Write What You Know and Then Some - Researching My Young Adult Novel Swim Season

My daughter had been swimming for five years when I came up with the idea to write a novel about girls’ varsity swimming. Sitting on those cold, hard bleachers season after season gave me more than a sore you-know-what. It sparked my imagination, creating a story line and cast of characters that would show in written form what high school swimming is like for these girls. As I wrote the story, they were always at the heart of it. I wrote it for them. And I wanted it to be as accurate and realistic as possible.

 

In many ways, writing Swim Season was natural and easy. Through many autumns, I’d watched my daughter and her team swim their hearts out, beside parents rooting for their own swimmers. In the beginning, I knew next to nothing about the sport, about swim meets. But as the years went on, I learned. 

I learned simple things, like the order of events. Try finding your kid on a pool deck swarming with dozens of young swimmers in caps and goggles when you’re not sure which event it is, or whether your child is swimming in it or not. Impossible. 

I chaperoned the waiting rooms where dozens of youngsters waited for their next event. Try to keep all that adrenaline in check.

 

I volunteered to time the races, and stood at the blocks, race after race, helping to make things run smoothly, making sure the right kid was in the right lane.

I helped out at the concession stand, serving up bagels and cream cheese.

I was involved with the fundraising activities, Picture Day, and put together the program for Senior Night for a number of years. 

I went to 99 percent of the meets with my husband (we missed one when it was an hour away from our home on a week night.) 

Most of my daughters’ friends were swimmers, so I got to know several of them up close and personal. They were an intelligent, ambitious, fantastic set of young women. When my book was criticized by a critique partner because the characters seemed “too smart,” I responded with, “Well, those are the girls I know.” The team had the highest GPA of all athletic teams at the high school year after year. Yes, swimmers are smart.

I took advantage of coaches I knew personally (and some I didn’t) to pick their brains, try out the story’s premise for believability, and tweak the details. Many thanks go to the following New York State coaches: Frank Woodward, Middletown High School; Justin Wright, Monroe-Woodbury High School; Jeremy Cuebas, Minisink Valley High School; and Danielle Lindner, former coach for Mount Saint Mary College, in Newburgh.

Early in the process, I sent out a tweet on Twitter, asking swimmers to complete a questionnaire for a new book about varsity swimming. Almost a dozen young swimmers – girls and boys -  responded, and we started dialogues that provided great background for my story. Some of them went on to become beta readers. All of them were thrilled at the idea of a book about them, about their sport.

As a reader, when the answers weren’t so simple I resorted to books. Michael Phelps’ biography No Limits: The Will to Succeed, with Alan Abrahamson, was more than worth its cost. Likewise, Amanda Beard’s memoir In the Water They Can't See You Cry gave me insight into how to build an Olympic silver medalist. Instruction books, such as Terry Laughlin’s Total Immersion, with John Delves, and Tracey McFarlane’s Mirande’s Championship Swimming with Kathlene Bissell, taught me the fine-tuning of technique. The Champion’s Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train, and Thrive, by Jim Afremow, PhD, was instrumental in creating Aerin’s mental game. For inspiration I turned to Swimmers: Courage and Triumph by Larry Thomson.

Then there was the time when I decided to swim the race at the heart of my story. For a while I was taking Aquasize classes at my local YMCA. One day I got the idea to try to swim 500 yards. I wanted to see if I could do it, how long it would take, and how I would feel during and afterwards. I have never swum competitively, although I have always loved to swim and am capable of doing the freestyle. My first 500 clocked in at 30 minutes. I stopped after every length to catch my breath and chat with the other ladies in the Aquasize class. I kept at it, though, and after a few weeks managed to complete the 500 in 16 minutes, which was phenomenal for me. Of course, the time to beat in Swim Season is 4:52.50, which, for me, was in never never land. But, as a middle-aged woman with below-average fitness, I was proud of my achievement. In the end, unfortunately, it exacerbated my repetitive strain injuries and I had to give it up.

Writing Swim Season was an endeavor born of many resources, personal and professional. It’s recommended that we write what we know. I knew a lot about competitive swimming as a Swim Mom, but that was not enough to compose this story. I needed to reach out to many others - swimmers, coaches, parents, Olympians, and a psychologist – to nail the details. All of this, I believe, leads to a more credible, believable story with depth. 

