Push on through

I'm having a hard time writing tonight.  With the events in Boston yesterday, I cannot concentrate.  If you follow this blog, you know that I completed my very first marathon exactly one month ago today, so what happened at the Boston Marathon yesterday seems fresh, like something I can relate to.  In fact, it seems like something a lot of people can relate to. 

So, I tried to start a blog on how there's more than one way to write a query, just like there's more than one way to castrate a dog.  But, sorry, my heart's not in it. I feel disingenuous writing something so trite and mundane today.  Stay tuned for that in a week or something. 

I just feel sad.  A deep sad that's just sort of hanging around in my guts. 

But, people are saying there's a lot of good that's coming out of this.  People much more eloquent than I are able to bring positive thoughts to such a negative thing.  Like Patton Oswalt's Facebook note.  Or the silent run in Miami tonight to show support.  The runnersworld site has a large list of other tribute runs going on this weekend and other events to show support.  I'll be closely watching the DC running scene to see if anything similar pops up around here.  These things make me feel a little bit better.

So I will continue to watch the news as the investigation unfolds.  And I will continue to run, since I have a half marathon coming up in two weeks.  And I will have to get my head back in the game, since there are deadlines and real work that needs to be attended to.  And most of all, I will read the columns of Bostonians such as Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe that show how tough, determined, and resilient these people are.  And we will push on through. 

The Heat of Competition

Now that the Epic Journey to the Marathon is over (whew), I can take a step back and concentrate on things I love more than torturing myself, like chocolate, puppies, writing, and torturing my husband.

Puppies are better than running a marathon

Chocolate cake is also better than running a marathon

So, I'm writing more regularly again and helping my husband train for a half marathon.  However, a curious thing is happening.  My husband is running almost as fast as I am.  Sometimes faster.  And I find this totally unacceptable.

I do not normally classify myself as a competitive person.  But deep down, I think I am.  I suspect a lot of people in the medical profession drift toward the Type A personality and tend to be at least a little competitive.  I recall in vet school being conscious of classmates' test scores and surgical skills to a sometimes acute degree.  But I also know, on some other level of my brain that apparently does not communicate with the competitive level, that this is a totally unhealthy way of evaluating and comparing oneself.  The same goes with writing.

I read a lot about people who find themselves jealous of other writers' success.  Since I don't know anyone personally who is a best-selling author or literary smash, I can't say I've had any of those feelings personally, but I can certainly understand them.  While you are toiling away bleeding your poor fingers to nubs on the keyboard trying to punch out the next best American novel (or YA series or encyclopedia of horses or historical sci-fi soap opera) someone just (overnight it seems) won the Pulitzer and Opera's Book Club in the same week!  No fair!!!!

Ah, but it seems to me that like life, all in writing is not fair.  Or is it: all's fair in love and war?  I don't know - find some quote about life being unfair and that'll do.

There's a lot out there on the internet about the topic of writer's jealousy so I take it this is a fairly common feeling.  Noelle Sterne wrote a very good blog on How to Conquer Jealousy that offers sage advice and good tips.  Author Robin Black also shares her personal experiences with the green-eyed monster.  But there's also a different side of the coin here.  If you're too jealous too much of the time, doesn't that just make you a jerk?  The awesome literary online mag The Rumpus explores this concept point-blank in the Dear Sugar column.  Good reading.

But wait.  There's a difference between being a competitive writer and being a jealous writer.  I think, to a certain degree (please note the italics!!!!) that being a little competitive can help.  I mean, who here needs a push sometimes to make that leap into writing that short story?  Or finishing that novel?  Or querying that magazine?  Or submitting that poem?  Sometimes it can be a little competitiveness that sparks a fire to get you off your rear and DO SOMETHING.

Eh, I bet that blonde kid eats his boogers. Jerk.

HOWEVER.  Don't be a jerk.  Be like a superhero: put your feelings of competitiveness to good use, not evil.  In other words, when my husband comes back from a 5 mile run that was just a little faster than my time and he looks at me and says: "I'm coming to get you," well... this is competition, baby.  Bring it on.

On Writing: A Comparison to the Marathon Part 3 of 3

So, I did it.  I completed my first marathon, the Rock n' Roll USA Marathon on March 16.  It's over.  Thank god. 

