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 don’t find that writing and publishing a book of my own personal thoughts about running makes me stray too far off my usual path. Perhaps I’m just too painstaking a type of person, but I can’t 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, I’d never know what running means to me.

Gradually, though, I found myself wanting to write a more substantial kind of novel. With the first two, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, I basically enjoyed the process of writing, but there were parts I wasn’t too pleased with. With these first two novels I was only able to write in spurts, snatching bits of time here and there—a half hour here, an hour there—and because I was always tired and felt like I was competing against the clock as I wrote, I was never able to concentrate. With this kind of scattered approach I was able to write some interesting, fresh things, but the result was far from a complex or profound novel. I felt I’d been given a wonderful opportunity to be a novelist—a chance you just don’t get every day—and a natural desire sprang up to take it as far as I possibly could and write the kind of novel I’d feel satisfied with. I knew I could write something more large-scale. And after giving it a lot of thought, I decided to close the business for a while and concentrate solely on writing. At this point my income from the jazz club was more than my income as a novelist, a reality I had to resign myself to.

When I finished the novel I had a good feeling that I’d created my own writing style. My whole body thrilled at the thought of how wonderful—and how difficult—it is to be able to sit at my desk, not worrying about time, and concentrate on writing. There were untouched veins still dormant within me, I felt, and now I could actually picture myself making a living as a novelist. So in the end the fallback idea of opening a small bar again never materialized. Sometimes, though, even now, I think how nice it would be to run a little bar somewhere.

Since I’m a writer with limits—an imperfect person living an imperfect, limited life—the fact that I can still feel this way is a real accomplishment. Calling it a miracle might be an exaggeration, but I really do feel this way. And if running every day helps me accomplish this, then I’m very grateful to running.

I didn’t want to write too much about myself, but if I didn’t 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 wouldn’t have been able to explore these delicate layers.