Over a week’s vacation from Day Job recently, I had one of my hardest running weeks, probably ever, as I’m training for a trail marathon. In case you didn’t know, trail marathons are just like regular road marathons except muddier, buggier, longer, and nastier than their refined road-based counterparts (which are also no cake walk). During that same week off, I had one of my toughest writing/editing weeks in a very long time. Given that one of the training runs was over four hours long, I had time to think. A lot of time. Too much time.
 
Seems that marathon training and writing aren’t that much different, after all.
 
Before I leap into the analogy, I need to make myself crystal clear on both topics. Full disclosure. I am in no way a great athlete. This chunky bod is getting dragged 26.2 miles (hopefully) because, well, the challenge is there. I’ve wanted to do a trail marathon for >15 years. Now is my chance, and you bet your left bunion, I’m downing the biggest bag of Cheetos + a Blizzard after I finish/collapse/die as I cross the finish line in dead last place. Also, I will not be setting any land-speed records. In many respects, that’s like my writing career. I’m not a bestselling anything. The writing happens because I need to/want to/enjoy it and I want to always improve. You can bet that writing consumes a huge amount of time and it’s exhausting. Also, Cheetos.

(FYI, this is not me. I don’t look this fresh at mile 0.1, much less mile 20+. This is Rory Bosio, and she is one of the badass-est trail runners around.)
 
 

But on mile #18 of last weekend’s long run, as my feet and cankles were aching and I would have gladly given my right arm for a bag of hot, steamy, salted tater tots and a blizzard treat, I had an epiphany. And no, the epiphany wasn’t to stop running, although no question that concept was tempting.
 
The epiphany was to keep going, no matter what. Sure, it hurt. Sure, I’m never going to win any prize at running. But there’s something to be said for doing an activity that most folks can’t. There’s also something to be said for mentally envisioning the finish line which takes months to work up to the point where it can be reached…and finally reach it.
 
So, yes, a lot like writing. You see, during the same week where I had that very tough training schedule, I also (barely) met my writing goals for that time period: #1) Complete a draft of the third book in a brand new project I started and #2) Re-edit (read: “gut”) two entire books in another project I’m working on. To say I returned to work Monday as a way to recover from my week “off” would be a gross understatement.

(Also not me. This woman looks way more alert than I do after writing all week long.)
 

​
But that’s writing for the average person, isn’t it? I’m not talking the bestselling authors who are full-time writers, and, god bless them, can focus their lives wholly on that career. That’s awesome, and many writers only dream of getting to that point. No. I’m talking about those of us who carve out the writing time from taking care of family/kids, jobs/work, life changes, moving, illness, and everything else that goes on in our lives. I’m talking about the folks who get up two hours before the rest of the family so they can write. The folks who stay up two hours late to write, or fit editing in while kiddo is at cheerleading or soccer practice or whatnot.
 
Why do we continue the middle-of-the-pack slog? (Back-of-the-pack in the case of yours truly.) I think it’s for a few key reasons that relate to both writing and distance running. Indulge me if you will as I relate the two:
 
#1) We keep writing day in and day out because we have to. Anything less and our noggins will explode. I’ve hit the point where I need to run most days. Need to. (Mostly to burn off the tater tots, TBH.)
 
#2) We keep writing because it’s exciting to work for so long to create an entire world and then share it for others to enjoy. It’s exciting to complete this seven month running odyssey.
 
#3) We keep writing because not everyone can write a book, and not everyone can write a book while maintaining a normal life. Not everyone can run a marathon on narrow trails, either.
 
#4) We keep writing/running because maybe, just maybe, we’ll break out of middle-of-the-pack and have one great book/race one day. You never know.
 
#5) We write because of the challenge. Same with running.
 
#6) We write because of the community of supportive people who also write. Same with the trail running community. (Supporters will equally high five the first place and last place runners.)
 
