"Bear Update," was the title of an e-mail recently sent to everyone in our neighborhood. "A bear and her cub have been spotted roaming the streets and woods."
Now, I do not live on the Aleutian Islands, or Alaska, or the zoo. I have seen bears a few times WAAYYYY up in the Virginia mountains, but having them loitering by my mailbox is a bit much. Especially considering the stomach-churning fear everyone experiences when they think about things "a bit too much" while running in the foggy dark before sunrise.
The deer are bad enough, huddling behind bushes and mailboxes, waiting for me to approach -- rubbing their hooves together, I imagine -- and then exploding across the road in a rain of demon-hooves and swaying tree branches. Ha ha! Hilarious, deer! Perhaps you'd like to try my venison-flavored deer treats!
This morning I was trotting along in the milky ghost light of a rainy night and thin moon, when I saw outlined against the dim road a squat thing moving in the leaves. I veered right; it followed. I swerved left, it followed.
Easy, easy, I whispered. This is reality. Reality! Come on, reality! When I saw it waving long arms and legs I felt the long cold shiver down my scalp and neck.
It was my shadow.
In my defense, it was a solid-looking shadow because the air was so humid and it caught on ... uh, water droplets ... three-dimensional....
The worst part is that it startled me twice. On the same run. As in, "I know the last thing was just my shadow but this new hell-denizen is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT."
Somehow I made it home without crashing into deer, bear, or anything worse. If I could just convince myself that the "bear" was just someone rehearsing a Halloween costume, then all I need is candy.
If I see the bear I will pelt it with Smarties and lock the door.
Showing posts with label running. Show all posts
Showing posts with label running. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Seeing Stars
Accursed Daylight Savings: It is now dark when I arise at 5 to run, dark when I leave the house, dark during my run, and dark when I return. In a few weeks when we lose Daylight Savings Time, I'll get an hour of daylight at dawn. Of course, it'll be pitch dark when I leave work, so six of one...
This morning we finally had clear skies, so I was hopeful that some light would leak across the horizon from the rising sun. No such luck: it was stars, stars, stars, and my breath fogging in the night of our first frost.
It was too dark to see: deer, monsters, other runners, road kills, goats, man-sized vultures, and other nightmarish creatures that I am certain inhabit our darkened neighborhood. Often a mailbox or a trashcan would pretend to be something else as I approached it nervously.
But mostly it was just stars and trees and the dim paleness of the road. Until, at about 3 miles, I looked ahead to where the mountains were just showing their crumpled outline in the darkness, and there was a streak of light in the sky, blink-fast and nearly vertical.
Ha! quoth I, a falling star!
And then, a few miles later, another one. This time I snapped my head up faster and saw a lingering trail of green hanging among the stars for an instant after the tiny green light fell, like a long dab of fingerpaint or cold smoke.
Nice to know there are some benefits to forcing myself out of bed and into the cold, cold darkness.
This morning we finally had clear skies, so I was hopeful that some light would leak across the horizon from the rising sun. No such luck: it was stars, stars, stars, and my breath fogging in the night of our first frost.
It was too dark to see: deer, monsters, other runners, road kills, goats, man-sized vultures, and other nightmarish creatures that I am certain inhabit our darkened neighborhood. Often a mailbox or a trashcan would pretend to be something else as I approached it nervously.
But mostly it was just stars and trees and the dim paleness of the road. Until, at about 3 miles, I looked ahead to where the mountains were just showing their crumpled outline in the darkness, and there was a streak of light in the sky, blink-fast and nearly vertical.
Ha! quoth I, a falling star!
And then, a few miles later, another one. This time I snapped my head up faster and saw a lingering trail of green hanging among the stars for an instant after the tiny green light fell, like a long dab of fingerpaint or cold smoke.
Nice to know there are some benefits to forcing myself out of bed and into the cold, cold darkness.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Terrified
This time of year, when I step out the door for a run at 5:30AM it is DARK. And even more so when it's overcast and there's no moon, like this morning.
I have been startled on runs before. A mailbox or a trash can slowly looming out of the murk can appear to be a dog, just standing there, watching me. Or a deer can crash through the woods and gallop, hooves clicking, across the road, giving me a little jolt. Often branches lie in the road pretending to be snakes.
But what happened this morning surpassed all that.
