The CEA Forum

Summer/Fall 2006: 35.2

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MAKING LEMONADE: AN ASSISTANT ENGLISH PROFESSOR'S

PERSPECTIVE ON THE PROFESSION

Colin Irvine

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Admitting to a Marathon

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While I was in graduate school, I admitted—at first to myself and then to a close friend—that I might like to see if I couldn't run a marathon some time down the road (it was hardly a line-in-the sand, Muhammad-Ali-I'm-greatest-in-the-world kind of pronouncement). At that point, I was less than a year away from turning thirty, and I had been running regularly (meaning, admittedly, on a regular basis) for about three years. But, to be clear here, I was a person who ran; I was not a “runner.” And yet despite this important semantic distinction, and despite the fact that I was fairly certain that those who saw me out for a “run” likely thought to themselves, “That's neat that people like that run,” I nonetheless felt I might have what it takes to take on this foolish undertaking. Motivated by this suspicion, I started training on the sly.

When my wife cornered me a month or so later and asked what I was up to and why I was so serious all of a sudden about exercise (I had just purchased a pair of running socks), I swore her to secrecy before telling her of my tentative plans. “Seriously?” she asked, cutting me off as I began going into the details regarding my training regiment. I rejoined, “Yeah, I think. I don't know. What do you think? Should I do it?” She shrugged, “Sure. Go for it. What've you got to lose?” That's easy, I thought: self-respect, self-esteem, meniscus….

Now, eight years later, I'm in the middle of repeating this same scenario, although this time around the stakes seem much higher. You see, I've recently admitted to friends, family, colleagues, and others eager to change the subject that I'm working on a book. You heard me right—I, Colin Irvine, am writing a book (in reality, I'm working on editing a collection of essays, but I say that I'm “writing a book” because it sounds more grown up, more serious). I have posted calls for papers, collected abstracts, invited completed essays from prospective authors, and I have even convinced the college to give me money to work on this project. What's more, I have persuaded my wife that we need to set aside a least three days a week this summer and one this fall for me to work on the book. Of course the money the college generously granted covers only two week's worth of daycare during the summer, but I downplay this discrepancy because what matters most is that I have sufficient time to work on my book—did I mention I'm writing a book? I really am. I can't believe it!

To be sure, the similarities between running one's first marathon and writing a book don't end at the beginning, at the admitting stage. As an educated methods teacher and as a person who has taught over two dozen composition courses, I am happy to report that these endeavors lend themselves excellently well to a comparison-and-contrast paper. In fact, and I'm not exaggerating here, analyzing these undertakings is so illuminating that it almost requires one to employ the all-important Venn Diagram for the purposes of illustrating the overlap and the insights found there in and outside the shaded area.

So, if you would, imagine said diagram drawn up on a clean green chalkboard, with the shaded area indicating a similarity ratio of 94.7%, give or take 40% margin of error—the similarities I will dispatch with before turning to the much more surprising and significant differences.

Here, then, are the similarities between running marathon and writing a book: Both undertakings are startlingly complex. When learning to train for that first marathon, for instance, you discover that there are foods to avoid and foods to eat in mass quantities (also referred to as “carbo loading,” or, more accurately, “carbo bloating”), that there are gels to ingest and gels to apply to the body (avoid confusing these). You learn, moreover, such essentials as when, where, why, and how to stretch, breathe, dress, journal, peak, taper, and train.

Similarly, when learning to edit a collection of essays, you learn along the way about such inside knowledge as how to query publishers and when and where to submit a prospectus (this, from what I have gathered thus far, is an impressive, commanding term and should be tossed about liberally).

In both instances—training and editing—my rookie mistakes have taught me that it's helpful at the outset to act the part and speak the lingo of the runner/editor in order to get along decently well in either arena. When, for example, a real runner first asked me if I were tapering, I told him that I thought that I might be, and then added that I was taking Ibuprofen just in case. Likewise, when my friend in the English Department asked me this last March if I had put together a prospectus yet for the project, I explained that I had decided to save that step until later, after I had secured a publisher. He nodded knowingly (I can't stand when people do that).

Still, regardless of having failed the verbal equivalent of the secret handshake in both fields, I must say that I felt good for having been familiar enough with these important terms of the trade to use them in a way that silenced (or stunned) my would-be critics.

Another similarity, and one that can be particularly unnerving when at the front of either undertaking, relates to the fact that everyone you know has already run a marathon and, oddly enough, everyone you know has already published at least one book. I'm not making this up. It's true. Ask around. When I was in the early stages of gearing up for my first marathon, I went to a couple of parties in which somebody broached the subject of marathons. Almost invariably, everybody then chimed in as if we were in a musical with stories about their first marathon, their worst marathons, and their least favorite flavors of Gatorade and Gu. They talked about training programs and websites and soon, much to my surprise, I realized that everyone, including my wife's ex-boyfriend, has run a handful of these races and that each person you're likely to meet is casually gearing up for another race in the next week or so.

Mention in a departmental meeting or the campus coffee shop that you're thinking about writing a book and three of the four people sitting around you will tell you about the ones they have just completed and/or are in the process of “proofing.” Even the department secretary mentioned the other day that her son, the one in the alternative band, is working on a book.

As for the differences between running a marathon and writing a book, they are these: the former involves running, and the latter does not; the former is always the same length (26.2 miles!), and the latter is more varied—when are you finished?—at 200 pages? 250? 50? 500? September? September 2010?—it's hard to say exactly; the former has a finish line, and the latter has (hopefully) a publisher; and, finally and most importantly, the former is an individual undertaking and the latter (in this particular case) is a group project, wherein everyone in the group is relying on me to succeed.

It is this last difference that causes me to lie awake at night and wonder what I've gotten myself and those willing to submit abstracts and essays for my consideration into. These people—these scholars from colleges and universities across the country and across the curriculum—are spending their summers writing essays for a book I am editing on teaching the novel across the curriculum, a book that—as yet—lacks a publisher. Hence, if I fail as their editor, I've wasted their time and completely disgraced and embarrassed myself. “Seriously?! That's huge,” to quote my wife. On the other hand, when it comes to running a marathon, if I fail, I've wasted my $70 entry fee and the better part of some Sunday morning in October. I can live with hopping on the quitter's bus and taking a ride to the finish line. I'm not sure I can survive the shame of letting my colleagues down.

I wish there were a silver lining here, or a point, but I don't as yet have anything but this forced comparison-and-contrast essay to give some semblance of shape and meaning to my daring, no-safety-net project. I wish I could say that, as was the case with running marathons, writing books has turned out to be unexpectedly easy. I wish I could extend the comparison into the future and add that I've learned to write books as often and as well as I've learned to run marathons. But as I sit here at the computer sipping Gatorade in advance of a long training run three weeks out ahead of my ninth marathon, I am incredibly uneasy about the prospect of publishing this collection of essays. (Here's the part where those of you who have had success writing and publishing books—which is to say ALL OF YOU—email me advice and support.)