I'm not particularly proud of my finishing time, or the fact that my quadriceps became iron logs at Mile 21.  But, I did it.  And that's that. 

OK, it's funny, but am I the only person who thinks sloths are really creepy?

So, now we're all set up for the comparison between finishing a marathon and writing and it goes a little somethin' like this (at least in my experience):  finishing a marathon is like finishing a first draft.  There's a flurry of emotions as you cross the finish line and as you eek out your final sentence.  There's joy that this epic journey is finally done; there's anxiety over what's next; there's disappointment that it wasn't all that you hoped for; there's hope that the next time will be better.  Who out there is absolutely in love with their first draft, whether it be an article, a short story, or a novel?  Not me!  I usually hate it and fight the urge to bury it under a rock somewhere. 

This is where I bury my first drafts: under a giant rock guarded by goats. Fierce guard goats.

But, as the saying goes, time heals all wounds (except those with Staph infections).  I give the first draft a day or more (if deadlines allow) to "steep" and then take a look at it again with fresh eyes.  And then a funny thing happens: it's not as horrible a monstrosity as I first thought.  It's ok - ok in that first-drafty kind of wonky way.  And so was my marathon.  No one's first draft is a masterpiece just as no one's first marathon is their finest physical performance.  Both feats are trials - testing the waters, so to speak.  Then you go and prove to yourself you can actually stick it out and finish and no matter how slow you run or how ugly your first draft is, you finished SOMETHING and you also now have something to fall back on - the hard part is over. 

So, I'm letting my legs rest and recover and I have a first draft tucked away on my laptop.  I'll revisit both running and writing this week as soon as I fight off those fierce guard goats. 

P. S.

OK, here's a post-script to what I was talking about yesterday: the "hate phase" of writing.  Karen Russell, author of the Pultizer-nominated novel Swamplandia! has a wonderful take on this phase (and a little less negative than mine), as seen in her interview by BookBrowse.  In this interview, Karen is asked how it was to write her first novel.  She answers:

"It's such hard work and it also feels ridiculous to me sometimes, all the effort that it takes - like, why can't you get some imaginary people to do something interesting? You invented these fools, why can't you make them behave?"

I just think that's wonderful.  That's all.  Also, I need to learn more about alligators.

On Writing: A Comparison to the Marathon Part 2 of 3

Over-training

My marathon is this coming Saturday.  Like, in 5 days.  I'm freaking out.  Just thought you'd like an update.

Me. Right now.

But, to continue the thread from last post, I'd like to further compare marathon training to writing.  There is a concept in long distance running called over-training.  Over-training happens when an athlete doesn't allow enough recovery time between running days.  The body responds in insidious ways, such as decreased performance, constant muscle fatigue, crabbiness, and even athletic regression.  Curiously enough, different people experience over-training in different ways and there's not one good field test to confirm that yes, you're suffering from over-training. 

I started to experience over-training about a month and a half ago.  We were about 7 weeks out from race date (March 16, by the way) and I couldn't keep up with the group.  Then I couldn't make it up the hills.  Then my legs were on fire.  Constantly.  And I was wondering what the hell was wrong with me.

After entering the mandatory internet search to self-diagnose my problems, article after article listed my symptoms as over-training. Turns out the best thing to do for over-training is to NOT TRAIN.  So I took a week off. 

I dare to compare some parts of the writing process to the concept of over-training.  Not that you could ever write too much and drain your ability to produce verbiage (as if we were all giant metal tanks of words that, when empty, well, you were empty), but that when mired deep in a particular project, you may feel yourself losing your way or unable to keep up with your previous creative fire.  

When I write anything really over 2,000 words, I go through a love-hate-love cycle.  At first, I LOVE the idea - I am a writing genius!  Every word is pure gold!  Then, I get stuck in the drudgery of actually finishing the piece, and editing.  And I HATE it.  It's crap.  All of it.  This part doesn't make sense, a 5 year old could write that paragraph better - hell, my dog could write it better.  This part of the process, to me, is sometimes like over-training.  This part makes me crabby and makes me feel like I've regressed as a writer.  It's about being too critical of a first draft and sometimes even too negative when it comes to the purity of the creative process.  It's a dangerous place and like over-training, if not recognized and dealt with properly, can lead to serious damage. 