So, will I complete the 26.2 miles later this month? Remains to be seen, but in my mind, of course I’ll finish it. Might not run the whole thing, might have to rest and snack a few times, might not be pretty, but you bet I’ll get the job done.
 
What about those writing projects? Sure, they’ll get completed. Might take time, but this writer will slog through, word by word, just like all of my author colleagues in the trenches who put one word down after another, one foot down after another, day in and day out.

(Want some inspiration? This is David Goggins. Also not a runner (in the beginning). He simply finishes runs. When I feel lazy, I pull up one of his podcasts/interviews, and then I don't have any excuses to feel lazy.

​Pull up a chair, my friends. I’m going to tell you a story. It’s the story of how Hubs and I met. Pretty much encapsulates our entire lives together.
 
It was a cold but sunny February day in a cold area of the country, and I was skiing that day while on call because…I like to tempt fate. (Hey, at reckless speeds, I could go from the top of the mountain to the hospital in 25 minutes, so…close enough.)
 
As per usual, I got in the “Singles” line of the ski lift. You know, the line where you’re skiing alone? Fine. Also, the Singles line because, a few years earlier, I had gladly jettisoned Bad Decision from my life. And had no intention of attempting any more Decisions for a long, long time.
 
So, this guy also got on the lift with me because…singles line. He had a snowboard attached to his foot. Strike one. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt over his thermal shirt. (It >was< a sunny day, but really? Hello, overkill.) Strike two. A helmet and reflective goggles completed the ensemble. Okay, I’d spot him those items, because…safety first.
 
I said my usual “hi, howerya” and settled in to ride the chair up the mountain.
 
Then this man started talking. And didn’t stop. He was hilarious. We >somehow< ended up at the next lift together, and rode to the other mountaintop. By this time, he figured out the whole medical thing, and God bless him, he worked in the words “uvula” and “medulla oblongata” into a casual conversation, thinking he would impress me. It was an obvious stretch, but as dating opening conversations go, I’ve heard worse.
 
Two hours later, we were still skiing/boarding together, having a blast of a time. My phone rang, it was the hospital. Patient needed an urgent procedure for complications of a miscarriage. I had to leave right away. Later, Hubs would tell me he thought that this was a ploy to extricate myself from the situation. We quickly exchanged digits and I left.
 
We chatted during the week and decided to meet up again at the ski park the next Sunday afternoon. I was to call him when I got to the parking lot and he’d meet me there. So that day, I pulled in, parked, and dialed his number. No answer. Huh. Left a quick message, geared up, waited a solid 10 minutes, then went skiing. A few checks on my phone confirmed he didn’t call back. Hey, no harm no foul – a gal can take a message. Loud and clear. Parenthetically, it was a great bluebird day, and I had a wonderful afternoon of turns, much to his later irritation.
 
That night, an email popped up. Something about him losing his phone on the ski lift. Yeah, right. All I could think was, that’s a pretty good excuse. I’d spot him a few points for sheer creativity, but if he didn’t want to hang out, he should just say so. Then the full truth came out when we chatted that night.
 
He had been on a lift when my call came in. In what he describes as “typical Costanza fashion” (he kind of >is< George Costanza – more on this in a few paragraphs). He went for his leg pocket, pulled out the phone, and fumbled it, dropping it about 50 feet down into the powdery snow. A string of creative phrases later, he got off the lift at the top of the mountain and boarded down to where he dropped the phone. There was no phone. (As it turned out, another skier had picked it up. Hubs later called his own number, someone answered, and he got the person to mail the phone back, but that’s a side story.)
 
He begged forgiveness, and I relented, mostly because if the story was false, that was one heck of a creative mind, and if the story was true, his luck flat-out stunk. He redeemed himself by taking me out for dinner the next weekend, and the rest, as they say, is history. Almost...
 
So, the George Costanza reference. Mind you, by the dinner date, I still hadn’t seen this guy without snowboard boots, helmet and goggles. Turns out, this was a smart play on his part. IRL, he wasn’t super tall and yes…Hubs was bald. I remind him periodically about the bait-and-switch move he did there, by wearing the tall boots and keeping the helmet firmly on his chrome dome that first “date”.
 
