of running, so my thoughts are free, and it feels like a sneaky invisible time for myself to wander. Fighting for a time to run has become a double-counted glory for me, because it also means finding time to write. I write in my head and in voice notes. I title them things like “Dynamics between character X and Y” and “Figuring out why character A committed B.” I consider how to resolve the main dispute or how to make this character more dynamic or work on description of setting. My novel happens in chunks of time that aren’t stressful or unorganized but rather my thoughts are directed towards a specific problem or element of the novel, picking up where I last left off on a prior run or during a prior writing session. There’s something about this running-and-writing connection that also makes it easier to remember where I was and getting into it takes a matter of seconds.
Running has changed the nature of writing for me in a helpful way.
When people say they can’t run or they hate running, I find it’s usually because they are running really fast or in a way that makes it impossible to enjoy or maintain for very long. Running has taught me the beauty of the long game. I can’t find writing stressful or running stressful because then I won’t do it, so I’ve had to slow down. I don’t need to run really fast and I don’t need to write 1,000 words every time I sit down or every time I run. It’s about the daily time, the daily effort, the daily thoughts. Many months ago I was discussing this with my husband, and he said running and writing happen like bamboo happens. Bamboo grows underground for five years before it sprouts above ground and the network of bamboo underground is so extensive, more extensive than the bamboo that grows above ground. When I’m getting frustrated that I’m not seeing the beauty of my efforts above ground yet or that I’m not growing fast enough or wide enough yet, I think of bamboo. It’s maybe not a perfect metaphor, but I kind of love it.
My kernel of advice: write when you’re not writing.
Inspiration, Information, & Insight
In the spirit of slow and steady wins the race, Natalia is reading 20 pages or spending 30 minutes on each of the following books everyday for the next couple weeks: The Crying of Lot 49, What’s Going On In There?, and The Great Debate. She is warming up to her writing sessions with The Patron Saint of Liars, because reading Ann Patchett’s writing is beautiful, clean, and effortless, which makes her feel she can do the same.
Shelby’s book club welcomed Marissa Higgins, author of A Good Happy Girl, this past week. As this debut novel is one of Shelby’s favorites to be released this year, she was delighted to hear Higgins’s insight into the story and her writing process for it. If you’re looking for a protagonist with a complex inner landscape, Shelby highly recommends this read! (Neidy also attended Shelby’s book club, and Shelby was happy to see her familiar face!)
Sarah finished the first year of her MFA program strong. In the past week she turned in 120 pages of manuscript, graded 40 papers and 40 final exams, and filed two freelance articles. She also attended her family’s piano recital, choir concert, band concert, orchestra concert, and hosted a birthday sleepover and an end-of-year celebration for the students and faculty in her program. She feels stretched to the end of her tether, and so she is taking a week-long word-fast—no reading, no writing—in hopes that this will help her recuperate and embark on a productive summer ahead.
Neidy read Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo this week and cannot recommend it enough. As the title suggests, it was filled with the stories of a Dominican-American family, but more than that, it was a love letter to all the Dominican women who came to New York to raise their children. Neidy thought of her own family and teared up often while reading. It was a beautiful portrayal of the way love is given between women, the cultural joys and harms that are carried across generations, and the magic that lives in all people from the island of Quisqueya.
Loved this, Natalia! You are inspiring me to find hidden pockets of time for writing—and to finally take up runnin!