No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act. As a writer, then, and as a runner, I donāt find that writing and publishing a book of my own personal thoughts about running makes me stray too far off my usual path. Perhaps Iām just too painstaking a type of person, but I canāt grasp much of anything without putting down my thoughts in writing, so I had to actually get my hands working and write these words. Otherwise, Iād never know what running means to me.
Related Quotes
Right now Iām aiming at increasing the distance I run, so speed is less of an issue. As long as I can run a certain distance, thatās all I care about. Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next dayās work goes surprisingly smoothly. I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speedāand to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage.
I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void. But as you might expect, an occasional thought will slip into this void. Peopleās minds canāt be a complete blank. Human beingsā emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. What I mean is, the kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions as I run remain subordinate to that void. Lacking content, they are just random thoughts that gather around that central void.
But I donāt think itās merely willpower that makes you able to do something. The world isnāt that simple. To tell the truth, I donāt even think thereās that much correlation between my running every day and whether or not I have a strong will. I think Iāve been able to run for more than twenty years for a simple reason: It suits me. Or at least because I donāt find it all that painful. Human beings naturally continue doing things they like, and they donāt continue what they donāt like. Admittedly, something close to will does play a small part in that. But no matter how strong a will a person has, no matter how much he may hate to lose, if itās an activity he doesnāt really care for, he wonāt keep it up for long. Even if he did, it wouldnāt be good for him.
As I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all sorts of things. I donāt necessarily write down what Iām thinking; itās just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how much I write, though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination. Even after decades of writing, the same still holds true. All I do is present a few hypotheses or paraphrase the issue. Or find an analogy between the structure of the problem and something else.
I didnāt want to write too much about myself, but if I didnāt honestly talk about what needed to be said, writing this book would have been pointless. I needed to revisit the manuscript many times over a period of time; otherwise I wouldnāt have been able to explore these delicate layers.