Today my book, ‘Running Through the Dark’, is available for pre-order, before the publication date of 12 September. For the next seven days, I will be sharing posts about how the book came about and the journey to get to this point. This first post is looking at what the book is about.
What is the book about?
This should be fairly easy to say, shouldn’t it? I mean, I wrote it. I edited it. I recorded the audiobook. I’ve read it a few times now. I should have my answer.
On one level it is a book about me setting out to run the Pennine Way in a record time and how things didn’t go as I planned.
But if I had to say what it is about on a deeper level? I would say, grief.
For me, the theme of grief is a trail that the book follows, with the twists and turns and dark valleys and sunnier uplands. I never set out to write about grief, I never even set out to write about my story at all. The book was to collect the records of other runners on the Pennine Way before they were lost in time, as I will go into on the next post tomorrow. But as I began my training towards my Pennine Way I started to write about my own journey, not quite knowing where it would go, but knowing it was helping me process what was in me. I wrote about the grief of bereavements, I wrote about the grief of losing my health, my livelihood, my identity, and I wrote about grief around childlessness. I wrote without ever thinking the words would be published, or even shared. I wrote because I had a feeling I had to write it. The words flowed out.
I found myself writing about the bereavement of my Dad and brother because I found solace in putting it onto a page. No one wants to ask you about people who have died, whether that was from fear of upsetting me or not being able to sit with the uncomfortable answers themselves. I found writing about Dad and John freeing; it was a place to put the memories floating around my head, trying not to drop them, a full glass of water I was invisibly carrying around each day without trying to spill a drop. I put the words down on the page and could put the glass down. I hadn’t realised how heavy it had become over the years.
I wrote about running, which I took back up in my grief. I wrote about what running brought into my life and then what not running had taken away. The book is about the sunrises and sunsets of runs and what happened in between. The book is about setting out with a goal and ending up questioning why it was a goal in the first place.
A theme could be about mental health, although my mental health was so entwined with my physical health it is hard to see as separate. My physical health was the one that slipped first, and I wrote when I didn’t know how much that would slip further. Hoping the book is a comfort to anyone is a comfort to anyone who is chronically ill, or feels cut off from medical professionals, or grieving a life they had wanted, was a reason I said yes to this book being published.
In writing about a particular years of my life, I had to dig back, to childhood, and to formative years that were still part of the story decades later. Uncovering what might have been planted back then, and left to grow through the seasons that the book travels.
I finished writing the book when it felt like there was no more I needed to say. I pressed send and sent it to the publishers, assuming it would be sent back with a polite ‘no thanks’ because it didn’t fit in a genre and wasn’t anything close to the book set out to write.
I hope the book is about hope. Because although I didn’t find the end goal I had set out to, I did find something else.
I’ll talk more about the writing and editing process in the coming days. Tomorrow will be about how the book idea and the publishing deal came about.
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Pre-order ‘Running Through the Dark’ here to be in with a chance of winning either a Petzl Headtorch or OMM pack. Sign up to the Vertebrate Publishing newsletter for 25% discount on all their book too.
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If you have a question about book, or processes please comment or message and I will answer any that are not answered already over the coming days in a bonus post.
Beautiful. I look forward to reading your book ❤️