The trouble is, writing fantasy means I get to / have to think about things like Baba Yaga and her house on chicken feet, or what a spider might feel like skittering down my throat (another worry: gulping down a glass of water at night without first checking that a spider is not floating in it!), or whether a goat standing alone on a dark road, grinning, is frightening, or whether there's an old man with long fingernails under my bed. Crows with smoke leaking from their eye sockets. Something in the air too big to be a bird. Poetry scrawled in tiny letters inside a rat den. The smell of rotting fish inside a cave. You see, I can't turn it off.
This is what happened today on my run. It was so dark that all I could see was a dim belt of grey above me, where the trees open to the sky, and an equally dim belt of grey below my feet. Everything else was that black, black, almost vibrating darkness of zero light.
I ran up what seemed like the middle of the road, trying not to think about dogtoothed clowns and old women giggling insanely -- you know, normal running thoughts -- when I glimpsed something in the darkness in front of me. RIGHT in front of me.
In less than a second, the following thoughts flickered through my animal brain like lightening:
1) That's a dog or a deer. Scary, but no problem.
2) It's not moving like a dog or a deer. What is it?
3) It's my height and flailing its arms and legs.
4) It's coming right at me OH GOD WHAT IS IT?
You know the sound you make when you open a drawer -- to get a spoon, say, or your keys -- and there is a spider that you nearly grab? Sort of "Unnhhhh!"
I made that sound and leapt out of the way of what turned out to be ... another runner, who was just as scared as I was. However, what scared him was the near-collision, whereas I was worried about face-eating demons who would take me back to their master, the bloody-faced old lady who lives in a dead tree and sends her scaly children out each night to bring her their prey to toy with.
The phrase "a chill went down my back," is an understatement. I shivered from the back of my head, down both arms, and down to my calves, a breath of ice that I expect was every hair trying to raise itself up as if I were a startled cat. Fight or flight is a difficult decision when you're already running directly at the problem.
I wanted to explain the strangled groan I had emitted, so I remarked in a shaky voice, "You scared the crap out of me!"
The rest of my run, thank goodness, was uneventful.
I have been startled on runs before. A mailbox or a trash can slowly looming out of the murk can appear to be a dog, just standing there, watching me. Or a deer can crash through the woods and gallop, hooves clicking, across the road, giving me a little jolt. Often branches lie in the road pretending to be snakes.
But what happened this morning surpassed all that.
The trouble is, writing fantasy means I get to / have to think about things like Baba Yaga and her house on chicken feet, or what a spider might feel like skittering down my throat (another worry: gulping down a glass of water at night without first checking that a spider is not floating in it!), or whether a goat standing alone on a dark road, grinning, is frightening, or whether there's an old man with long fingernails under my bed. Crows with smoke leaking from their eye sockets. Something in the air too big to be a bird. Poetry scrawled in tiny letters inside a rat den. The smell of rotting fish inside a cave. You see, I can't turn it off.
This is what happened today on my run. It was so dark that all I could see was a dim belt of grey above me, where the trees open to the sky, and an equally dim belt of grey below my feet. Everything else was that black, black, almost vibrating darkness of zero light.
I ran up what seemed like the middle of the road, trying not to think about dogtoothed clowns and old women giggling insanely -- you know, normal running thoughts -- when I glimpsed something in the darkness in front of me. RIGHT in front of me.
In less than a second, the following thoughts flickered through my animal brain like lightening:
1) That's a dog or a deer. Scary, but no problem.
2) It's not moving like a dog or a deer. What is it?
3) It's my height and flailing its arms and legs.
4) It's coming right at me OH GOD WHAT IS IT?
You know the sound you make when you open a drawer -- to get a spoon, say, or your keys -- and there is a spider that you nearly grab? Sort of "Unnhhhh!"
I made that sound and leapt out of the way of what turned out to be ... another runner, who was just as scared as I was. However, what scared him was the near-collision, whereas I was worried about face-eating demons who would take me back to their master, the bloody-faced old lady who lives in a dead tree and sends her scaly children out each night to bring her their prey to toy with.
The phrase "a chill went down my back," is an understatement. I shivered from the back of my head, down both arms, and down to my calves, a breath of ice that I expect was every hair trying to raise itself up as if I were a startled cat. Fight or flight is a difficult decision when you're already running directly at the problem.
