« 012: Déjà vu | Main | 014: The Quiet Bomb » November 25, 2002

013: The Daily Regime

I spent part of my lunch hour staring out the window at the leaden water of Lake Union, thinking about writing. Also thinking about the lack of exercise in my life and the two threads started to run together. Sure, it's an old adage of the trade that you have to put words on the page to get anywhere. Raymond Chandler once said that you've got a million shit words that are dying to get out and there's no point in trying to avoid them. I'm thinking about writing and exercising and realize I've never taken the metaphor seriously.

Here I sit, a guy who is spending all of his time working his biceps, and I'm completely neglecting the rest of my body. It's one thing to pour all my energy into putting words on the page, but I'm going to end up looking like a Venice Beach librarian--bulging at the top with no back or lower body support and no endurance. The other parts of the body -- or, in this case, the mind -- need their workout time too.

Let's call reading "cardio" and revising/editing the "lower body workout." You're supposed to alternate days, aren't you? Lower body on even days, upper body the odd days, with a little cardio every day is how I think the regimes are intended. I don't want to tear anything or to fry my synapses too harshly.

It's been awhile since I made regular trips to the gym, but I can remember that first week. I couldn't lift my hands to the top of my scalp to get the shampoo worked into my hair. I couldn't walk up and down stairs without feeling like I was hauling a sack of anvils. Riding the bike for a half hour just plain sucked.

But it got better. I even started to look forward to the workouts, relishing the fading sensation of the upper body burn when I moved the weights around for the lower body workout, feeling my legs loosen as I fell into the rhythmic motion of the bike. It was a month or so before I started to notice the changes. They weren't immediate, but they were there.

Reading. Writing. Revising. Full workouts only. No skimping.

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Final week of NaNoWriMo. I'm not even sure where my word count is, but I am sure that it is woefully short of 50K. Not that it matters, 50K isn't anywhere near the end of the book. After about a quarter of the way, I can usually nail the final word count pretty accurately, but I'm afraid I have no idea right now. Feels like 120K, but I know there is a whole lot I haven't done yet.

I've left the outline as well. I just started Chapter 15 and, let's see, what is supposed to be happening there? Oh, "Sex." Huh. You can stick it anywhere I suppose and it works.

This is where the process gets interesting. The NaNo safety net disappears in a week and the only impetus to finish will be my own. I've got a number of unfinished books in the file drawers which speak ever so highly of my success rate. The distractions of the holiday season are endless. There are any number of reasons to put off working on the next chapter.

And one reason to keep working. You only need one.

Posted by Teppo at November 25, 2002 09:06 PM

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