Wrangler Dani

Adam and I have been swimming several times a week this summer (in keeping with my manifesto, huzzah!) and it’s been really wonderful for me. Swimming laps is one of my favorite things to do – I love the feel of pushing through the water, the sensation of flipping over at the wall and the smell of chlorine and sunshine on my skin. It doesn’t hurt that we’re in Olympics season either – as a former Swim Team-er I like to imagine that I could at least be friends with Team USA.

But I had a realization the other day – despite years of coaching and a lot of practice in the pool, I was swimming with a focus on my breath rather than my stroke. This means that, in freestyle for example, I was over-rotating in order to breathe, sashaying back and forth down the pool like a limp noodle, wobbling from breath to breath.

I realized that my mental state was affecting my stroke, that instead of breathing to swim I was swimming to breathe, and my freestyle had lost the clean lines and powerful strokes of a practiced swimmer.

So I put my head down, didn’t think about breathing, and raised my shoulders out of the water. YOU GUYS. It was like going from driving a Prius to a F-350. The power difference was unbelievable, and I couldn’t believe how much easier the stroke was and how much faster I swam. And guess what? I didn’t drown. I still breathed, despite hardly thinking about it and focusing on my stroke instead.

Afterward, I was thinking about this with regards to my work as a writer. I think often I focus on the stress-inducing bits – the editing and proposal-writing and marketing – the “breathing” of writing – without letting myself enjoy the powerful feeling of exercising my creative muscles. Thus, my writing stunts and staggers, flailing around before I even get going, because I have been so consumed with the day-to-day that the powerful joy of feeling a thought or perfect paragraph break the water has been lost.

I’ve been told that I am a “craft” writer – someone who focuses on the way the words play with each other, rather than a “content” writer, someone with a story that is burning to get out.  The craft is tough, like letting go of fear and mental tiredness and muscle fatigue when in the pool.

Today in my head, I’m Missy Franklin. Clean lines and powerful strokes and gold-medal hopes. Not a fearful focus on the basics, but eyes on the prize – whether that’s a book deal, a perfect blog-post or just a paragraph that says it perfectly.