I wanted to explain the strangled groan I had emitted, so I remarked in a shaky voice, "You scared the crap out of me!"
The rest of my run, thank goodness, was uneventful.
Friday, March 27, 2009
100,000
This morning my work-in-progress lurched past 100,000 words. A landmark! Which means nothing! It's just a number at the bottom of my screen that makes me feel like I've done something of note.
But like a broken clock that still shows the correct time twice a day, I suspect that if I had typed the same word 100,000 times, at least occasionally it would be the right one in the right place, which is more than I can say for this first draft now slouching towards completion.
How can it seem to be both melodramatic and boring? Both superficial and self-indulgent? I don't know, that's the madness of the exploratory draft!
Oh well. I try not to judge, because I suspect that it's impossible to be objective this close to it. What seems slow-paced will turn out to be fast; what seems meaningful will turn laughable; what I half-remember as sloppy, half-witted prose will become poetry. So really, nothing I think now about its quality matters. At all! Or so I tell myself.
But now the end is in sight. I know roughly what is going to happen and (more importantly) how I want it to feel -- to me, to the reader, to the characters.
There are still -- heh heh heh -- a few surprises in store for the characters. This may be the end of the book, but it's not the end of the story, after all.
Just a few more weeks. I feel like I've rounded the last corner in a race and I can see the finish line even as my muscles turn to glue and everything goes slow and dreamlike. Almost there....
But like a broken clock that still shows the correct time twice a day, I suspect that if I had typed the same word 100,000 times, at least occasionally it would be the right one in the right place, which is more than I can say for this first draft now slouching towards completion.
How can it seem to be both melodramatic and boring? Both superficial and self-indulgent? I don't know, that's the madness of the exploratory draft!
Oh well. I try not to judge, because I suspect that it's impossible to be objective this close to it. What seems slow-paced will turn out to be fast; what seems meaningful will turn laughable; what I half-remember as sloppy, half-witted prose will become poetry. So really, nothing I think now about its quality matters. At all! Or so I tell myself.
But now the end is in sight. I know roughly what is going to happen and (more importantly) how I want it to feel -- to me, to the reader, to the characters.
There are still -- heh heh heh -- a few surprises in store for the characters. This may be the end of the book, but it's not the end of the story, after all.
Just a few more weeks. I feel like I've rounded the last corner in a race and I can see the finish line even as my muscles turn to glue and everything goes slow and dreamlike. Almost there....
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Darkness at Dawn
Daylight Savings Time has made my morning runs a little tricky. As in: completely black. Imagine my surprise, then, when I left the house this morning under the silver light of a full moon.
It hung in the sky like a sun, and was so bright I wondered if I'd need sunglasses. Moonglasses. My shadow streamed behind me as I ran into the glow.
But the moon was setting, and 40 minutes later , it was a watery and tired yellow behind a screen of clouds that looked like woven fingers, the light diffusing and spreading so that I almost couldn't see the round moon at its center. And my shadow faded. And the trees darkened. And the sky lots its sheen.
By the time I walked panting up our driveway the moon had set and it was fully night: black sky and stars, and a dim blueness high and far off that only hinted at dawn.
That's first time I've ever seen it get darker on a morning run.
It hung in the sky like a sun, and was so bright I wondered if I'd need sunglasses. Moonglasses. My shadow streamed behind me as I ran into the glow.
But the moon was setting, and 40 minutes later , it was a watery and tired yellow behind a screen of clouds that looked like woven fingers, the light diffusing and spreading so that I almost couldn't see the round moon at its center. And my shadow faded. And the trees darkened. And the sky lots its sheen.
By the time I walked panting up our driveway the moon had set and it was fully night: black sky and stars, and a dim blueness high and far off that only hinted at dawn.
That's first time I've ever seen it get darker on a morning run.
Friday, February 27, 2009
The Hardest Thing
It's not easy getting up early to write or run. It's hard. Really hard.
In fact, it occurred to me the other day that once I've gotten out of bed and am loping down the road under a sky of stars, or I'm sitting at the computer trying to re-enter the world of the story, that is the hardest thing I'm likely to do all day.
My life is not hard. I have food and shelter and a job, and clothes and oxygen and I'm in good health. I even have hobbies, which are pretty much the definition of having more time than you know what to do with. But it's not easy, and I don't want it to be easy, and it shouldn't be easy.
