Rocky, Long Distance Running, Writing, Grief and Ambition

This week on the Torg Stories Podcast we discuss an an essay called “Shadow Boxing” by Jeremy Collins. It was first published in the Georgia Review in 2007 and was included in the Pushcart Prize collection published in 2009.

After I first read and admired this, I reached out to Jeremy to see if he would be willing to endorse my first novel Love on the Big Screen. He was generous enough to do so. Don’t forget that the second edition is available on Amazon: $2.99 for the Kindle. $9.99 for the paperback. Click here to check out the book. 

What got me most about this essay: 

Jeremy and his friend were in a car wreck. His friend died. He wrote this: 

• I set two goals. I decided I’d write three pages a day for one hundred days, and I signed up to run the Philadelphia Marathon, which ended at the steps of the museum. 

When I read about Jeremy’s life, it certainly caused me to remember some things I did when my first wife moved out of the house where we lived. She said she didn’t know if she would come back. Not too long after, I set two goals: 

1. I would write 800 words a day 6 days a week and tell the story of what looked like the end of my marriage. I figured it would either end when the divorce was final or when we reconciled. 
2. I signed up to run the Chicago Marathon. 

The Long Distance Running Section: 

Let’s take a minute to remember our longest runs: 

1. Chicago Marathon: Dad came and filmed me with a large video camera. I trained with a fellow teacher who was also having trouble in her marriage. I planned to drive myself home. It was cold. I slept on the ground wrapped in one of those silver blankets and then drove home. 
2. Charlotte Marathon: Megan was there. I crashed. 
3. Columbus Marathon: I was so disappointed in my Charlotte run that I signed up for another one a few weeks later and a week before I got married. I ran slower at the start and it was a fun day. 

Collins writes, “No one ever warns you about bleeding nipples.” 

He writes about the people who are running around you in a marathon. 

Questions for discussion sparked by the essay: 

1. How would you describe the author Jeremy Collins’ relationship with the original Rocky movie? What’s the closest thing you have to a relationship like that with a work of art? Say Anything, High Fidelity
2. Related: What movie have you seen the most? Say Anything, Elf, No Country for Old Men, High Fidelity (Maybe only Elf 10x) let alone a thousand. 
3. He fell asleep every night as a kid listening to the Rocky audio recording. Do you do anything different to fall asleep? 
4. The car wreck. Then he goes to see the dad and promises to write a book. Promising someone you will write a book is a big promise. Sometimes, an idea just doesn’t pan out. (The Fern Story and the US Marshal Plane) 
5. The writer Jeremy Collins read that story about how Stallone wrote Rocky. He thought he’d copy that plan. He says he missed this: What I didn’t see was the most important lesson of the creation of Rocky: some things, perhaps the best things, cannot be taught. Anne, what do you make of that? 

Favorite Parts: 

1. Bottom of p. 174 he tells the story he read about Stallone getting Rocky made. 
2. I admire Stallone and Collins’s ambition.

Lines that grabbed me: 

1. …I’ve yet to publish the book I’ve been writing for ten years. 
2. I made mourning my mission. 
3. Defeat and loss are our most honest teachers. 

Memory’s triggered: 

1. He listens to a tape of a recording. I make 6 minute quarter countdowns on a tape player for my imaginary basketball games. 
2. His answering machine players the opening bars from Eye of the Tiger. My current alarm I wake up to is the original Rocky training montage. 
3. He has Rocky on his wall. I have Rocky IV poster in our workout area. 
4. Jeremy types other people’s books. I used to retype interesting sentences and then I’d emulate them as practice and a warm up for what I was writing. Those didn’t count toward the word count. 
5. The film Rocky came out in 1976. Where were we? 

Lines about writing: 

1. Writing takes time, and good writing is earned a word at a time. (makes me think of AI) 
2. Write it first in pencil, then again with a typewriter. – Hemingway
3. Stop when it is going well so you’ll know what happens next. -Hemingway 
4. Do not mistake motion for action. – Hemingway.  A basketball practice can be like this too. 
5. Make sure you read, read, read–read everything. – Faulkner 
6. He’s someone with pain and experience. Someone who might have a story to tell. 
7. I try to write a little bit each day. – Flannery O’Connor 

My divorce was the catalyst to my most creative work: books, films, articles, screenplays 

Wrapping Up: 

1. He refers to Donald Trump in the 80s. This was published in 2007, 10 years before he became president. 
2. Anne, do you know what the Pushcart Prize is? 

• From wikipedia: The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best “poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot”[1] published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to submit up to six works they have featured.[2] Since 1976, anthologies of selected works have been published on an annual basis. These initiatives are supported and staffed entirely by dedicated volunteers.

3. Jeremy’s friend writes him off when Stallone wears elevated shoes. 

A bit about the writer Jeremy Collins: 

• His writing has appeared in Best American Sportswriting and The Pushcart Prize. 
• He once shook hands with Mr. T as a kid at the ball. 
• The thing of his I’d most like to read is a piece in esquire called “When My Father Talked About Larry Bird.” 
• His website is JeremyCollinsWrites.com 

Anne and I read Shadowboxing from the Pushcart Prize Collection. 

Here is a citation for the piece: 

• Collins, Jeremy. “Shadow Boxing.” The Georgia Review, vol. 61, no. 3, 2007, pp. 604–22. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41402884.

Thanks for checking out this episode!