A Writing Tip by Susan Buttenwieser
HOW TO FINISH YOUR BOOK: SCHEDULE LIKE A MARATHONER

You don’t have to run a marathon to finish your book. But if you’re struggling, like I was for many years, there are lessons to be learned from running 26.2 miles through every borough of New York City. Let me save you the trouble.

I had been writing seriously, I thought, for well over a decade, and while I had a bunch of publishing credits and a Pushcart nomination under my belt, my dream of getting a book published was eluding me. Although I had drafts of both a short story collection and a novel, neither was at the stage to secure a literary agent or sell to an editor, and I was failing to complete either one. 

Then I signed up to run the New York City Marathon and everything changed. There was an urgency to the task. I was doing it in memory of my brother’s best friend from high school, who had died the previous year. His family and my brother were counting on me to follow through and finish the race. 

I embarked on a training routine consisting of exercising four days a week: two short runs, strength-training, and one long run that would slowly increase. In order to do this, I sat down with my calendar every Sunday to schedule the exercising around teaching, parenting, and everything else in my life. 

Six months later, after crossing the finish line, I had an epiphany. I needed to do the same thing with my writing. I got a planner with each day divided into 15-minute increments, and every Sunday, I made a writing plan for the following week. Early mornings, when I was most clear-headed, were for deep revision and generating new material. The days that were busy with teaching, which also involved long commutes, were for reviewing drafts and sending out work. But the most crucial change was the act of creating the schedule every week — because every week was a little different. So, instead of a vague idea of trying to get some writing done here and there, I had a specific schedule to follow, just like the one I had for training.

The effort paid off. First, I had my short story collection accepted for publication, followed by finding an agent for my novel, which was subsequently published. 

Although my marathon-running days are behind me, the lessons and the scheduling remain. 

Susan Buttenwieser is the author of the novel Junction of Earth and Sky (Manilla Press) and the short story collection We Were Lucky With the Rain (Four Way Books). She has taught poetry and memoir writing for more than twenty years in diverse settings, including a women’s maximum-security prison, public middle schools in the Bronx and Queens, homeless shelters, libraries, services for older adults, and juvenile detention facilities.

Read more from Cleaver’s Writing Tips.