By Tracy Clark

I’m sitting here watching a million hours of Olympic coverage like I don’t have a book deadline or a life to live, it suddenly struck me how writers are kind of similar to Olympic athletes.

Oh, not in BMI or range of motion, but in focus and grit and determination. Sha’Carri Richardson can run 100 meters in ten seconds. My knees would give out at the starting block. But when she gets in that zone you can see it in her eyes. That I get. Writers have a zone too. 

When we’ve worked out our plot and all the cylinders are working, when we are focused only on that page and those fingers are flying across the keyboard, Cirque du Soleil could be performing in back of us, and we wouldn’t even know it until glitter flew into our eyes.

But that’s what we athletes have to have, though, isn’t it, focus, determination, grit. It’s what gets Katie Ledecky to the finish line 100 meters before the second-place finisher (what?! Go, Ledecky!!) It’s what gets writers through that messy first draft that stinks so bad you want to toss your computer into the trash and take up pickleball.

It’s not just the ability to write that we have to have, but the other bits that keep us writing when writing is difficult. Follow through. A plan. The rabid compulsion to finish what we start. It’s what gets us through the trying times when the rejection letters pile up and all we hear is no, no, no. 

We’re the little engines that could who did because we were just too gosh darn stubborn to give up on our dream, too spiteful to give in, too sure of ourselves that what we put on the page was worthy of reading someday.

I didn’t do a single pushup but I’m now writing my eighth book. Eight! Yikes. I am not a platform diver (What? No!), nor can I wield an epee like d’Artagnan, but I can sit my writer tush in a chair and get the job done. I can do the hard work paragraph by paragraph, page by page, chapter by chapter. I can make it to the finish line and type THE END (and I do type THE END. Try and stop me). That’s a good thing to know when the writing’s going well and especially when it isn’t.

So, I was thinking about the drive and the focus as I was watching Grant Fisher gut it out to win the bronze in the 10,000 meters. He hung in there, sticking with the frontrunners like his life depended on it, and then he turned the jets on the last lap and got to the line in third place. Yay, for the US of A! I worry about Fisher’s knees in about thirty years, though, because I know what’s coming.

The road to a writing career is fraught with setbacks and gut punches. Some things you win, some things you lose. You win a contract, you lose one. The rejections take a toll after a while. Sometimes at 2 a.m. when you’ve written yourself into a corner, you want to stop and try something else. Sometimes you turn the words this way and that, try coming at a story at a different angle, and things still won’t work. Sometimes you have to dig deeper and focus harder and ignore the noise. Often you have to stick to the plan, knowing deep down that you know what you’re doing and are on the right course. Other times, you have to go beyond your limits and condition yourself to endure the uncertainty of the biz. 

Then suddenly there’s a break. A yes instead of a no. A workable draft. A good story. A sale! A publishing home. Readers. More books to write. Many days where the writer athlete in you will be required.

Writing life is much like a marathon. Slow and steady, one foot in front of the other, over that wall, and done. Word by word. Character by character. Writer athletes always on the case working it out from cushy chairs in quiet rooms.

No warmups required, either, though I suppose you could stretch it out if you wanted to (hat tip to my pal, Tori Eldridge, who writes her wonderful books from a standing desk after a workout. Props, girl!), but the brain is always nimble and ready to go. The push to finish, the need to find the perfect way to say exactly what the story should say is everything. We revise and rework. They delete precious things like cold-hearted assassins. They eat those rejection letters and keep writing. We overcome all that self-doubt and fear and write anyway. We don’t cry uncle.

So, I’m putting writers right up there with all those Olympic heroes. We might not beat any of them to the finish line, but when we eventually get there, we’ll have laid out the perfect plot for how the winner of the race gets ingeniously bumped off by his rival seconds after crossing the finish line. (I’m thinking poisoned shoelaces, but I’m still mulling it over.) 

You will know us from our sinister smiles. Bahahahaha.

Can you recall a time when you had to dig deep as a writer? To overcome a devastating rejection and keep pushing forward? Tell us your Olympic moment.

Read Other Blogs On This Topic: