(This post is the first in a week-long co-blogging series between myself and Sara Lewis Holmes on The Exercise of Writing. See previous post for complete schedule.)

When I was a kid in Colorado, I skied.

A lot.

Sometimes school let out early and the bus dropped us at the slopes.

Sometimes I found powder with my mom, sometimes I ran gates with my team.

Sometimes I’d leave a ski at the bottom so I could take a wild, one-legged ride.

My ski pass for the whole season (and I know this is gonna make you want to hurl) cost $57.

But here’s the thing. I was never great.

Nobody had their sights set on the Olympics for me… or even a decent college scholarship.

I knew it.

But I loved it just the same.

I loved eating Bit O’ Honey on the chair-a-lift.

I loved the names of all the runs and the signs with their geometric shapes and the little paper maps.

I loved pointing my tips downhill and pushing off.

Fast forward about 25 years.

I’m training for some race – a 10K or a triathlon or a half-marathon.

My daughter asks me if I’m going to win.

She is not kidding and I love her for that.

I’m able to articulate, at this point, why I’m not going to win, and how deeply and truly okay that is, and how it feels like I’m getting my own big fat prize just for running.

Which is what has kept me writing all these years.

My own big fat prize.

Not the Olympics.

Not a college scholarship.

Just the totally exhilarating sense of working hard at something and makin’ it happen. 
The thrill of fresh tracks. 
The thrill of working those same tracks over – again and again and again until it’s almost easy. 
The thrill of watching myself do something I only imagined I could do…

When Sara and I started talking about the physicality of writing, I don’t know what we meant, exactly.

Using sport as an analogy for what we do with words each day?

Using actual sport to support or inspire our creative work?

Using exercise to survive the anxiety of the writer’s life?

All of that, I think.

Body is inextricable from brain.

Writing is not entirely a cerebral act.

(There are times when I wonder if writing is cerebral at all.)

Twyla Tharp, the dancer, wrote a book called The Creative Habit and it is, unsurprisingly, filled with bodily ways of thinking about creativity. Tharp herself creates with her body but she speaks, in the book, to writers and painters, composers and chefs. And to all of us she says, “I can’t say enough about the connection between body and mind; when you stimulate your body, your brain comes alive in ways you can’t simulate in a sedentary position. The brain is an organ, tied integrally to all the other systems in the body, and it’s affected by blood flow, neural transmission, all the processes you undergo when you put your body through its paces.”

I, for one, am not gonna argue with her.

Writing is like sport – sprints and long slogs, blisters and, if you’re lucky, hitting an altered state.

Writing is fed by sport – the blood flow, the neural transmission – y’know, what Twyla said.

Writing is survived through sport – the release, the fresh air, the mind flush.

Right?
 

Sara? 
Sara? 
You there, sister????

Last October, Sara Lewis Holmes posted about push-ups.

Which, it must be said, are not exactly my favorite activity.

(Sara loves them. Beats the heck outta me.)

But what I do understand is her love of a little exercise.

I feel the love. I even reckon with a bit of obsession at times.

Addiction, if you will.

Running my miles and practicing yoga keep me sane.

Period.

Without them, my children and husband would cower and cringe, my house would be condemned, friends and neighbors would avert their eyes, and my writing would… well…suck.

It’s true.

So when Sara wrote about the beauty of push-ups – and about how hard, intense, physical work might relate to writing, I got it. In spite of myself. And after batting back and forth a few emails, Sara and I decided we’d dedicate a week of co-blogging to the physicality of writing.

Why did it take three months to make it happen?

Um… we were in… training?

But now we’re all limbered up and ready to go.

This coming week, Monday through Friday, we’ve dedicated to The Exercise of Writing.
(Pun intended…)

Let the games begin!