But I have to admit some masochistic satisfaction in knowing that nothing will be that hard for the rest of the day. I don't think success is like winning the lottery, I think it's like building a house. Or a boat. You have to make it happen. And there's no way other than hard work. Anything less feels dishonest.
Or so I mutter to myself as I try to roll out of bed.
In fact, it occurred to me the other day that once I've gotten out of bed and am loping down the road under a sky of stars, or I'm sitting at the computer trying to re-enter the world of the story, that is the hardest thing I'm likely to do all day.
My life is not hard. I have food and shelter and a job, and clothes and oxygen and I'm in good health. I even have hobbies, which are pretty much the definition of having more time than you know what to do with. But it's not easy, and I don't want it to be easy, and it shouldn't be easy.
But I have to admit some masochistic satisfaction in knowing that nothing will be that hard for the rest of the day. I don't think success is like winning the lottery, I think it's like building a house. Or a boat. You have to make it happen. And there's no way other than hard work. Anything less feels dishonest.
Or so I mutter to myself as I try to roll out of bed.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Lights in the Trees
Today I got up at 5 and went for a run. It was 17 degrees: cold enough for pants; not cold enough to freeze my nose hairs. Freezing my nose hairs is the second-best part of a very cold run. The best part is that it usually gets that cold only when the air is very clear and dry, and the stars glitter like nail points caught in the trees.
It was very cold, and very dark. Even the deer that usually clattered, panicked, across the road in front of me were still. All I could hear was my own breathing and the crisp scrape of nylon on nylon. I ran by the dim blue light of stars and a slender, hooked moon just setting in the south.
The stars seemed very bright, but still the woods along the road were dark and full of mottled indistinct shapes: trees, stumps, bushes.
I padded up a hill, adjusted my jacket zipper to cool down a little, rounded the turn at the top of the hill, and started down the other side when I saw a shape in the woods. It was so dark that I could only see if it I looked next to it, but my breath caught and I slowed to a walk.
It looked like a person. Leaning against a tree about six feet in from the edge of the woods.
These sorts of things -- Balrogs, velociraptors, wolves, Nazguls -- often appear during my runs and turn into natural features -- trash bags, mailboxes, fallen trees -- as I approach.
But this, God help me, was a man wearing some sort of robe (a pervert! freezing! psycho freezing fiend! my mind helpfully stuttered) and just watching me as I walked closer.
"Hey," I said. "Are you okay? It's cold out."
He nodded at me and I smelled the sweet burning of a pipe. My steps crackled the ice at the road's edge, brushed last year's leaves as I walked closer. He had to be in trouble, or homeless, or something.
"It's cold out," I said again.
"I am ... accustomed to the cold." His voice sent puffs of white into the darkness. "I seem to have lost my way."
I didn't want to get any closer, though he seemed anything but dangerous. Feeble, in fact. Lost. "Where are you going?"
He looked up at the tree branches. Was he looking at the sky?
"It's almost time. Help me, son. Help me from these woods."
And I saw for the first time a rope tangled around his leg and foot. No, it was a vine or something. I bent closer. It was a tree root that looked like it had grown there.
I was getting cold now, and felt how wet my shirt and fleece hat were. But he must have been hypothermic: he wasn't even shivering. I knelt down and pried the root open. He lifted his boot up with a soft gasp and stepped out of the woods, rubbing his shin.
"Obliged," he said, and again I smelled the pipesmoke. He raised his arms as if he were a priest giving a benediction and not some creepy old man standing in the woods for no reason, and a icy wind rustled the leaves and bit at my exposed skin like a knife.
The stars grew brighter and it sounded like they were ringing, almost: a thin, high, unimaginably distant chiming, more like the idea of bells than the actual sound.
The sky was filled with distant airplanes then, the lights tracking across the darkness. So many of them. And I realized they weren't airplanes but the hard little stars themselves, rotating and then moving slowly in great curves.
I put my hand out to steady myself, but it was the middle of the road, and with nothing to hold onto I swayed like a drunk, blinking fast to clear my watering eyes.
"Much obliged," he said again, and the stars were no longer caught in the nets of dark branches, they alighted like blue sparks on his head and arms and -- I saw it for the first time -- his white beard.
