Thrusty Thursday: Dolvett Quince

If you don't watch The Biggest Loser, you'll be saying, "Huh? Who?" If you do watch The Biggest Loser, you'll be biting your lip and squirming in your seat and imagining Atlanta-born fox Dolvett Quince in a sleeveless shirt screaming at you to sweat more. His arms are as big as most people's thighs and his smile is like BLAM! and he talks all smooth and calm (when he's not screaming). He is shapely. He gives me feelings.

A Tardy Start to October

Hey, it's October! That means I can watch TV again… Check. I watched some in my hotel room while my evil twin was attending a smut writers' conference last week, actually, before September was even officially over. So sue me. No wait, don't.

Anyhow, now that I'm back and no longer suffering from food poisoning (possibly from the scrambled eggs I so gloatingly overloaded on at the hotel's breakfast buffet) it's time to get with the program for October. Or rather, Ommmctober, the month during which I practice yoga every day, for a minimum of thirty minutes. I could actually desperately use it, right about now. At the best of times I'm an intermediate yoga student, flexible if not especially strong…my lifts are woeful, but I can do an enviable upward bow. Right about now, I'm at least three weeks overdue for even a basic stretching session. Probably no coincidence I've been a bit of a basket case the last month or so.

Here's my little lamp-lit yoga space, in my office:

Check the hourglass, which is actually a half-hourglass (thanks, Mom) perfect for making sure I get my thirty minutes minimum in. And that's it, really. I'm off to punish my hamstrings and attain bliss.

Stuff that's good…

I spent so much of May in a rough mood, I wanted to write a post about stuff that's good. So without further ado, here are some awesome things.

1. A new season of The Bachelorette. My favorite guilty TV pleasure…until Instant Watcher posts another season of Celebrity Rehab, anyhow. I'm saving yesterday's episode for tomorrow afternoon, once I've hit my word count goal and tackled a bit of design freelance and wine o'clock rolls around. And whenever possible, I like to complement a new-sale bottle of champagne with an episode of The Bachelor or Bachelorette. I figure if I poison both my mind and body at once, they'll cancel each other out. So far this season I'm rooting for two of the dudes—West and JP. Not sure they've got the best chemistry with Ashley out of the whole group, but I hereby declare them my top-pick foxy front runners.

2. Neko Case. I've been listening to her 2006 album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood practically non-stop for the past month. Love love love. It's already right up there in my moody-folky-chick-rock favorites list beside Patty Griffin's Flaming Red and Tori Amos' Boys for Pélé.

3. Weekly writing goals. In just the past three weeks I've switched from daily word count goals to a weekly one. It's tough to predict whether I'll be able to churn out 4,000 words before lunch, or struggle all day to type a measly 500, so instead of saying, "I'm going to write 2,000 words every day this week," I'm saying, "I'm going to write 10,000 words this week." It's an ambitious number for me, but I try to take weekends off from writing and editing (work-life-balance and all that) so if I'm still a thousand words short on Saturday morning, I can play a little catch up. I think the key has been not capping myself at 2K for any given day, as I used to, as once I'd hit that number, I was off the hook, mentally clocked out for the rest of the day. Now I think, "I hit 2,000 easily. Better push for 3,000 in case tomorrow brings a word drought." It's working great so far, and I recommend it to other writers with fluctuating daily counts. A good month for me used to 30,000 words, and now I'm looking poised to bank about 45K.

4. Dog the Bounty Hunter's autobiography. Well, his second autobiography, anyhow. I'm just about done with Where Mercy is Shown, Mercy is Given. I grabbed it randomly from the library and checked it out without shame. It's not a literary masterpiece, but it's endlessly entertaining and surprisingly heartfelt.

5. No sugar = I lost three pounds. Actually, I couldn't tell you if it's absence of sugar or my getting back into yoga and calisthenics in the past couple weeks, but I've lost weight. It's likely both, of course. But ditching the sugar has definitely reduced the random carb cravings. As with meat last month, I'm really not missing it—the odd wistful twinge as the manfriend enjoys a block of chocolate or an ice cream sandwich, but nothing I could classify as true temptation.

6. Klondike. I've absolutely re-addicted myself to Klondike. Found the nifty free Real Solitaire app for my iPad and both the manfriend and I can't quit. Every morning over coffee, over lunch, over beers while dinner's cooking, before bed… In fact, new Angry Birds Rio levels came out yesterday and we haven't even opened them yet—the deck's got us by the throats.

6. Crank 2. We watched this movie randomly because for whatever reason, Revolver (another Jason Statham movie) decided not to play on Instant Watcher. I can't remember the last time the manfriend was so delighted by a movie. We'd never seen the original Crank, but that didn't matter. This action movie was spastic, incessant, ridiculous, nearly seizure-inducing…but really fun. Plus it's got Statham in a fitted hoodie, running really fast, all throughout the movie. And you know what a fast-running, desperate man does to me. He also electrocutes himself with jumper cables every ten minutes or so, which I found oddly stirring.

Hope everyone's enjoying their Junes so far!

My Thirty-Third May

I feel as if I've barely blogged this month. I feel just slightly as if I've barely been conscious this month, actually, especially during that week and a half of non-stop rain and gloom. At the same time, I can't believe how much I've gotten done. I turned thirty-two on the second, and so far the thirty-third May of my life has been…all over the place.

As the month started, I'd just thrown in the towel on a third failed Blaze proposal, eyeballs-deep in a weird mix of frustrated / discouraged and liberated / hopeful. Two weeks after hearing I needed to put that last proposal out of its misery, I'd started and finished the next proposal (synopsis and first three chapters) and sent it off to my intrepid editor. I got a call about it just this past Friday while I was waiting in the train station—I'd gone into Boston for a physical and to get my possibly stress-fractured shin x-rayed. My editor wanted to see some deeper emotional insight in both the hero and heroine's initial opening POV scenes, and a stronger first couple paragraphs. Um, period.

Period?

Period! No changes requested on the spartan synopsis. No issues with either characters' conflicts or motivations. Nothing wrong with the hook, the setting, the premise. For reals?

Apparently, for reals. When I had what I'd cautiously hoped was a light bulb moment, chatting with senior Blaze editor Brenda Chin at the New England RWA conference, I prayed things might go this way. The last three proposals have missed the mark flagrantly and unsalvageably, though I thrashed and struggled as much as anyone could, trying to force them to work. Then at conference I finally gave myself permission to quit overthinking and overworking, overguessing the details of the overwrought plot, when I'm simply not an up-front plotter. I got the green light to explore a workable hook, and did just that, 100% chart-, graph-, and fourteen-page synopsis-free. It may not have scored a resounding, revisionless acceptance, but the writing process felt infinitely more organic and intuitive that the last few efforts, and I'm not surprised it garnered far fewer editorial misgivings.

This morning I finished (I hope) addressing my editor's concerns with the opening chapters, and sent the revised proposal back out into the ether. And she's encouraged me to keep working on the subsequent chapters, which can't be a bad sign. So keep those fingers crossed, if they haven't grown arthritic and mangled with your unwavering empathy. Maybe I'll have extra-good news to share soon. Maybe I'll even manage to make my second Blaze sale within a year of the first… For those with Doomsday clocks at the ready, set them to July 12.

May was also the month of no meat. This experiment, of all the Discipline Year self-imposed challenges I've yet tackled, was far and away the easiest and the most fun. The only temptations came during family barbecues, and I resisted with little angst. Otherwise I had a blast rediscovering an interest in cooking. I always enjoy cooking, but in the past year or two I'd gotten to a point where I simply recycled the same half-dozen dinner standards over and over. Meat-Free May was a great excuse to try out new dishes. In fact tonight I'm making that African stew again, so my repertoire of regulars has expanded! And of course, my life will no longer be complete without tempeh making the occasional appearance.

I didn't lose or gain any weight, so no revelations on that front.

My husband suspects that, in part, my unnaturally long blue spell (nearly two weeks' funk) in the latter half of the month could be linked to the decreased protein intake. I'll buy it. It was also rainy and I had PMS and was dealing with stupid social media melodrama angst and was uncertain about my proposal, but I rarely stay bummed that long without something else going on, so perhaps he's on to something.

Still, I'm in no rush to bring the meat back. I'll be excited to order seafood at my favorite restaurants once more, and it'll be nice to toss chicken in with the stir-fry, but I haven't missed meat all that much. Doesn't hurt that I have a broad-palated partner with West Coast ideals, either. The entire household went veggie this month, at least at home. Thanks, manfriend!

Next month was supposed to be No Java June, when I go coffee-free (if not caffeine free—tea was to still be kosher) but I think I'll switch it up. All things going well, I may be on deadline, and that is not the time to volunteer for chemical withdrawal. So I'm likely going to swap June and July and go sugar-free for the next month. Anyhow, more on that tomorrow.

Despite the possible stress fracture, which is keeping me from running, May has been a great month for exercise. Lovely spring temperatures for my daily walks, plus we've been cycling a couple times, hiking even more, and at long last I got my shit together and rearranged my room, making it yoga-friendly again. Unless you're talking to someone who's practiced and enjoyed yoga themselves, it's hard to say how powerful and awesome it is without sounding like a self-satisfied hippie-dippy douchebag. So I won't ramble, but since I got back to hardcore stretching before bedtime in the last week or so, I've slept better, felt better, blah blah blah. Go yoga.

Back to work! Hoping to finish my evil conjoined erotica-writing twin's edits quickly, so I'll have time to indulge in a beer and last night's Bachelorette episode before chores call me to wifely duty. Enjoy the final day of May! Or if you're already in June when you read this, don't tell me what happens. I hate spoilers.

Spring Revamp

I've been quiet for the past few days—did you worry I got Raptured? If so, you clearly don't know me very well. The manfriend and I were away in Vermont over the weekend visiting friends, then on Monday I was all over the place for a freelance meeting then an appearance as a special guest at my husband's colleagues' book club (they read Caught on Camera of all things, quite the literary fiction palate cleanser). And yesterday I was busy doing something that was looong overdue—a spring revamp.

The main project was rearranging my office so I'd have the space to comfortably practice yoga again. Which I need desperately—I've been a bit of a basketcase lately. Making it happen meant giving the boot to my "editing nook", ditching a side table and moving my beloved papasan chair to the living room. I also went to Target and bought a new shelving unit (among many other things). It took pretty much the entire day (I did some kitchen improvements and a ton of cleaning as well) but now I've got a faboo new space beneath the skylight for my stretching and calisthenics:

It also felt good just to do the whole spring cleaning / space freshening / reinvention thing. I don't know if it's the redecorating or the blessed absence of rain for the first time in a week, but I'm finally perking up. Oh and if anyone's curious where I write, I do 95% of it in the space just to the right of my new micro yoga studio (in fact I'm sitting on the "black pearl" as I type this):

Anyone else have any big spring projects going on?

Leg-Related Whatnots

Went for my first bike ride of the season this morning, twenty miles along Boston's North Shore. Before you start picturing me in spandex, my manfriend and I both have touring bikes, so we're more jeans-and-sneakers type cyclists, not jerseys-and-toe-clips, cruising not racing. Sadly, my bike computer (a little device on my handlebar that talks to sensor on my wheel and tells me my distance, time, calories, speed, etc.) needs a new battery, so I was in the dark on my vitals. I love anything that tracks progress…if I didn't own a scale I'd probably weigh a lot more than I do, as I'm very number-motivated. I have one of those annoying brains that fixates on quantifiable progress.

Couch to 10K app for iPhone/Touch

It was a nice ride, though my legs were a bit wonked from yesterday's run. Though I ran through the winter at the gym, my recent transition to outdoor running feels as rough as always, asphalt much less forgiving than a treadmill. I'd also forgotten how much tougher it is to run with the temp in the mid-forties, how much harsher it feels in my lungs and how streamy my eyes get from the wind. Still, nice to be outdoors, with spring finally feeling imminent. And the little park near my house has a gravel track running around it, which is exactly a half-mile long. Reasonably kind to joints and very handy for goal-setting.

And I have a new goal for this year. I'm not a distance runner. I'm a pretty ace sprinter and I can run a respectable enough 5K, and on a good day I average about a nine-minute mile. Not bad for a hobby runner. One of the reasons I've managed to stick with running in recent years, when in the past I haven't, is my iPod and its lovely apps. I completed the Couch to 5K program last year and really enjoyed it—it assigns you different run-and-walk workouts in increasingly challenging increments until you can run a full 5K (3.1 miles). Then the next time I had to buy new running shoes I gave the Nike+ system a spin. It's largely awesome, but not perfect. The pedometer effect it produces between an in-shoe sensor (sold separately and for specific models of Nikes, naturally) and my iPod is shockingly accurate, better than any actual pedometer I've ever used. It saves your workouts and stats and tells you your speed, whereas programs like Couch to 5K can only track your time…though I believe the latest Couch to 5K version will interact with the Nike+ program, a clunky marriage of a good training app with a good pedometer app.

But this year I'd like to train myself for a 10K…a solo one, if I don't stumble across a local charity run. The farthest I've ever run without stopping before is 5.1 miles, and every time I say things like, "I wish I was the kind of person who could run a marathon," my manfriend says, "You are, you just don't choose to." So this year I'll choose to be the kind of person who runs a 10K. At 6.2 miles it's within my reach, even if it's still twenty miles short of a marathon. Maybe in the fall I'll sign up for Salem's 6.66-mile Devil's Chase on Halloween morning. And maybe next year I'll find out if I'm fit for a half-marathon. The year after that…who knows.

Because I looove quantifiable progress, of course I just downloaded a new app. It's called Couch to 10K, though oddly enough it's made by a different developer than Couch to 5K…they must have snuck in there and stolen the name. But it got great ratings and I like the interface, and allegedly it works alongside Nike+ if you want it to. I scanned the workouts, and on Monday I'm going to give it a go, starting on Week Seven (since I'm not starting straight off the couch)—a sixty-eight-minute routine, alternating running and walking. It's so much easier (for me) to get jazzed about goals when they're broken into bite-sized chucks. The same goes for writing, actually. It'd be daunting to see only 100,000 shadowy, unwritten words spread out between you and the distant horizon…but break it down to one or two thousand a day, and before you know it you're typing The End. Well, maybe not before you know it…but eventually.

Anyhow, that's just me blathering about my new goal. I love goals—did you notice? According to this app's schedule, if I go at the pace they suggest (three training runs per week) I'll be ready to run a full 10K in about five weeks. If my janky knee doesn't get other ideas, that is. But I won't know if I don't try, and I won't likely try if I can't quantify. So here goes nothing. Well, here goes nothing but me on my wobbly legs, anyhow.

The Chemistry of Writing

Nope, nothing to do with a leading couple's attraction. Nothing to do with plot formulae. I'm talking about basic bodily chemistry here, and how it affects writing, or how it affects me as a writer, at least. Bear in mind, this ain't proper science…

Proper science.

I think any dedicated fiction writer will agree, this job is unpredictable. One day you write five thousand words, all of them as brilliant as first drafts come. Euphoria! The next day, you tweeze out six hundred, each feeling like a tooth being extracted. In between are the adequate days, maybe one or two thousand usable words, steady forward momentum. But one thing is certain—you can't guess which type of day you're in for until you sit down and start listening to the voices in your head. Or in the case of a bad day, straining to hear them, desperate for the tiniest scrap of inspiration.

That's all very annoying, because some days, due to deadlines both external and self-imposed, we feel we need to hammer out three thousand genius words, but it just isn't going to happen. However, there are certain chemical aids and hindrances you can either avoid or harness to help stack the writing deck in your favor.

Caffeine. If you're a coffee (or Coke or tea) drinker, this is major. I think we underestimate how strong a stimulant caffeine is. A highly reliable scientific reference (Wikipedia) tells us "caffeine is an ergogenic, increasing a person's capability for mental or physical labor." It is my opinion that writing is both a mental and physical labor, so one might think this would bode well. I disagree.

Too much coffee and I swear my brain dries up from a lake to a gully. I may be alert, but the thoughts I'm having feel very surface-level, very uninspired. The movies that play in my head when I write become faint and fuzzy. It's my experience that too much caffeine makes the brain shallow. That reads like the label off a Victorian quack medicine bottle, but I stand by it. Caffeine can push your body into jacked-up faux-survival mode, heart beating faster, all impulses feeling urgent and immediate…kiss your creativity and emotional awareness goodbye. Stick to the same dosage each day. I have a mug of coffee first thing with breakfast, and that's it if I want to stay relaxed enough to write. For me, much of the appeal of coffee is the comfort factor; having a mug of something warm by my side makes work feel less worky, as if I'm getting away with something. My twenty year old self would scoff, but I can't say enough good things about decaf.

Sugar. Similar to caffeine, but different. The illusion of instant energy, but in my opinion, the crash is far worse. I try to not eat anything too sugary until after dinner, because it just wrecks me for the day. Also, during the brief window when one does enjoy a little energy hit, I find myself very distractable. I may be going a million miles a minute, but generally only around and around in circles, from Twitter to Google to the kitchen, to the work-in-progress, which I stare blankly at before deciding to see if anything's changed on Twitter in the ninety seconds since I last visited. Then, cue the robot slumping as it powers down. The only thing worse than a sugar buzz for getting words written is a sugar crash. Just stay away from that white powder…at least until you've hit your word count.

Adrenaline. This is a tricky one…again, I can only speak for myself. If you work great under pressure, more power to you. But my body does not process adrenaline the way I wish it would. I would love to be one of those people who, when confronted or in the midst of a competition, get a surge of superhuman strength and ride that wave to victory. Not me. My adrenaline highs make me shaky and short of breath, turn my mouth to a desert and my knees to jelly. Ask anyone who's watched me right before I had to spar in Taekwondo or at the start line of a 5K. I would love to be that person who feeds on the surge, but something about my engine just does not process that chemical to the best effect. Flight, not fight, for me.

As such, I know I can't function as a procrastinator and succeed at this job. I don't work well under pressure at all, so instead I go the teacher's pet route and do every assignment as soon as it's given, so I won't find myself in the midst of an anxiety attack the night before it's due.

The only times I do enjoy adrenaline rushes are when I'm competing against myself, with low stakes. If I'm running and I decide to push myself to go a bit faster, a bit farther, suddenly I'm there—an actual, enjoyable adrenaline high, and nothing to lose if I fail. Same with the writing—if I set my daily goal at a thousand words, I nearly always double it or better. It sounds lame and counterintuitive to our reach for the stars culture, but the more reasonable the goal, the more likely you'll surpass it. Set too high a goal and you're inviting pressure. If my goal is a thousand words, I might hit it, get a surge of accomplishment, and write another thousand. Set it at four thousand and the uphill climb wears me out and I begin to doubt myself by word 1,500. I hate to say it, but if you're like me and don't process adrenaline the way Gator-Aid and Under Armour like to suggest we all should, set your hurdles low. You might go soaring over that hurdle way up in the air, but if you set it too high you're likely to just whack your head on the bar.

Endorphins. Ah, what makes running an admissible form of torture for me. I wanted to be sure to offer up a couple of positive chemical aids after villainizing caffeine and sugar and adrenaline. Endorphins are the body's own self-made opiates, triggered by such things as exercise, love, spicy foods, and orgasm. I'll focus on that first one.

