Last night I went to see The Spirit of the Marathon, a documentary film that follows six marathoners (elite runners and first-timers and in-betweeners) through their Chicago Marathon journey.
I sat in between my two faithful running partners — women who get up in the dark 3 days a week to meet me at the trail and clock a few miles while our families sleep snuggled in their beds and the sun makes its creeping rise over the city.
My longest runs ever have been 1/2 marathons. I’ve done a bunch of them (and that’s where I’ll be Sunday morning) but I’ve never doubled the distance.
The film, needless to say, made me want to push on through to the real nellie. It also made me cry. There’s something profoundly inspiring and humbling about the people who train to run 26.2 miles — both the incredible physical specimens who win the darn things and the ordinary folk like you and me.
There was also some pretty powerful history depicted in the movie — scenes from the first London marathon, the first Boston run by a woman, various Olympic runs. All of which inspired me to post some poetry about our ancient forbears this morning:
The Victory Ode of Bacchylides
You quick Greek, Aglaus, you earned the wild applause you stirred and fuelled that filled Poseidon’s field with roars. Out of the groove you moved as fire burns a field and up the track you ran and spun around the turn and back and then again and then again without a pause for breath, you ran to rising noise with springy poise, the men behind like panting boys.
You cut no slack on every tack sped up and back and spun four times around the posts and down again. Your oil flew off like rain. You won by half the track and ran straight on so coyly proud still spraying oil to share the joys you’d won with loyal fans among the crowd, who all got spattered, ceased their noise and to a man they screeched aloud and clutched their robes and ran and scattered.
— Bacchylides, Isthmian Ode, for Aglaus of Athens, Footrace, 5BC
(Special and delighted thanks to Ms. Sara Lewis Holmes who’s been my running partner this week in our co-blogging exercise! Thanks for gettin’ me up and makin’ the miles fly by, Sara!)
For some of you, this week’s blog barrage about the physicality of writing has resonated fully. You’ve nodded knowingly, you who write from your chin, navel and left knee.
But the rest of you think we’re cracked.
“We’re writers,” you cry. “Leave our triceps out of this!”
Friends, I assure you, we’re onto something here. Sara and I are not in the business of creating pure, unadulterated fiction. (Oh, wait. Yes, we are. But, y’know what I mean…)
In a last ditch effort to score with the skeptics, here are my sports metaphors for writing. (And if these don’t win you over, go check out Sara’s.)
Writing as Skiing
Here’s what I think about gravity. They didn’t invent it for nothing. The whole point of working your way up to the top of a steep hill is to have a kickin’ ride down. Am I right here, folks? When you’re picking up speed, do not sink into a snowplow. Sometimes you’ve just got to let ‘er rip! What are you afraid of? An icy patch? A bumpy spot? That snooty looking group in their matching Helly Hanson outerwear? Come on, mogul runners. Pull those goggles tight, point your tips downhill, tuck your poles under your arms and go. There’s always the ski patrol, um, I mean, your editor, standing by if you really careen out of control.
Writing as Basketball Practice
You’re sitting at your desk, kind of working on your middle-grade novel, kind of imagining that you’re winning The Newbery Award. And it’s not unlike shooting hoops off the garage as a kid. The announcer’s voice, eerily similar to your own, says, “This is it folks, the final shot in the final second of the game for the championship title, and she shoots and she…. okay, well, it looks like there’s actually one more second on the clock and this shot is the one…” Right? But you just keep going for it because – all evidence to the contrary – there’s always the chance that you’re going to toss the perfect swish without even hitting the rim.
Writing Revising as Bowling
Perfect! Look at all your words there, lined up like neat little pins. Oh. Only they’re not perfect. There are too many adjectives, not enough vivid verbs and the main character’s motivation is questionable. You need to pick your pen back up (it feels heavy enough to snap your wrist), take aim and go back into the manuscript. Again and again and again. Knocking down what wasn’t working, making room for what will. And on the odd occasion that you really nail it, the other bowlers cheer and you look up at your name in lights. Satisfied.
Writing as Yoga
Practice: verb
To do something repeatedly in order to improve performance; to do something as an established custom or habit.
Meet the mat like you meet a blank page – as part of a never-ending practice. You work toward balance; strength; epiphany. The abolishment of fear and ego. Realizing the harmony of body, mind and spirit (or idea, language and story). You work to connect the single self to the whole wide world.
This requires endless patience. Forgiveness. And practice…
Get your popcorn and settle in for a courtside chat with the mighty Sara Lewis Holmes. Go ahead – do the wave. Get it out of your system and then plant it. You’re not gonna want to miss a word of this. (And when you’re finished, head on over to Sara’s to read her grill me!)
Ms. Holmes, we know you’re a writer – and a smart one at that, with an always wise and articulate blog — full of incredible poetry and generosity and humour. And plus, we’ve got a beautiful book here with your name on the cover. But what about your more physical self? For example, do you consider yourself a jock? And if so, have you always, or has that been an evolving identity?
Thanks, Liz. I’m going to remember that lovely introduction the next time I’m feeling like I got my butt kicked. To answer your question, I never considered myself a jock because I didn’t play team sports. But I’ve also never had a time in my life when I wasn’t doing something physically active. I can’t stay away. I may go a week where I don’t do much, but I always come roaring back. I know I was at the gym the day my son was born. Exercise doesn’t seem like a chore to me—more like an expression of gratitude.
And what is your favorite exercise?
I like variety, so my answer to this one changes. I love my outdoor boot camp class (which is on a winter break right now) and my weekly shot of yoga, and the group craziness of spinning. I have also pulled out my boxing gloves again, and I’m doing rounds with both the speed and heavy bags.I would like to find a dance class, if it wasn’t filled with professional dancers. (Once, I went to a gym class in Vegas, and it was FILLED with showgirls. They twirled and glided; I got a headache and a bad case of boob envy.)
So with that array of activity, do you consider yourself fickle or consistent about sport/exercise? And what about your writing practice?
I’m fickle in that I change activities a lot; I’m consistent in that I always find something to keep me moving. The same could be said of my writing. I don’t have a schedule, but I somehow always manage to get the work done.
Does sport energize or exhaust you?
Energizes me, for sure. Although, a nap is often in order after a long workout and a meal.
What do you most love about exercise or athletics?
I love being a student, and my body teaches me something new all the time. After attempting a balance pose in yoga, I discovered tiny muscles in my ankles that I didn’t know I had. When I taught myself how to hit a speed bag, I learned how to ignore the feeling that everybody was laughing at my pathetic attempts. When I took up golf, I found out that I had to make, make, make myself focus on a putt, because no amount of hopeful, feel-good thinking was going to make the ball go in the cup. I love the fact that your body doesn’t lie to you and that it adapts to the demands you make on it. And yes, I love the non-chemical “high.”
(Brief digression here sports fans: 1. This slick looking golfer really truly is our very own Sara Lewis Holmes. I kid you not! and 2. This is the very first time I have ever attempted to insert an image into a blog post because I am ordinarily a scaredy cat!!! Inserting images into a blog post is like an extreme sport for me!!! I am soooo proud!!!!)
Is there anything about exercise that you hate? What about the writing process? Do you do those hateful things anyway?
I hate the first five-ten minutes of a run. I always feel so slow and creaky. In fact, I’m not a good runner at all, but I’ve been doing a lot of it for boot camp, and it’s growing on me.I don’t like being hot, and I hate the way sweat makes my back break out. I also hate the way I want to throw up after doing sprints, and I despise workout pants that are designed for girls with no butts.As for the writing process, I struggle with self-doubt, and with choosing just one thing to focus on. I have a tough time with first drafts, and just have to slog through them.
How do your athletics dovetail with your writing? Do they compliment your efforts or distract you? Do you think about your writing while you play or exercise? Are you aware of your body and movements while you write?
You’d think that all would be wine and roses (or Gatorade and herbal supplements) with me and my writing/athletics. But one conflict I have is that I want to do BOTH in the morning. I’ll get on a tear with my blogging or novel or poetry writing, and the next thing I know, it’s noon, and I’m not enthused about working out alone and there’s no fitness class on the schedule at that time, and it’s too hot (or cold) to run, and blah, blah, blah…I’m skipping my workout for the day.Or the opposite: I’ll get so set into going to certain fitness classes in the morning that I totally blow off any writing work, and then I wonder why no words are appearing on the page. Sometimes, working out seems so much easier and more concrete than dealing with that amorphous first draft.
But mostly, exercising helps my writing by burning off stress, showing me how to think about problems in a fresh way, and by teaching me patience and endurance and focus.
Many people think of writing as a quiet, still, solitary effort, and they picture writers sitting in small rooms wearing big, thick glasses, possibly with a bottle of scotch at their side. Do you think you’re unique as a writer in that you put yourself out there in the world as an active, risk-taking, blood-pumping, lean, mean exercise machine??
I don’t drink Scotch.I do, in fact, own the big, thick glasses. (I prefer wearing contacts, but still…I often don’t bother to put them in until I’ve been writing for hours behind the laughably eye-warping lenses.) But I think that there are many, many writers who incorporate exercise into their writing routines. Walking seems to be the most popular writer-sport.I’m hoping that this co-blogging week will encourage other writers to tell all about their secret non-Scotch-drinking, non-thick-glasses-wearing activities…
And, our agreed-upon wrap up question d’jour, what would you say to those who hate their own bodies and/or hate their own writing?
Laugh a little, perhaps? Do you really want to be perfect? Or do you just want to feel comfortable in your own skin? Your body IS you; it’s not just a shell for your soul or your brain. Yeah, I know that I’m dust, and to dust this body will return. But not even in my wildest writer dreams could I create something as marvelous and infinitely capable as my own body. So give it respect. Respect your writing. It’s where you are now; it’s carrying you along in this world, and so is your body, and that’s one heck of a lot to do every day, each day.
And Sara takes that “heck of a lot to do” very seriously. Amen! Glad you fit us in , Sara — thanks!
(This post is part of a continuing series on The Exercise of Writing — here at Liz in Ink and next door at Read Write Believe. Today, for example, I’m interviewed at Sara’s place, Sara’s interviewed here and there’s a bunch of back matter at both blogs. Thanks for joining us. Now sit down — I can’t see the game…)
… to Read Write Believe to see what Sara has to say about writing with her whole body.
But you better hurry or she’ll be gone — curling or cliff diving or something. That girl knows how to mix it up, lemme tell you.
The whole post is really compelling and full of very (to the power of ten) cute pictures of Sara, but here’s my favorite bit:
No matter how blocked or frustrated our minds are, our bodies know what we want to say. They’re charged with it; they store every hurt and hope; and they literally are the instruments that produce our voices.
If that’s true, what’re we getting so freaked out about all the time? I am really comforted by the fact that our job is just to listen…
OK, giddy up folks. And thanks for joining us this week. Isn’t it fun???
(This post is part of a week-long co-blogging series on The Exercise of Writing at Liz in Ink and Sara Lewis Holmes’ Read Write Believe. See related posts here and here and here and here. Today’s post, by Sara, is here.)
(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.)
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.
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…)
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.
SplinterBeach
— 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?
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.
…. 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.