"You," I breathed. It was very cold. "Are you...?"
"You know who I am," he said. "This is my season. Cold is my country."
"I thought, I thought--"
He looked very stern then, almost grave. "Believe," he said, and he was lit with the cold white fire of the stars. "Believe."
The word hung in the air even after he had gone, and I looked at the dark trees and the stars and felt younger than I ever had before.
I turned and continued down the cold road, breathing steadily, warming up again, nylon brushing on nylon. Seven miles under the stars, until sunrise paled the east and I returned home, shaking and wet with sweat.
Happy holidays, everyone. Believe.
It was very cold, and very dark. Even the deer that usually clattered, panicked, across the road in front of me were still. All I could hear was my own breathing and the crisp scrape of nylon on nylon. I ran by the dim blue light of stars and a slender, hooked moon just setting in the south.
The stars seemed very bright, but still the woods along the road were dark and full of mottled indistinct shapes: trees, stumps, bushes.
I padded up a hill, adjusted my jacket zipper to cool down a little, rounded the turn at the top of the hill, and started down the other side when I saw a shape in the woods. It was so dark that I could only see if it I looked next to it, but my breath caught and I slowed to a walk.
It looked like a person. Leaning against a tree about six feet in from the edge of the woods.
These sorts of things -- Balrogs, velociraptors, wolves, Nazguls -- often appear during my runs and turn into natural features -- trash bags, mailboxes, fallen trees -- as I approach.
But this, God help me, was a man wearing some sort of robe (a pervert! freezing! psycho freezing fiend! my mind helpfully stuttered) and just watching me as I walked closer.
"Hey," I said. "Are you okay? It's cold out."
He nodded at me and I smelled the sweet burning of a pipe. My steps crackled the ice at the road's edge, brushed last year's leaves as I walked closer. He had to be in trouble, or homeless, or something.
"It's cold out," I said again.
"I am ... accustomed to the cold." His voice sent puffs of white into the darkness. "I seem to have lost my way."
I didn't want to get any closer, though he seemed anything but dangerous. Feeble, in fact. Lost. "Where are you going?"
He looked up at the tree branches. Was he looking at the sky?
"It's almost time. Help me, son. Help me from these woods."
And I saw for the first time a rope tangled around his leg and foot. No, it was a vine or something. I bent closer. It was a tree root that looked like it had grown there.
I was getting cold now, and felt how wet my shirt and fleece hat were. But he must have been hypothermic: he wasn't even shivering. I knelt down and pried the root open. He lifted his boot up with a soft gasp and stepped out of the woods, rubbing his shin.
"Obliged," he said, and again I smelled the pipesmoke. He raised his arms as if he were a priest giving a benediction and not some creepy old man standing in the woods for no reason, and a icy wind rustled the leaves and bit at my exposed skin like a knife.
The stars grew brighter and it sounded like they were ringing, almost: a thin, high, unimaginably distant chiming, more like the idea of bells than the actual sound.
The sky was filled with distant airplanes then, the lights tracking across the darkness. So many of them. And I realized they weren't airplanes but the hard little stars themselves, rotating and then moving slowly in great curves.
I put my hand out to steady myself, but it was the middle of the road, and with nothing to hold onto I swayed like a drunk, blinking fast to clear my watering eyes.
"Much obliged," he said again, and the stars were no longer caught in the nets of dark branches, they alighted like blue sparks on his head and arms and -- I saw it for the first time -- his white beard.
"You," I breathed. It was very cold. "Are you...?"
"You know who I am," he said. "This is my season. Cold is my country."
"I thought, I thought--"
He looked very stern then, almost grave. "Believe," he said, and he was lit with the cold white fire of the stars. "Believe."
The word hung in the air even after he had gone, and I looked at the dark trees and the stars and felt younger than I ever had before.
I turned and continued down the cold road, breathing steadily, warming up again, nylon brushing on nylon. Seven miles under the stars, until sunrise paled the east and I returned home, shaking and wet with sweat.
Happy holidays, everyone. Believe.
Friday, July 25, 2008
When Animals Almost Attack
I do not live in the wilderness, though I suppose it can feel that way when visitors put on their wading boots to come visit us from the shining land of Oz we call the big city. But we do have a wooded neighborhood that is filled with animals at dawn, when I run through it.