Monday: Hit the starting blocks at Liz in Ink

Tuesday: Out of the gate at Read Write Believe

Wednesday: Half-time entertainment

         Sara Strong-Arms It – at Liz in Ink

         Liz Lifts and Lunges – at Read Write Believe

Thursday:  The Olympics – A round-up of sports posts and analogies (at both blogs)

Friday: The Fifth Quarter – Poetry Friday (at both blogs)

Now go get your stadium blanket and water bottle and settle in. 
This is gonna be fun….

About ten days ago, I posted about writing villanelles. 

I posted about writing a particular villanelle, actually — my ekphrastic response to a lithograph at 
The Blanton Museum of Art.

A poet friend solicited the work, inspired by pieces in the museum’s permanent collection. Some of the poems will eventually be posted next to their visual muses in the gallery, and all of them will come together in some sort of collection — printed or online. 

I said yes because that’s my default setting.
And because reconnecting with and stretching my poetry muscle is on my to-do list these days.
And because I like my poet friend and everything she touches is thoughtful and inspired and lovely.
Who wouldn’t want in on that?

Only then I actually had to write the dang thing. 
And I chose to write in form.
And it was kind of hard. (Subtle understatement.)

I turned it in on the last hour of the last day of the submission period.
(Because that’s another one of my default settings.)

So now it’s time to follow up with the goods, right?
And I know ya’ll are nice folk and have never been anything less than kind and receptive but oi, I’m nerve-wracked about sharing this one. Not to mention the fact that I have to transist straight into sonnet writing now, because the kidlit blogger’s crown sonnet is rolling along and I AM NEXT. (Yes, I shouted that. I’m a little on edge…)

But stretching my bravery muscle is on my to-do list, too, so here goes.

A villanelle is a haunting French form of 5 tercets and a concluding quatrain.
The first and third lines are repeated throughout the poem, and there’s an aba rhyme scheme, too.

Here’s mine, inspired by a piece by John Wesley Bellows called Splinter Beach.

Splinter Beach

— after the lithograph by George Wesley Bellows, 1916

Today sprawls, unpredictable – water dark and daylight pale.

We hover, some of us, while others plunge in deep.

Are we like boat or bridge? Will we leave behind us wake or trail

while time stands still for us to swallow or assail?

It is as if we’re jumping in while still asleep –

today sprawls, unpredictable (the water dark, the daylight pale).

We’re at the edge of everything, river wet and city hale.

Oh, to freeze this simple morning we might keep.

Are we like boat or bridge? Will we leave behind us wake or trail

as we move beyond today on wheel and rail?

(Because we must; it’s time’s impassive creep.

Today sprawls, unpredictable – water dark and daylight pale –

but tomorrow is assured, its promise filled or failed

by us – and ships and steel and smokestacks steep.)

Are we like boat or bridge? Will we leave behind us wake or trail?

We do not know. For now the water cures all that ails

and some bloke whistles Love’s Sweet Song, each note a leap.

But day sprawls unpredictable – water dark and daylight pale.

Oh, are we boat or bridge, and will we leave behind us wake or trail?

 — Liz Garton Scanlon, 2008

I like the idea of retreat meaning  to treat yourself — again and again and again.

I’m big on treats. 
I think it’s how we sustain the energy and clarity and attention needed for hard work and laundry.

Last weekend I went away with my group of impassioned-artist gal-friends and lemme tell you, it was better than dark chocolate, red wine or getting my feet dipped in warm paraffin.

Here are some of the things we did:

hula hooped
sang
reflected on 2007
envisioned 2008
cooked
meditated
laughed 
cried
talked about budgets
stretched
ran
skipped
hot-tubbed
wrote
slept

Here are some of the things we didn’t do:

laundry
make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against peanut butter and jelly, ‘tho I prefer a rough-cut almond butter. 
It’s just that it is an amazing thing to be un-needed by children for a couple of days. 
It enables the kind of fun and focus that, otherwise, I can be a little too tired or scattered for. 

