Four Things Fighting Has Taught Me About Writing

Issue #1 | November 2025

Hey Readers,

Welcome to the first issue of Nicole’s Notes, a newsletter documenting my journey to publication and beyond, as well as occasional thoughts on writing and fighting.

As I am writing this, I am less than a week out to bringing eight athletes to their first kickboxing tournament in Ontario, and twelve days out from my debut on the international stage at the WAKO Senior World Championship in Abu Dhabi. The anxiety dreams started last week - I had almost forgotten what those felt like.

On the writing side of things, I had one of my favorite literary agents request a full manuscript recently, and I am waiting to see if that will go anywhere. This is a tough industry to break into, so I am not getting my hopes up. In the meantime, I am focusing on completing two other works in progress.

Between the upcoming competitions and the manuscript request, plus all the day-to-day things that come with running a martial arts gym, I’ve had to pull out all the stops on my coping skills to not go into an anxiety spiral. This co-occurrence of opportunities has made me reflect on what fighting has taught me about writing and mental wellness.

Grit and toughness

Grit and mental toughness are concepts that are often talked about in combat sport communities. Their meaning can sometimes be misconstrued to be associated with an unhealthy sport culture of pushing through injury, having a big ego, “sucking it up,” top-down coaching philosophies, and the like.

To me, grit and mental toughness are interchangeable and mean perseverance of passion in the face of adversity toward long-term goals. In combat sports, I have learned that my body and my mind are a lot tougher than I thought they were; I have learned that I can take some knocks and remain standing; and I know that I can come back stronger after losing a bout. I know that perseverance, consistency, and dedication will take you further than raw talent alone. This has been a boon in the querying process.

Have other things that matter

If my whole identity was based on winning one particular bout, I would be in a lot of distress. Likewise, if my whole identity was based on one query submission or making it as a published author in general, the querying process would feel much more like a threat to my existence. Instead, having other interests and goals and things that matter to me has helped balance the anxiety in different spheres of my life. And when big things are happening in multiple spheres - like right now with the writing and fighting parts of my life - then one can provide suitable distraction from the other when needed.

Radical acceptance

This is a skill from Dialectical Behavior Therapy that I often use in the weeks leading up to a bout, as well as managing emotional reactions after a loss. This skill differentiates pain from suffering. Pain in life is unavoidable, but suffering is. Pain becomes suffering when you fight reality. Fighting reality can look like, for example, incessantly checking your email to see if your query received a reply yet (yes, I am calling myself out). Radical acceptance is acknowledging reality and constantly turning your mind back to accepting reality when it tries to fight it.

Reframe rejection

Whenever I compete, I reframe a potential loss to be a learning opportunity, a chance to get information and data so I can focus my training for next time. If I step into the ring with the only acceptable outcome being winning, I am setting myself up to not get the most out of the experience. Instead, if I focus on training as best I can, preparing myself as best I can, and then stepping into the ring with the goal of learning from the experience to advance my skills, then, regardless of the outcome, I get something from the experience.

Similarly, as I query my novels, I reframe rejection letters as learning opportunities to make the next batch of queries or the next novel better, rather than putting intense stakes on one batch of queries or one submission. I guess you could also call this focusing on process goals rather than outcome goals, but who’s keeping score? I’m certainly not. I’m fighting off an anxiety-spiral for my bout in less than two weeks. I just hope that you all find this whole thing slightly coherent.

I am really enjoying a re-read of Jade City by Fonda Lee. Published in 2017, it is the first novel in the Green Bone Saga. Described as “a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kung fu” on Goodreads, it certainly lives up to it! Not many books make me cry; there is a scene in this book that hits me hard every time I read it.

I’m always on the hunt for books to be added to by TBR pile. Send me your recommendations!

Next you hear from me, I’ll have an update on how our competitions went.

Warmly,

Nicole