On Tuesday morning I saw a deer in a bush so close I could have reached out and touched it (the deer). Why didn't I? After all, how often do you get to say, "I touched a deer this morning"? Well, I was afraid it would attack. Just a herbivore, you say? Ha! Have you seen a deer up close? Their heads are the size of dog's heads, with long lean snouts and mouthfuls of fangs and/or regular teeth. It could also (I reasoned to myself) spring from the bush and beat me with its head. Or stomp on my ears with its wicked little hooves. No thanks!
Yesterday morning things got even more exciting. I'm always delighted to see bats fluttering in the blue light of dawn, but yesterday one flapped so close I could hear its wings. It sounded like someone shuffling a deck of cards. Then it came back, looped around and came back again. This, quoth I, is not normal bat behavior. Had I become some sort of bat-magnet? Was I emitting bat pheromones? 'Cause it just smelled like sweaty running clothes to me but you never know what's going to activate mad bat lust. After all, perhaps my overwhelming attractiveness cannot be limited to just humanity.
Just as I was feeling pretty studly, it occurred to me that if the bat decided to clamp onto my face, hook its little prickly claws into my ears, and start chewing on my nose? I'm not sure I could stop it. And what if it squeaked a triumphant summons to its bat-friends, and they all fluttered around me like a cloud of dark butterflies and carried me away?
Running is such a calming, meditative time.
On Tuesday morning I saw a deer in a bush so close I could have reached out and touched it (the deer). Why didn't I? After all, how often do you get to say, "I touched a deer this morning"? Well, I was afraid it would attack. Just a herbivore, you say? Ha! Have you seen a deer up close? Their heads are the size of dog's heads, with long lean snouts and mouthfuls of fangs and/or regular teeth. It could also (I reasoned to myself) spring from the bush and beat me with its head. Or stomp on my ears with its wicked little hooves. No thanks!
Yesterday morning things got even more exciting. I'm always delighted to see bats fluttering in the blue light of dawn, but yesterday one flapped so close I could hear its wings. It sounded like someone shuffling a deck of cards. Then it came back, looped around and came back again. This, quoth I, is not normal bat behavior. Had I become some sort of bat-magnet? Was I emitting bat pheromones? 'Cause it just smelled like sweaty running clothes to me but you never know what's going to activate mad bat lust. After all, perhaps my overwhelming attractiveness cannot be limited to just humanity.
Just as I was feeling pretty studly, it occurred to me that if the bat decided to clamp onto my face, hook its little prickly claws into my ears, and start chewing on my nose? I'm not sure I could stop it. And what if it squeaked a triumphant summons to its bat-friends, and they all fluttered around me like a cloud of dark butterflies and carried me away?
Running is such a calming, meditative time.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Steps in the dark
I get up early to run before work two days a week. In the summer months it's usually just breaking dawn, though the sky is still dark blue enough for bats to flit over meadows. Bats at dawn; who knew?
Getting up early to write is tough, but at least I have the consolation of coffee. Getting up early to run is nearly impossible some days. Especially in the winter, when it's pitch black outside. Full-on, middle-of-the-night darkness. If I'm lucky it's clear enough for starlight; once or twice a year the moon is just right. But for the most part it means waking up in the middle of the night, leaving a warm bed, dressing, and stepping outside for that first shock of cold. Walk down the driveway swinging my arms to warm up, hating every minute of it. Every step. It is so dark and so cold and it is just. pure. misery.
Then I take a few steps and all of the resistance melts away and I'm just running. I'm still sleepy, still cold, still groggy ... but I'm running. Steps in the dark.
Road races are the same way: a few weeks or a few days of anticipation, the trembling adrenaline feeling making my fingertips throb I'm so nervous, shaking my hands, standing in the crowd at the start, nerves jangling into a crescendo. And then the gun goes off and it all melts away and I'm in the race, just running.
See, I realized it's all the stuff before the effort that's most difficult. The effort itself is no picnic, don't get me wrong -- the pounding gasping merciless last miles of a race can be almost transcendentally painful. But all the badness, all the getting-ready, all the self-doubts and uncertainty and wishing I was somewhere else ... just melts away once I begin. Once I commit.
This is where I am with writing. The starting is hard. Don't get me wrong: enduring through the shifty flaccid mealy-feeling mediocrity that plagues all first drafts is not easy. But something clicks into place when I start and I think: Okay. Now you just write.