It didn’t hurt that we were lent an incredible sanctuary in the piney woods of near-east Texas. There were acres of dirt roads and soft paths and, nestled in the trees, an octagonal yoga room, a pool, a bunkhouse with 8 queen-sized bunkbeds… 

You get the idea. 
Drrrrr-eamy.

All that space. All that time.
I came home loving and feeling loved. And knowing what I wanted to do next. 
Right after I finish making the peanut butter sandwiches.

If you haven’t gotten away lately, I recommend it. 
And even if you have, book another get-away soon.

Re-treat.

…. wordsmith.org sends you a word-a-day, with definitions, derivations and  excerpts of the word being used wittily in real life. And then you get to figure out how to slide supererogatory into a sentence. All nonchalantly-like. 

…delanceyplace.com delivers a little quote or excerpt from some notable non-fiction text that you may or may not have gotten to in college. It’ll make you feel erudite. (Which you can look up on wordsmith.org if you’re wondering…)

… visualthesaurus.com offers a bunch of email subscriptions, on topics ranging from book reviews to teaching hints. Plus, if you pay an annual fee, you can play with the Visual Thesaurus (a sort of solar systemy map of synonyms, plus audio pronunciation and other fun bennies) to your heart’s content.

Idn’t it all just too much fun?

Don’t you wish you were at the ALA ceremony to have seen the announcement of this year’s big book awards, up close and personal?

(A gala event that the writers’ strike isn’t in conflict with — wahoo!)

Alas, most of us found out about the winners via our home computers. 
At least the coffee’s good and we can wear our slippers.

So, here’s the news:

It turns out I am not quite the soothsayer I thought I was. 

I did (drum roll, please) nail the Caldecott: 
Brian Selznick won for his long and elegant genre-buster The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

My other predictions were, well, wrong.

There were a bunch of sweet nods toward poetry, though.
I have to admit I didn’t forsee that trend but hallelujah!

For example:

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village took the Newbery Medal. 

(Linda Urban told me she thought Wednesday Wars or Elijah of Buxton would win and she was right on — they both were given honors.)

Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath was given a Printz honor.

I don’t know about you, but I need to get to the library and start snagging the award winners I haven’t yet read.
I’m off….

I did a writing workshop with 3rd, 4th and 5th graders yesterday morning. 
It was at a lovely school with the most enthusiastic principal, teachers and librarians, all of whom seemed to think it was important that kids belive writing can be fun! Isn’t THAT a novel idea?

We had such a good time together, the kids and I did, talking about metaphors and similes and making things vivid. I had them do one of my all-time favorite exercises:

1. On one little slip of paper, each student writes down an emotional state (lonliness, happiness, jealousy, worry…) 
All of these get popped in one basket.

2. On another little slip of paper, each student writes down a noun (and I got everything from tennis shoe to mountain, tree to xbox 360). All of these get popped in another basket.

3. Each student picks one slip of paper from each basket and, voila, you’ve got the makings of metaphor. 
They have to tease out how lonliness is like a tennis shoe, or jealousy is like a tree. 

There are always a few writers who raise their hands and say, “My two words don’t work together.” (And this is even — or especially — true if I do this exercise with adults.) But after we work together to think of everything we know about lonliness and everything we know about tennis shoes, they’re almost always able to find some lovely little meeting spot — the center of a ven diagram. And therein lies the poem. It’s a beautiful thing. And, dare I say, fun.

So today, in honor of all that, here’s Metaphors by Sylvia Plath. I’ve always loved this little ditty:

Metaphors

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils. 

(Read the rest here…)

 I spent the day polishing up a villanelle.

One of my wee ones was home sick so she heard me do my ‘read every line aloud ten thousand times’ thing.

If she thought I was a little off before, it’s now been formally confirmed and set in stone. 
I heard her tell her sister, “Mama talked to herself in poems today. Even in the bath!”

Reading aloud is part of my process, to be sure. Good thing I don’t work in a cube where the protocol is to put your phone on vibrate and think to yourself. I really can’t see what works and what doesn’t — I can only hear it. 

