By Jane Friedman:

For the past two months, I have been training for a long road race (10 miles) and the parallels between writing practice and running are once again at the forefront of my mind.

Yesterday I experienced a terrible run, where I had a nagging pain in my side that slowed me to a crawl, but I kept running through it. Eventually, it went away—proving an important lesson I’ve learned about running and life: most terrible things pass if you’re patient.

That said, you have to also learn to recognize those times when something is truly wrong and you can’t continue as before.