Bright & Dark

My writing mentor, Dean Wesley Smith, has another series starting on his blog. This one is called Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing, and the first installment is about writing speed. Kill the myth!

The interesting reading is here.

Today is day 5 of the early a.m. workout regimen — an hour of Nia on Monday and every other morning except Thursday (on account of a late-running Wednesday night meeting), 30 minutes of heavy cardio. I’m hoping to incorporate some lifting into the mix and some formal stretching (yoga) in the next couple of weeks.

I’m doing this because, although I’ve lost quite a bit of weight over the last few years, there’s still some more to go, and because of the way my body works there’s very little chance of dropping more weight without a lot of exercise. (All hail the metabolism!) Plus, there’s the thorny issue of when that’s going to happen.

By the time I get home at night after running errands, walking the Doggie Ranger, fix dinner, and take care of whatever chores need taking care of, there’s not a lot of time left. Mostly what I want to do is read a book or watch a DVD, or sometimes noodle around on the harp. Anyway, the key word in that equation is RELAX. So working out gets the short shrift every time. This way, I make sure I get it in. And it makes a heckuva lot of difference in my day, what with all the sitting I do while legal secretary-ing.

I’m gradually getting more used to this crack-of-dawn schedule and I’m liking it, even it it means I’m in bed no later than 10:30 and the alarm goes off a 5 AM every day and that I can’t just putz around the house with a mug of tea or stare at Angel re-runs on TNT. There’s not only the cardio to do; there’s also a sit because meditation is my daily grounding, not to mention some pages to write.

Some days its faster writing and others slower, but I usually can manage 500-1000 words in the hour I’ve got for that. I left our small for his age 13-year-old hero this morning in a muttered war of words with his much larger (if not older) traveling campanion. (Whale. Shrimp. Am not. Are, too.)

Anyhow, page 142 of the novel and counting. Happily this weekend I don’t have a ton going on, so there can be extra writing time.

The Barnes & Noble big box (thanks to the $100 of gift card money I found in my bookcase) is here. It includes my very own copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (I, like everyone else of late, blame Julie & Julia). Also the first in the Sookie Stackhouse series (because I’m behind the rest of the world), Just Listen, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Fragile Eternity, and The Demon’s Lexicon. These are in line behind God is a Verb and Coyote Blue. Plenty reading, me. Oh, and cooking, too!

Via my friend Anne Hill and Talking Points Memo, I share a very moving memory of Ted Kennedy.

In all the eulogizing today, I’ve seen a lot of tributes and several comments about Chappaquiddick, plenty about his public service and more than enough about how he murdered/was responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and should never be forgiven.

I say Ted Kennedy was a complicated and flawed human being, just like everyone else. It’s always struck me that, whatever he may have to answer for and to whomever, he did the best he could with his life to help people. That’s some redemption in my book.

Dean Wesley Smith has announced a list of amazing 2010 Oregon Writers Network workshops.

This stuff is invaluable. Not to be missed.

I will be making a superhuman effort to get to several of them, including a couple of novel workshops and mystery structure, which I am particularly excited about.

Never written a mystery, although I like to read them. What makes me all happy is the opportunity to learn from an award-winning master of the form (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) about how to write them. Because even if I don’t start out angling for a mystery and am instead, say, working on a YA science fiction novel, it’s amazing how a mystery will pop up and thread its way into the story. So much fun.

I can hardly wait.

Once upon a time, I thought this kind of thing involved sitting at the computer for a certain amount of time every day and meeting my goal word count.  Plus, every so often, attending workshops taught by people far ahead of me in the game so that I could learn what I need to always be bumping up my level of craft and business knowledge.   And then there’s all the amazing people I’ve met and continue  to meet at those workshops.  Fast friends made under trial by fire.

All of that is at the top of the list for being and staying in writing shape.  But that’s not all.

There’s also the part where I have to take care of body.  If the body is unhappy – slug-like from so much sitting, or not getting enough nutrients, or slug-like from so much sitting — then I actually can’t sit at the computer.  Or if I can manage it, I’m not in top form to create.  So that means exercise and fresh air and, for me, actual cooking with, you know, vegetables.  (Like this morning’s big breakfast of egg scramble with kale, ground turkey, and pico de gallo, with corn tortillas.)

So far, so good.  (And so far, so full; just waiting on the tea to steep.)  But wait, there’s more.  If you order now, you get this nifty set of knives and a salad spinner.

Which means there’s another thing that I can’t do without:  sitting meditation.  Yes, more sitting.  Only different.

This kind of sitting involves actual stillness and silence, noticing my breath as it moves in and inflates my lungs and belly and as it moves out, contracting my stomach muscles just a little, lengthening and strengthening my back.  All those stories spinning in my creative imagination come to a rest.

That rest is a re-set button.  It’s a deep breath before the plunge.   Without it, I run out of air.

And then there’s the ingestion of every kind of story I can get my hands on. — first for pleasure and then for studying.  That means books — which, in the last month or so for me, include The Luxe, Duma Key, The Last Templar, Ink Exchange, and The Constant Gardener.  On deck:  Christopher Moore’s Coyote Blue.  It also means movies (last weekend, District 9; this weekend Julie and Julia).  And all those excellent stories on TV, which one I am most anticipating is the second season of Sons of Anarchy.  Not to mention LOST, which after a Netflixed disc-and-a-half has hooked me well and good.

And lastly:  I need adventures.  I need to be around friends and meet new ones, go dancing until all hours of the night, enjoy art wherever I find it, go for neighborhood walks and hikes and beach strolls.

Whew!  That’s A LOT.  But what it really is, is life.  Getting into and staying in writing shape for me is all about life.