And it turns out that’s especially true with form poetry. 

OK, first of all, I’m a glutton for punishment. I committed to writing an ekphrastic poem (a poem inspired by another piece of art) about a piece in the permanent collection at The Blanton Museum of Art. But it could have been anything! A haiku, for goddsake. A prose poem cut-and-pasted straight from my journal. A list of words that came to mind as I sat there soaking in the image. 

And also, how hard could it be? 19 lines, and a bunch of them are repeats. 

Well, the thing is, if you’re going to repeat an entire line it’s got to be, well, good.
And also, there’s a rhyme scheme. So once you pick your first couple of lines, you’re stuck with two particular sounds.
Or I guess ‘blessed’ with two particular sounds if stars are aligned. 

And then, to top it off, I received the invitation to write this poem months ago. Not weeks. Months.
But when did I get cracking on it? This week. This week. 
It is some crazy dysfunctional relationship I have with deadlines…

Wrap all that up and Mama’s talking to herself in poems. Even in the bath.

1. Y’know how little kids call blonde hair “yellow”? I just realized my 9-year-old still does. I love that.

2. How is it that after a 9-mile training run, the next day’s 3-mile recovery run still feels hard?

3. I just discovered Rhymezone.com, thanks to Laura. I’m just gonna put this out on the table as a potential addiction, right here and now.

4. This year’s science fair projects are (drum roll, please): lead testing toys (taller one) and comparing the fat content in various fast foods (smaller one). These are sure to transform the face of healthcare in America. I mean, just in case Hillary doesn’t get to that.

5. I am seriously, compulsively enjoying Kingsley Amis’ The King’s English. Here’s one (of about a zillion) reasons why:

Thankfully

Not an illiteracy in sentences like, ‘After my long walk in the sun I thankfully put down a glass of shandy,’ where the walker/drinker is thankful. But a stark illiteracy in, say, ‘Thankfully, the shandy is well chilled,’ where nobody in particular is thankful. A word like luckily is required instead. 

The use of thankfully in a dangling position, however, as in my second example just above, is not a politician’s use like that of dangling hopefully. It makes no attempt to smuggle in more than it says, even though it is a warmer sort of word than luckily. In any case, this is a use that looks likely to catch on further with or without the approval of honest writers, who will go on avoiding it.

So, the other day I got kind of haughty about how clairvoyant I am and, as a result, I was dared to predict the Caldecott, Newbery and Cybils awards.

Well throw down the gauntlet. 
Far be it for me to ignore a good ol’ fashioned dare. 
(And yes, if all my friends jumped off a cliff I would, too.)

Coming up with these was a tall order and totally intuitive (if you don’t count my crystal ball from the dollar store) so there will be no reviews or explanations. Just wild guesses. (And I should say, these aren’t necessarily my absolute favorites. I just think they’re gonna win…)

Caldecott and Caledcott Honors:
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick 
The Incredible Book Eating Boy, Oliver Jeffers
Pssst!, Adam Rex
The Apple Pie that Papa Baked, Lauren Thomson/Jonathon Bean
Pictures from our Vacation, Lynne Rae Perkins

Newbery and Newbery Honors:
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick (I mean really — where does this one fit???)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
Edward’s Eyes, Patricia McLachlan
Me and the Pumpkin Queen, Marlane Kennedy
A Crooked Kind of Perfect, Linda Urban

Cybils:
Poetry — This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness, Joyce Sidman
Picture — Pssst! or The Chicken-Chasing Queen, Janice N. Herrington/Shelley Jackson
Middle Grade — Crooked or Emma Jean Lazarus, Lauren Tarshis
YA — Deadline, Chris Crutcher or Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, Carrie Jones (and if I get this one right, promote me to queen because the finalists haven’t even been announced yet.)

So what do you guys think?
On the money?