My hands were sweaty. I had cotton mouth. Nervous energy zipped through my core, making me feel hot.

The second hand on my Apple watch swept up toward 6:30 p.m. – no turning back now. I opened Zoom and prepared to meet the virtual novel class I’d be working hard alongside for the next 12 weeks. The pages I was going to read, critique and WRITE (oh dear lord, so many pages I needed to write before I could call my draft ‘done’) stretched out into eternity. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to keep up.

Four months later, I was on another starting line. My hands were cold. I had cotton mouth. Nervous energy zipped through my core, making me shiver uncontrollably. The digits on my Timex non-smart watch ticked toward 7:30 a.m. as I stood in a starting corral for the Illinois Marathon. Nervous as hell about running the 26.2 miles in front of me, I wanted to just lose myself in the crowd. Instead, I stepped up to a runner carrying a little sign on a wooden dowel that had a proposed finish time on it: 3:35.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m in your pace group.”

This year, I’ve committed to two pace groups, one running a marathon, and one writing a novel. Both intimidated me. Both challenged me mightily. Both surrounded me with enthusiastic, talented and supporting compatriots. Both pulled me farther, faster than I could have gone by my lonesome.

I can be a bit of a turtle when it comes to solo ventures I care about. If I don’t tell anyone my plans or aspirations, I can just pull my head in and hide when I feel I’m not succeeding. See, nobody knows! Nobody home.

The novel workshop, organized by A Public Space and led adroitly by Elizabeth Gaffney, required participants to read each other’s work, 350-400 pages of it each week, and share critiques during class and in writing. The flip side of this was submitting a novel manuscript for critique.  

That first task, reading others’ work, I enjoyed. It was time-consuming and required me to polish the rust off my critique skills, but it helped focus mentally like I hadn’t for a long time. And it gave me access to several really good books-in-progress – an amazing rainbow of genres and styles – many of which – perhaps all – I expect to see in print.

The second, turning in my own work, scared me. On top of the usual “what are smart readers going to think about this raw material?” fears, there was the fact that my novel didn’t have an ending when I started the class. Like a swan gliding over the surface of a pond, feel paddling furiously; I read others’ novels, showed up in class, and wrote like a mad woman whenever I got a few minutes.

My real break-through came during a week of vacation I dedicated to writing full time. Writing fiction like it was my full time job, I made structure decisions, pulled plot lines together, fleshed out scenes faster than I thought humanly possible. By the end of the week, I was NOT done, but had enough of a head start that I soon did turn in a readable and logical full draft to my class, on time. Whew. I only could have done this knowing that I was committed to the group.

The marathon pace group was more spontaneous. Feeling slow after a winter of sluggish training, I had let my goal – a 3:30 marathon – slip into Neverland. But at the race expo, I came face to face with the Joe’s Pacers table. Bill said, go talk with them!

Despite my fear of commitment and failure, I found myself in the start corral with a sign pinned to my back with my name and “3:35” on it. The guy holding the 3:35 sign was named Marty, and I hung with him and his pace group until Mile 23. Through the first 10 miles, we chatted and joked. Then for a few more, the group was behind me, their reassuring presence blowing me forward like a tail wind. Then around Mile 16 things got tough. I was about to drop back when another runner motioned with her head: “Come on, stay with us.” I did, until Mile 23, when I slowed, eventually finishing in 3:38. That many miles RIGHT ON 8:11 per mile is a new record for me.

I’m caught up in these two activities – writing and running – that require vast swaths of solitude. Even so, I’m learning when companionship carries me past a point I could not have reached alone.