You know how they say fairy tales come true? Sometimes they don’t abide by those Disney tropes. And that’s okay…
 
PS: We were married 1 year after meeting on the ski lift. That was many years ago.
 
PPS: He still hasn’t stopped talking.

Yup, that's all mine, ladies. Take a step back.  :)

And yes, that's orange + camo. In Hubs' universe, camo goes with >everything<.

You guys, I’m super stoked to be giving two talks at ECWC this October. If you haven’t heard of it, this is a fabulous writer’s conference. I’ve been lucky to attend for the past 4 years now.
 
The very first talk I attended as a writer – ever – was Cherry Adair’s master class, given at ECWC. The title of her talk escapes me, but her course involved spending several hours learning about character development. It was frankly, life changing relative to my writing process. (If you ever have a chance to hear Cherry speak, don’t ask questions. Just go.) The other (writing)life changing piece was her advice to use medicine as part of my author platform. You see, I’d gone into that first conference thinking that no way would I share with anyone that I’m a physician because #1) writing credibility reduced and #2) privacy. So basically, yes, I was clueless.
 
Cherry took all of ten seconds consideration before saying something to the effect of “Honey, that’s your platform. Use it.”
 
As it turns out, blending medicine and writing? Not so difficult, since there is zero way I can completely separate Dr. Jill from writer Jillian. And once I figured out the privacy piece, I feel a lot better about the blend. But what I did this year with the workshops at ECWC takes that blending to a scary new level. This where I put it all out there, together, and see how it goes…
 
I’ll be giving a talk on “Medicine, Manuscripts, and Mayhem”. Funny and terrifying, if you consider I feel personally qualified to speak on only one of those three title items. Big time imposter syndrome going on. But I’ve also been personally challenged by a mentor to ‘do things that scare me’ with the writing this year, so I took a big leap and there we went. Guess what? If all I do is talk about medicine for 90 minutes, and it helps other writers, then that’ll be okay.
 
The other talk is the one that makes me feel 100% imposter. “Fastdrafting 101”. It’s outside of my comfort zone and expertise. It’s all about this writing process that I’m still figuring out for myself. But I’m excited to try and teach this one, since fastdrafting is the best way I know to get a draft done, with my crazy schedule. There have to be other writers out there who work weird shifts and have exhausting schedules and lives. If I can give an author colleague a new way to produce a book that works for them, then my job will be done.
 
At the risk of sounding like I'm plugging the conference, seriously, if you are considering ECWC, it’s well worth it. There are always excellent agents/editors in the industry for us to pitch books, outstanding workshops, networking opportunities, lots of nice people, and a fabulous reader appreciation event on Saturday. And you can come to one of my talk and heckle.... Or just say hi!

A few weeks back, I was reading a chick-lit sweet Amish story* with lots of police procedural elements. Totally got immersed in the world and believed every detail that author dished out. Why? Because I had zero clue otherwise. My life is the exact polar opposite of “police procedural”. And legal stuff? I can’t tell the difference between “so moved” and “sustained”. Lordie help me if someone wants me to define a tort. (If I’m not mistaken, that’s a lovely lemony treat, right?)
 
Then in that same novel, something medical happened where stuff like guts or blood or bones or some anatomically gross thing happened. Of course, I’m eating all of that description up like…well, like a yummy torte…because of my Day Job. (I kind of dig blood ‘n’ guts.)
 
But then it happened. The author tripped and fell down. Like, total swing and a miss. This awesome, immersive experience grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and hurled me out of book. Kind of like when in one of the Star Trek episodes they get thrown out of warp and how jarring that was with space-time and atoms splitting and stuff? Like that.
 
Lemony torte experience, ruined.
 