And so I find myself coming up with reasons not to start the next book. "More research!" I tell myself. "How cold is the Baltic Sea in March? How do guns work? Why don't birds have four wings like dragonflies? Why don't dragonflies have tiny feathers? What if they did? Quick! Off to the Internet!"
Sigh.
I think one of the tricky things about writing fantasy is that the "fantasy" aspects of the story can distract us from the human issues at its core. Certainly I can feel that pull to always add more details, always pursue other ideas, always to do anything but sit down and write the dang first draft already.
Because a first draft is not a road race, with mile markers and a certain protocol and things you can expect at certain points. Heck, a first draft isn't even linear, much to my frustration. It's a great swirling jumble, a mess of false starts and dead ends and meanderings. Laini Taylor has a great metaphor for this: the exploratory draft.
Thinking of it that way -- as an exploration -- is a great way for me to lighten that crushing pressure of having to forge the absolutely right path, the right story, the first time. How could anyone do that?
And so I know that the first draft is an exploration. And I know that all the uncertainty and doubt and need to do just-one-more-bit-of-research will, to some extent, melt away when I begin to write. And I know that writing is work, it's just hard hard work, like building a stone wall or hoeing iron-hard ground or training for a marathon.
I know all this and still I delay. Surely there's some more plotting I can do, right? Or research. Or map-sketching. That it, I have to figure out ocean currents!
But then comes the whispering, as it always does. The flicker of an image or a snatch of music, a twinging emotion and I know: there is a boy fleeing over the mountains. I can see him. I will tell his story. And it will be hard.
But not as hard as starting in the first place.
Getting up early to write is tough, but at least I have the consolation of coffee. Getting up early to run is nearly impossible some days. Especially in the winter, when it's pitch black outside. Full-on, middle-of-the-night darkness. If I'm lucky it's clear enough for starlight; once or twice a year the moon is just right. But for the most part it means waking up in the middle of the night, leaving a warm bed, dressing, and stepping outside for that first shock of cold. Walk down the driveway swinging my arms to warm up, hating every minute of it. Every step. It is so dark and so cold and it is just. pure. misery.
Then I take a few steps and all of the resistance melts away and I'm just running. I'm still sleepy, still cold, still groggy ... but I'm running. Steps in the dark.
Road races are the same way: a few weeks or a few days of anticipation, the trembling adrenaline feeling making my fingertips throb I'm so nervous, shaking my hands, standing in the crowd at the start, nerves jangling into a crescendo. And then the gun goes off and it all melts away and I'm in the race, just running.
See, I realized it's all the stuff before the effort that's most difficult. The effort itself is no picnic, don't get me wrong -- the pounding gasping merciless last miles of a race can be almost transcendentally painful. But all the badness, all the getting-ready, all the self-doubts and uncertainty and wishing I was somewhere else ... just melts away once I begin. Once I commit.
This is where I am with writing. The starting is hard. Don't get me wrong: enduring through the shifty flaccid mealy-feeling mediocrity that plagues all first drafts is not easy. But something clicks into place when I start and I think: Okay. Now you just write.
And so I find myself coming up with reasons not to start the next book. "More research!" I tell myself. "How cold is the Baltic Sea in March? How do guns work? Why don't birds have four wings like dragonflies? Why don't dragonflies have tiny feathers? What if they did? Quick! Off to the Internet!"
Sigh.
I think one of the tricky things about writing fantasy is that the "fantasy" aspects of the story can distract us from the human issues at its core. Certainly I can feel that pull to always add more details, always pursue other ideas, always to do anything but sit down and write the dang first draft already.
Because a first draft is not a road race, with mile markers and a certain protocol and things you can expect at certain points. Heck, a first draft isn't even linear, much to my frustration. It's a great swirling jumble, a mess of false starts and dead ends and meanderings. Laini Taylor has a great metaphor for this: the exploratory draft.
Thinking of it that way -- as an exploration -- is a great way for me to lighten that crushing pressure of having to forge the absolutely right path, the right story, the first time. How could anyone do that?
And so I know that the first draft is an exploration. And I know that all the uncertainty and doubt and need to do just-one-more-bit-of-research will, to some extent, melt away when I begin to write. And I know that writing is work, it's just hard hard work, like building a stone wall or hoeing iron-hard ground or training for a marathon.
