Last week, I listened to Haruki Murakami’s Novelist as Vocation, which then led me to start listening to his What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

I ran 5 miles listening to this book yesterday and will run more today. Murakami talks about his discipline in writing and running nearly every day, which I find incredibly admirable and inspiring. While I don’t think I’ll be running 6 miles daily like he does, I like the emphasis on the importance of discipline.

One of the biggest lessons I learned from marathon training was that motivation comes and goes. What’s important is discipline. Discipline to get the miles done, no matter the weather or if I feel motivated that day. I think this translates to any goal that we set for ourselves. For me, it translates to writing. Some days I might not feel motivated, but writing, like running, activates those muscles and creates muscle memory, so that even on the hard days, I can push through. But this only comes with time and consistency. We’ll hit road blocks along the way, there will be days that we don’t meet our goals, but if we want to hit our goals, we come back to it and try again the next day.

Another major lesson I learned from marathon training is that I can do hard things. Running a marathon isn’t the hard part—it’s the six months, hundreds of miles, hours of cross-training, diligently fueling—that’s the hard part. (Don’t get me wrong, race day is hard too, but it’s a few hours versus months of hard work). Again, this translates to writing. I wrote a book! A full book! The hard part isn’t the finished project—it’s working day-in and day-out as the word count and pages slowly build up. Getting that first draft done is more than many people ever accomplish.

It’s thought that fewer than 1% of people successfully write and publish a book (various online sources say this, but in my admittedly lackluster google search, I couldn’t find any real statistics), and the same is said about marathon running.

As I continue in the query trenches and start to take steps toward self-publishing, I need that little bit of reassurance. I’m twice now part of a tiny minority of people who have accomplished these huge goals. They may not seem like much, but to me, they mean the world and have both changed my life in immense and small ways.