What happened? The author described an emergency tracheostomy. Of course, I’m like, yes I’m intrigued, bring it on, master author. But the description was wrong. It actually wasn’t a little bit wrong, it was All Wrong. The only way it could be wronger was if the dude had shoved the tube through the victim’s eyeball. That much wrong.
 
This author describes making an incision nowhere near the victim’s Adam’s apple/cricoid but way down at the base of the neck. Nope! Then the author described shoving the tube into the “esophagus”. Double nope! Not only is that maneuver anatomically not possible (you have to go through the WINDPIPE before getting to the esophagus)…but if one truly did cannulate the esophagus? That’d be one dead patient.
 
So am I a medical writing snob? No, not at all, and that’s not the point. I would totally make the same mistake if I tried to write, say, a police procedural sweet Amish chick-lit military suspense* novel myself. I can’t even accurately identify the most basic of parts of your average assault rifle, much less a how to book someone into jail. And don’t even get me near a crime scene for evidence collection. If I wrote that crime scene in my humorous sidekick Amish sweet inspirational procedural*, no reader would believe it, unless they were under the influence of mescaline. Actually, even someone who has completely dissociated with every scrap of reality would still know I was 10 pounds of BS in a 5 pound sack when it came to legal/crime madcap buddy chick-lit inspirational* novels.
 
There is so much advice out there – pro and con – about whether we should write what we know.
 
However, based on that colossal fail example (to be fair, I’m sure that all authors have tripped at times) from that well-known and excellent Amish military suspense* author, I’m going to give you this woman’s opinion: Anyone writing outside of their expertise needs to meticulously research so that their madcap sweet inspirational military buddies-to-lovers* novel is believable. So much research is needed, that the author should either shadow people doing the tasks, personally learn to do them, or should pump anyone they know** for legit information on the topic.
 
Heck, I’m knee deep in blood, guts, and humanity on most days of my Day Job, and I still ask colleagues for help with details. I pulled our Friendly Neighborhood Orthopedic Surgeon*** over to ask questions about open tib-fib fractures, external fixation devices, return to weight-bearing time, and typical healing times – all for a book I’m working on. Let’s just say that #1) Dr. Jones has no sense of humor and #2) he probably thinks I have a tortured human locked in my basement or something. (#2 is mostly because I also asked him a question about depressed skull fractures. Because this is a rural area and we have no neurosurgeons here, so I went with the next best thing: bone doctor. Beggars/choosers, people. Use what resources you have available.)
 
And no, I do not have a body in the basement, as far as you know.
 
But what I’m trying to say here is that I believe authors should start off in the beginning by writing what you know best. It’ll be the most realistic writing you’ll do. Why? Because you’ll sound like an authority… because you ARE an authority. Your readers will believe all that super authoritative information. And later, when you take some creative liberty, it’s easier to slide it by the unsuspecting reader who has been lulled into complaisance by your Authority. (You see how “author” is part of “authority”? That’s not an accident.) Also, if you branch out into an area where you’re not an expert? Research the heck out of it and blend it with the stuff you know well to create beautiful verisimilitude.
 
But above all? Never, ever snatch away your reader’s lemony torte.****
 
 
 
 
FOOTNOTES:
 
*Novel types have been changed to reduce chances of identifying the author.
 
** “anyone they know” should involve people with some level of subject expertise. Not Joe Shmoe off the street. Just in case I was a bit nebulous with my advice there.
 
***Let’s acknowledge the truth: that description of my colleague is clearly a joke. Ortho folks generally don’t have a well-developed sense of humor. And yes, that’s stereotyping. But to date, I haven’t seen an example to refute overwhelming evidence of serious jock-types in orthopedics. And no that’s not sexist; this description appears equally true for female orthopods.
 
****Later research has revealed that “torte” is more of a generic term for a “sweet cake” and there are, like, thousands of varieties of tortes, including chocolate, vanilla, berry, and yes, lemon. In case you feel like I’m locking you into one type of torte, I’m not. You can have any kind you want.