If you're an athlete and ignore the signs of over-training, a few things could happen.  You could get injured.  Also, you could burn out.  Most cataclysmic of all, both of these things could happen at the same time.  If you're a writer in this hate phase, you could listen to your inner demons and quit. And quitting is the worst thing a writer can do.  Well, except for plagiarism.  That's probably worse. 

But, like getting out of over-training, finding your way out of the hate phase comes down to taking some time away, at least for me.  Even a day's break from a project to let it "set" helps me come back with fresh eyes, eyes that aren't so critical as they were the day before.  And what's nice is that after that hate phase, there's another love phase.  After a break, I sometimes come back to a project and think: wow!  That's not too bad! Or at least not as bad as I first thought!  And that's a much better place to be. 

Cheesy ending, folks. Deal with it.

So, what I'm trying to say, and remind myself of, is that writing, like running, can be hard, but working through the tough bits to the finish is rewarding in the end.  I'll be trying to remember these very words on Saturday, as I'm around Mile 19 of the marathon.  I'll let you know how it goes.


PS: don't despair.  After this stupid marathon, it's back to more vet stuff, I promise.

On Writing: A Comparison to the Marathon

Hi folks.  I'm dangerously close to already failing one of my New Year's resolutions, which was to blog at least four times a month.  As such, I'm scrambling to write three posts within this last week of February.  Additionally, I'm deep in the struggle of training for my very first marathon, a feat much much more difficult than I ever imagined.  Since this is taking most of my time and energy, and provides me long training runs in which I can come up with blog topics, the next three posts will be running-heavy and animal-light.  As an attempt at amends for all my dear readers who visit for the veterinary side of things, here's a picture of a patient of mine in vet school:

I forgot his name, but doesn't he look like a Mr. Bigglesworth?

The next three posts here will be on a theme of comparing writing, in particular the long commitment of writing a novel, to training for a marathon. 

Blog 1 of 3:

Writing is so much like training for a marathon, it's not even funny.  Not in the slightest.  Especially when the going gets tough.  I know.  Because right now, the going is VERY tough for my marathon training. 

With a 26.2 mile challenge breathing down my neck in four weeks, I am stressed, I am tired, I am working hard.  Anyone with a writing deadline ever feel the same way?  I am suffering from over-training (more on that in an up-coming post), which I am likening to writer's block.  Worst of all, I am tempted to quit.  So very tempted. 

And yet..... so many people talk about running a marathon.  Just like so many people talk about writing a book.  I prefer to live, or at least try to live, my life according to the Elvis song: "A Little Less Conversation" (a little more action, please).  Anyone can TALK about doing something.  How about we actually DO IT?

I believe in order to complete either a book or a marathon, one must exemplify three traits: perseverance, self-discipline, and ambition.  Please note I have not mentioned talent.  There is no secret to writing a book - you have an idea and you write it down.  There is no secret to running a marathon - you put feet to pavement and start moving.  You don't need to be the next Hemingway, or the next Usain Bolt.  A popular writer's quote goes something like, "Writing is 3% inspiration and 97% avoiding distractions on the Internet", which means to me: just freaking do it.  A nose to the grindstone sort of thing.

I'm writing today because I'm angry and frustrated and I want to quit.  A few weeks ago, just as I really started to feel the effects of extra miles in my training, I got a rejection letter in the mail from a writing query I sent a month earlier.  Talk about getting kicked when you're down.  Struggling both in writing and running, it's so tempting to wallow in self-pity and have a convenient excuse to eat an entire bag of M&Ms.

Me, for the past month.

And yet.... there are people who believe in me.  One thing about bragging that you're training for a marathon (in the euphoria of the first week of training) is that the people you tell keep you accountable.  They ask how things are going and offer words of encouragement.  And it's a funny thing about encouragement - after you keep hearing it, you start to believe in yourself again.  It can be the same thing with writing.

So, here we are four weeks from race day.  One last long run tomorrow morning, then it's down to tapering.  You could liken this to finishing the last third of a novel: the plot is winding up for the climax, but there are loose ends and plot holes you need to repair.  It's overwhelming, but the end is in sight.  And we can do this.

