Keri Blakinger wanted to be proud of herself. In the ninth grade, after years of persistence and practice, she mastered the triple salchow and the triple toe loop. But she catastrophized, not believing she deserved figure skating success. Sure, she had executed the jumps, but she didn't feel them instinctively and knew the skill was fleeting, not wired in her muscle memory. She focused on training harder.

Two years later, she competed at the United States Figure Skating Championships, known as "Nationals." Keri was encouraged by a fifth place showing, but her partner, Mark Ladwig, was dissatisfied and abruptly quit their pairing. "His ambition," she writes in Corrections in Ink, "had become my Olympic-sized tragedy." (Ladwig went on to participate in the 2010 Winter Olympics with Amanda Evora and finished tenth. The pair would win two US National silver medals.)

Her consolation ...