Updated January 2025
Last week, a really nice article appeared in the New London Day, about—of all things—me. Back in the late nineteen hundreds I used to read the Day on an, ahem, “Daily” basis, as a student at Connecticut College. So the story seemed somehow more significant than the others that have appeared in newspapers around the country.
The hook was last Saturday’s book signing at the Mystic Seaport bookstore (a special honor).
Sailing Into a Writing Career
The article finally answered one of my longstanding questions from readers and fans: “How did you go from Olympic sailing to writing fiction?” Whether people come to meet novelist or Olympian, the juxtaposition of the two can be confusing—even though I did combine the two into Game of Sails.
Thanks to journalist Kristina Dorsey, now I can identify the link between Olympic sailing and writing fiction: Self-motivation. As I said in the interview, “Nobody is making me sit down to write fiction that may or may not be published.” And nobody forced me to buy three boats, fundraise, find sponsorship and teammates, and go on the road 200 days a year for a very un-guaranteed reward. Success at the top end of my chosen sport requires a great deal of personal sticktoitiveness, and I sure can’t justify it from the financial end.
Hmm, that sounds a lot like fiction writing.
Many of us put a lot of time and effort into things for which we don’t get paid. Or at least, we don’t get paid ENOUGH to financially justify all that time and effort. Most people call these things “hobbies.” For better or worse, I’ve now taken two “hobbies” far beyond the usual scope of the word –and found success in both. As one of my Jamestown acquaintances told me a year ago, “It’s not fair that you got to go to the Olympics and now you’ve gotten a book published too!”
What’s Required
How nice, then, to have a random reporter figure out that it’s the same aspect of my personality driving both forms of success. Olympic sailing and fiction writing require the same thing: A dogged devotion to craft that has nothing to do with making money, one that probably couldn’t survive within a (potentially more lucrative) 9 to 5 mentality.
I spent three hours at Mystic Seaport last Saturday, handing out bookmarks and chatting with visitors from all walks of life. I sold twice the number of books expected and spoke with close to a hundred people–by far my biggest and best signing yet. And even though I was wearing my booksigning uniform (the Team 2004 podium jacket), only two people asked about the Olympics—one because she’d read the newspaper article. In that setting, most people saw me as “just” the author of the book lying on the table between us.
Simpler perhaps, but definitely not the whole story.