Literary Art

It always seems that in the dead of winter, when I'm trapped inside the confines of my house daydreaming myself away to a tropical paradise or just somewhere above 30 degrees, I get a little artsy-fartsy.  Years ago during my senior year of vet school, on a fairly quiet rotation called "ancillary" where we fine-tuned our histopathology skills in the mornings and spent the afternoons slipping on blood on the necropsy floor, and therefore had no patients to care for and were finished by 4:30 every afternoon, I had some time on my hands.  This rotation was in February and being cooped up in my one-bedroom apartment in bone-chilling Lafayette, Indiana, I revived a passion of the art work of Edward Hopper.  

Months prior to this, I visited the Indianapolis Museum of Art, where I encountered my first Hopper painting: Hotel Lobby.

Hotel Lobby, Edward Hopper (1943)

At the time I was completely unfamiliar with Hopper's work but I recall being drawn to this painting.  I loved it.  I found it had the simplistic power of suggesting a million different stories of what was going on in the scene.  I remember standing in front of it for minutes, just staring and getting lost in the possibilities.  This painting was like the opening of a novel, laid out visually right before my eyes. Researching more of Hopper's work, I discovered he painted one of my favorite paintings of all time, Nighthawks. 

Nighthawks, Edward Hopper (1942)

I read this painting was on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, which is where I set out on a bitterly cold Saturday during my ancillary rotation.  Ironically, the exhibit showcasing Hopper's masterpiece was closed for renovation during my visit, but I did see a few of his other works and of course bought a few goodies at the gift shop.  One of my prize possessions from this trip was a book called The Poetry of Solitude: A Tribute to Edward Hopper by Gail Levin.  A small collection of poems inspired by Hopper's works, this book contains the culmination of all things wonderful in my world: a poem written my one of my favorite authors (Joyce Carol Oates) about my favorite piece of art, Nighthawks.

EDWARD HOPPER’S NIGHTHAWKS, 1942

The three men are fully clothed, long sleeves,
even hats, though it’s indoors, and brightly lit,
and there’s a woman. The woman is wearing
a short-sleeved red dress cut to expose her arms,
a curve of her creamy chest; she’s contemplating
a cigarette in her right hand, thinking that
her companion has finally left his wife but
can she trust him? Her heavy-lidded eyes,
pouty lipsticked mouth, she has the redhead’s
true pallor like skim milk, damned good-looking
and she guesses she knows it, but what exactly
has it gotten her so far, and where? — he’ll start
to feel guilty in a few days, she knows
the signs, an actual smell, sweaty, rancid, like
dirty socks; he’ll slip away to make telephone calls
and she swears she isn’t going to go through that
again, isn’t going to break down crying or begging
nor is she going to scream at him, she’s finished
with all that. And he’s silent beside her,
not the kind to talk much but he’s thinking
thank God he made the right move at last,
he’s a little dazed like a man in a dream —
is this a dream? — so much that’s wide, still,
mute, horizontal, and the counterman in white,
stooped as he is and unmoving, and the man
on the other stool unmoving except to sip
his coffee; but he’s feeling pretty good,
it’s primarily relief, this time he’s sure
as hell going to make it work, he owes it to her
and to himself. . . . And she’s thinking
the light in this place is too bright, probably
not very flattering, she hates it when her lipstick
wears off and her makeup gets caked, she’d like
to use a ladies’ room but there isn’t one here
and . . . how long before a gas station opens? —
it’s the middle of the night and she has a feeling
time is never going to budge. This time
though she isn’t going to demean herself —
he starts in about his wife, his kids, how
he let them down, they trusted him and he let
them down, she’ll slam out of the goddamned room
and if he calls her Sugar or Baby in that voice,
running his hands over her like he has the right,
she’ll slap his face hard, You know I hate that: STOP!
And he’ll stop. He’d better. The angrier
she gets the stiller she is, hasn’t said a word
for the past ten minutes, not a strand
of her hair stirs, and it smells a little like ashes
or like the henna she uses to brighten it, but
the smell is faint or anyway, crazy for her
like he is, he doesn’t notice, or mind —
burying his hot face in her neck. . . . She’s still contemplating
the cigarette burning in her hand,
the counterman is still stooped gaping
at her, and he doesn’t mind that, why not,
as long as she doesn’t look back, in fact
he’s thinking he’s the luckiest man in the world
so why isn’t he happier?

~ Joyce Carol Oates, born 1938, American poet, novelist, and essayist

Now, if only one of my other favorite authors, Margaret Atwood, would write a poem inspired by Dogs Playing Poker, by C.M. Coolidge, I will have found my nirvana.