For weeks I’ve been mentally drafting this post, putting it on to-do lists . . . and not following through. But today, all that changes!

 

My manuscript is revised, done, finished, ready to go out and see the world. The night I finished, as I formatted my synopsis to send to my agent, my husband, John, asked how it felt. I told him it felt weird and anticlimactic. Then I pressed send, and the reality of almost three years of work set in. I giggled. We high-fived. We ate ice cream and cookies.

 

That was almost a month ago. In the meantime, I’ve been freelancing, meeting with my writers’ group, reading, and training for my first half marathon.

 

Wait, what? Until last year, I hated running. I’ve always found it just a teensy bit ironic that my husband proposed while he was running the Boston Marathon.

 

But time will change things, and apparently I now believe that trying to accomplish two nearly impossible goals (being traditionally published and committing to twelve weeks of training in order to run 13.1 miles straight) is better than one.

 

The race is in a month, and I wonder if I signed up as a kind of consolation for my ego. Even if I get rejections before the race, at least I can run a considerable distance. Or, even if I can’t run in my goal time, my novel might still get published. To tweak another cliché, I guess I’m putting my eggs in two baskets, with some kind of confidence that at least one will hold.

 

The odd thing is that I signed up for the race knowing that I could run it, what with the adrenaline the day will bring (we’ll be in Nashville with a different country band at every mile), but worrying about the training. Could I keep up with the schedule? Could I work the miles into our schedule? How much would I have to walk on the longer runs?

 

What I’m learning about the training is that most of the battle is maintaining consistency. It’s only on the “long run” days that I really have to push myself, and there are only seven of those days in twelve whole weeks.

 

I’m doing my best to resist running/writing comparisons, so I’ll leave it at that.

 

In other writing news, I have new confidence as a growing writer. I know I have a lot to learn and my writing has room to improve. But I also know I can produce something worth reading, and that every word read and written makes me stronger.

 

I’m working on my new novel—and perhaps a related short story—as well as a YA novel and a picture book. The adrenaline from running and the fact that exercise makes me sleep better are contributing to a burst in creativity.

 

As my writing life grows and changes, so may the shape of this blog. I’m very happy to be back here, and will strive for regular posts, but I make no guarantees. Thanks for coming back to visit again. More soon!