 
Recently, I was cleaning out my email in-box and ran across contest entries, emails, and queries that I sent, way back when the world was good and pure, and the possibilities for becoming an author were endless. One thing became super clear: I didn’t have a single clue what I was doing.
 
Now? Still learning, but I do have a better grasp on what I am supposed to be doing and what seems to work in my little nook of the universe.
 
#1) Time management = everything. Especially for those of us working full-time jobs. A day or a week off is GOLD. Give me a few post-it sheets for my to-do list and I will set the world on fire. (Not literally. That would be super bad.)
 
#2) Let editors know your time frames. Because of my weird work schedule, I am on call for 7-10 days at a time. During that time, my writing brain pretty much shuts down and I live in on-call doctor mode. It’s not in anyone’s best interest for me to have deadlines or interviews or projects due during that period. I do my best to let folks know this information in advance, or will try to pre-emptively complete projects early when I know these blocks are coming. I’ve been caught out a few times where I didn’t give enough lead-time on my time limitations. Like many professional areas, I need to work more on time transparency.
 
#3) Marketing still kind of stinks. There’s no magic bullet. There’s no one thing to do that will make a book visible. And social media will eat up all of my time, if I’m not careful. Over time, I’ve cultivated some marketing sites that seem to work for me. For right now. Things change constantly.
 
#4) Things change constantly. This fact also stinks. In medicine, I get pretty torqued off about how outside forces keep moving the #$^&@ cheese. Turns out, this happens in writing, too. What works in marketing one month won’t work the next. Publishers and agents change, fold, merge. Some genres work better at certain times, and there may be no rhyme or reason to that shift. Nothing like having unstable footing underneath our feet.
 
#5) Don’t stop reading. I read at least an article and a few pages of a novel daily. Even on those crazy call blocks, I can generally get a little bit done. Like, I have a list for what I can do in little snippets of time for those blocks. Maybe it’s emailing a few reviewers or setting up a blog tour. Easy. Brief. If I get called, it won’t mess up any creative “flow”.
 
#6) Don’t write every day. Yes, this is a heretical statement. I get it. This is what works for me. Might not work for other folks. But sometimes when I’ve been up all night with one of my vampire babies who took their sweet time blasting into the world, I don’t have it in my tank to do much more than see patients in the office, go home, and try to get some sleep. That’s okay. I’ve stopped beating myself up about this fact and have adjusted production/creative time to fit the schedule.
 
#7) Don’t forget to exercise. This is me putting on the doctor hat now. It’s easy to get in the mode of sitting and writing and reading, etc. Too easy. At some point, lack of activity will catch up with each and every one of us. MOVE daily, even if it’s 10 minutes of walking. Something is better than nothing. Makes the brain work better, too. (improved blood flow!)
 
#8) Become okay with writing crappy stuff. When I started fastdrafting the first version of manuscripts, my OCD perfectionist tendencies got left in the dust. All that mattered was getting the ideas on paper. Once it’s on paper, it can be fixed.
 
#9) Try new things. Whether it’s in life or Day Job or writing – doesn’t matter. I made a promise to myself about 18 months ago that I’d push myself into writing stuff that made me uncomfortable – character types, scenarios, subject matter. Have I gone over the line of what my current publisher wants? Frankly, yes, in a few cases. But that’s what good editors are for. And I’m proud of sticking my proverbial neck out on those books as well as some other works that are in development.
 
#10) Never, ever, ever give up. Ever. Ever. The tallies on my first list of queries for the first awful book that shall never see the light of day? Embarrassing. Or are they? I’d like to think they show a determined author who looked at rejection as an indication to move in a different direction. And now? Things are better. More importantly, though, my skin is much thicker, and I roll with the setbacks.
 
#Bonus) Have friends, whether they are virtual or right down the street. Friends will give the “atta girl” or the “suck it up sunshine” that we need on any given day. They let us know that we’re not laboring in isolated oblivion. They will cheer for the good things and boo with the bad things. And above all else, make sure they are extremely biased toward you. That’s what you need them for!