I know all this and still I delay. Surely there's some more plotting I can do, right? Or research. Or map-sketching. That it, I have to figure out ocean currents!
But then comes the whispering, as it always does. The flicker of an image or a snatch of music, a twinging emotion and I know: there is a boy fleeing over the mountains. I can see him. I will tell his story. And it will be hard.
But not as hard as starting in the first place.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Sad ... and spooky
Ordinarily I run Tuesday and Thursday mornings before work. It's a quiet time, usually dark, and far removed from the corporate world where I spend my days. I like feeling as if I'm in shape, and there's something magical and not a little frightning about the world before the sun comes up: frost and dark trees and a dim blue sky.
This morning I was out, puffing down the road under a windy blue sky, soft with dawn after a night of rain and tornado warnings. There was a sharp moon crescent low on the horizon with Venus (let's say) hanging just above.
I was thinking my usual running thoughts -- should I have worn the blue fleece shirt? why have my toes been hurting for the past week? is this the house with the scary dog? move OVER you idiot driver -- when I spotted a small animal in the middle of the road.
It was cat-sized, but not cat-shaped, and it was walking in wandering circles. Most animals either run or are dead. Lot of road kills out here in the country.
Its shape appeared out of the dimness and I realized it wasn't a cat or a skunk or a squirrel, it was some sort of long, low, arch-backed weasel. Most animals scurry off the road when they hear something strange, so I clapped my hands and shouted at it. No change. Still it wandered down the middle of the road, turned back, sniffed the ground, resumed course, drifted off to the side.
I took a slow wide circuit, hoping to scare if off the road so it wouldn't get hit by a car -- or attack me -- when I took a closer look at its head.
It had no eyes.
Its face was intact except for dark blood and what might have been white bone where its eyes should have been.
"HEY!" I shouted. "Get off the road!" I had stopped running and was standing there, damp and panting. Still it wandered, nose to the ground, and I realized it must have already been hit by a car, just barely hit enough to crush its eyes and wreck its hearing and probably concuss it into a groping instinctive bumbling thing, unaware of everything about it.
Nothing I could do, save finding a stick and shoveling it off the road, but the poor thing probably would have panicked. So I went on down the road and didn't see it on my way back home ten minutes later.
I wondered how long it would bumble around in the world before getting hit by another car. Ten minutes? An hour? What was it doing, wandering around like that?
Maybe it was looking for its eyes.
Godspeed, little thing. I hope your pain is ended.
This morning I was out, puffing down the road under a windy blue sky, soft with dawn after a night of rain and tornado warnings. There was a sharp moon crescent low on the horizon with Venus (let's say) hanging just above.
I was thinking my usual running thoughts -- should I have worn the blue fleece shirt? why have my toes been hurting for the past week? is this the house with the scary dog? move OVER you idiot driver -- when I spotted a small animal in the middle of the road.
It was cat-sized, but not cat-shaped, and it was walking in wandering circles. Most animals either run or are dead. Lot of road kills out here in the country.
Its shape appeared out of the dimness and I realized it wasn't a cat or a skunk or a squirrel, it was some sort of long, low, arch-backed weasel. Most animals scurry off the road when they hear something strange, so I clapped my hands and shouted at it. No change. Still it wandered down the middle of the road, turned back, sniffed the ground, resumed course, drifted off to the side.
I took a slow wide circuit, hoping to scare if off the road so it wouldn't get hit by a car -- or attack me -- when I took a closer look at its head.
It had no eyes.
Its face was intact except for dark blood and what might have been white bone where its eyes should have been.
"HEY!" I shouted. "Get off the road!" I had stopped running and was standing there, damp and panting. Still it wandered, nose to the ground, and I realized it must have already been hit by a car, just barely hit enough to crush its eyes and wreck its hearing and probably concuss it into a groping instinctive bumbling thing, unaware of everything about it.
Nothing I could do, save finding a stick and shoveling it off the road, but the poor thing probably would have panicked. So I went on down the road and didn't see it on my way back home ten minutes later.
I wondered how long it would bumble around in the world before getting hit by another car. Ten minutes? An hour? What was it doing, wandering around like that?
Maybe it was looking for its eyes.
Godspeed, little thing. I hope your pain is ended.
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