Finding inspiration while on the run

TRENT WOODS, N.C. -- Ask Nicholas Sparks how many novels he’s written, and the prolific writer counts on his fingers, listing the titles under his breath.

One finger: “The Notebook.” Two fingers: “Message in a Bottle.” Three fingers: “A Walk to Remember.” And so forth, until he starts over with the first hand to eventually reach the latest, No. 12: “The Choice.”

It is, he says, in many ways like the other 11: set in eastern North Carolina, with likable characters in realistic situations. And it’s likely to be similar in another way: So far, all the novels have been bestsellers for Sparks, who has sold about 60 million books worldwide and had three novels made into movies. A fourth, “Nights in Rodanthe,” is to be released next year.

In “The Choice,” Travis Parker is a fun-loving veterinarian. Gabby Holland, a physician’s assistant, moves next door, and their meeting puts Gabby at a crossroads.

The story line of “The Choice” comes from two thoughts: Sparks’ desire to return to the structure of his first book, “The Notebook,” in which characters face consequences later in life from events that happened earlier, and to his time coaching track at New Bern High School over the last two years.

“I find myself on a daily basis with these young men saying, ‘Go to school’ or, ‘Do your homework and don’t talk back to your teachers and make sure you do what your parents ask you,’ ” says Sparks, whose relay team still holds the record at the University of Notre Dame for the 4x800. “I always follow with the thought that because what you do today has consequences for the future. The choices you make today lead to the outcome that your life will be.”

His life lessons are making a difference: Five of his six seniors from the last team are going to college this year on track scholarships; the sixth got an academic scholarship.

“Track and field changed my life,” says Sparks in a recent interview at his 7,000-square-foot home on the Trent River, some 110 miles southeast of Raleigh.

“It taught me more about discipline and perseverance and character than any class I’ve ever taken, because to be good, you need to show up every day, rain or shine. And for me, I was talented, but I was not supremely talented. To get where I was, I had to outwork people, and it taught me to do that.”

He lives with his wife, Catherine, and five children ages 6 to 16, and writes about four days a week, up to five hours a day and produces 2,000 words each time.

Of the 140,000 or so words he puts together in about six months of writing, Sparks culls about 80,000 for a book.

“I don’t really struggle with writer’s block for extended periods,” he says. “There are times I struggle with which way I want to take the story, and those can get aggravating. But it passes, and something comes.”

When he’s not writing, he’s involved in philanthropy. He and his wife have donated more than $700,000 to build the high school track and established a $1.5-million program in creative writing at Notre Dame, where Sparks graduated in 1988.