Swim Season is available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.

AlzAuthors: Mary Cail, The All-Weather Friend

by Mary Cail

I’m a long-distance caregiver to my parents, who suffer from memory loss and multiple other health problems. I know every bump and bend in the 300 miles between their house and mine. I manage every part of their lives and the medically-trained staff they need, around the clock. I’m losing them in a very different way than I lost my husband. 

I was not a caregiver to Wayne, not in the sense of someone who tends to a person with Alzheimer’s disease. My husband didn’t have dementia; he had a rare brain tumor, growing like a pointed tool into his brain stem. The nine-hour surgery to remove it seemed to remove, as well, his sense of self and place in the world. 

No amount of care I could give made up for this sudden loss. He felt bewildered and scared. I wasn’t strong enough to hold him against the undertow of his dizziness, confusion, depression, insomnia, and failed confidence. But I tried. 

He took his own life one February evening almost 14 years ago, assembling his means as I stood at our kitchen sink, chopping onions and tomatoes for the spaghetti we shared every Sunday night. When he didn’t come home, I left the pot on a cold stove and drove to the hospital where he worked as a physician—where he’d earned a reputation for his brilliant mind and his decency. 

A short while later I was screaming, crouched on the linoleum tiles of a back hallway, holding my head in my hands, unable to stop the screams. He was in his office, dead. 

I’d recently suffered a miscarriage, after five years of infertility treatments. In the wake of his death I felt as shattered as an empty glass dropped on a stone floor. Thus began my years of learning to live a different life. 

Dreams of the family I had imagined—the school conferences, piano lessons, carpools and ponies—disintegrated like the white ash of a dying fire. My friends had no idea what to say. Some cried with me. One crawled into my bed the nights of that first terrible week and pressed her body against mine. Another said simply, “Come for dinner. Come everyday.” 

My friends wanted to help after my husband’s death, but they didn’t know whether to talk about what had happened or pretend nothing had changed. They didn’t know whether to give advice, sit with me in silence, or ask questions.  

The letters of sympathy, if unsure and rambling, were poignantly sincere. I couldn’t explain what I was feeling and needed from them; it was too huge and raw and incomprehensible—I still cannot talk or write easily about suicide. 

I could only accept whatever they offered, whether it was an invitation to a funny play, a basketball game, or a tour of historic homes. I never allowed myself to say no; withdrawing, I knew, would prolong the grief. At night I cried until my eyes were almost swollen shut. I yelled in anger until the light fixtures rattled at what my husband had done. 

I realized unless I could step outside myself and take care, in some way, of others, I would not survive. My life felt unendurable, tormented, disconnected. I could only reach out to people who were like me, I thought, and I looked for them in nursing homes. 

The oldest were stooped and wrinkled, confined to chairs and beds. No one listened to the stories they could still tell. In my affinity with their pain and loneliness, I found a measure of comfort. 

This experience led me to the younger group of caregivers and patients in early-stage dementia, many pulled, as I was, outside the social mainstream, grappling with a heartbreaking situation they never anticipated. 

During those months and years, my dream of a family evolved slowly into a new dream, one of a concept: the All-Weather Friend, not the fair-weather friend we dread—the one who disappears or worse, who gossips, but the friend who’s there for us when we need her most and is empowered with an understanding of how best to help. Working with caregivers years before I became one myself, I wrote a book to help people outside this situation feel comfortable and be comforting: a book to help friends stay close. It isn’t as hard as people imagine, and small words and acts of kindness can make a big difference. 

One morning during “those years,” as I call them now, I was in a country store near where I live. It’s a dark, cool place with a concrete floor, where chicken feed, handmade Christmas ornaments, eggs and mousetraps are within easy reach.

I had counted out the change for a package of crackers. As I turned to go, the lady behind the counter said, “I’m so sorry,” and her voice dropped off in disconcerted silence. 

I looked into her face for a few seconds and saw nothing less than a deep well of compassion in her faded blue eyes. In the set of her features, I read the words she could not bring to her lips. 

“For everything,” she finally finished. And it was enough.

About the Author

Mary Cail, PhD, is the founder of The All-Weather Friend and author of Alzheimer’s: A Crash Course for Friends and Relatives. Visit her website:  

Mary Cail, Ph.D. ⎮ The All-Weather Friend®.