This post was actually inspired by my trip to the Y yesterday. I'd started my day less than chipper, filled with low-level angst and mild annoyance, an overall sensation of meh. But I knew from experience that this meant I needed to get a nice sweat on. Thirty to sixty minutes of good old fashioned exercise and I can suddenly find myself staring wide-eyed into a totally new day. During my walk to the gym, the snow looked gray, the people seemed like slow-moving obstacles blocking my way, the cars like death machines hell-bent on running me down. On the walk home, the sun was shining (it had been before, but I hadn't bothered noticing), the people were friendly, and the cars all seemed eager to stop and let me cross the street. Oh, endorphins. Best drug ever, and totally free! Another huge upshot to exercise is of course better health, plus a feeling of accomplishment, competence, a temporary sense superiority to others (if you're a jerk like me), and I firmly believe, increased creativity. Plus you can eat more.

Serotonin. I won't pretend I have any authoritative understanding of this one, but I did want to touch on it. Please don't trust my science. But here's what I believe to be accurate: serotonin is a neurotransmitter that can create in us a sense of well-being and contentment. Highly conducive to writing. The tryptophan in turkey we've all heard about is an amino acid that our bodies convert to serotonin, hence that happy, sleepy feeling many of us Yanks experience after Thanksgiving dinner.

Serotonin production and release is highly influenced by diet, and things like complex carbohydrates help us create it, while things like protein do not. Junk foods, particularly those high in simple carbs, trigger the serotonin effect, but because they don't actually provide us with the nutrients to replace the serotonin they unleash from our bodies' stores, they give us a temporary high that can later result in a depressed sensation. The obvious lesson here—eat junk food in moderation. The little high it gives us is short-lived, often chased by the low that spurred us to head to the cupboard in the first place.

Hmmm… I hadn't intended this post to become an "Eat right and exercise!" PSA, but here we are. I would have liked to cover alcohol as well, but that hotbed of emotion- and impulse-modification is a post or two in itself. Plus, I need to go write…just as soon as I steep myself a cup of decaf.

Ten Things I Learned from Gymuary

Well, it's the final day of Gymuary, and I still have bronchitis. That sort of knocks my big 5K running goal finale on the head…but no matter. Maybe I'll do that on March 1. Get it? 3.1 miles on 3/1?

I wouldn't quite call Gymuary an epic failure, despite the fact that I fell flagrantly short of my goal. Thirteen days out of thirty-one! Not even a fifty percent completion rate. Stupid blizzards. Stupid dangerously low temperatures. Stupid bronchitis. Stupid injury…oh wait, that one was my fault. But onward! To assure myself that the experiment was not a complete flop, here are ten things I learned from this first month of Discipline Year:

1. January is poor month to pick if you're looking to go to the gym every day in New England.
2. I like Zumba! And it's okay to look a sweaty clod while learning something new.
3. The busy, walk-signless street that I cross to get to my gym, the one which gives me disproportionate anxiety when I haven't been out of the house enough, loses much of its scariness after a few days' exposure (hermitic writer alert).
4. Locker 118 sucks. Request a different one when they hand you that key.
5. I am not immune to the Katie Perry virus. Teenage Dream in now on my running shortlist.
6. I can run as fast or faster than nearly all the dudes in my gym, if not for long distances.
7. I need to listen to my body more, and less to my adrenal glands. Not all twinges are the sensation of normal, spirited exertion.
8. It's okay to give up on Revolved Triangle pose. Some things aren't meant to be.
9. You can indeed go to gym dressed like a total schlub and no one will look at you funny.
10. A more reasonable goal would have been, "I will go to the gym every day I am physically able." That one I would have met!

So tomorrow kicks off Face-Off February, the dreaded month of no-makeup. Swing by and see what I look like, all naked up in the face!

Gymuary non-update

It's been a while since I've brought everyone up to speed on how Gymuary is progressing, and I'm sad to say it's not because of my deep appreciation of how boring it is, listening to people talking about what they did at the gym.

As it turns out, January is a pretty lousy pick if you're determined to go to the gym every single day for a month. At least in New England. We're now twenty-nine days into January, and I've only gone thirteen of those days. As a consolation to my overworked guilt gland, I never once failed to go to the gym simply because I didn't want to. The spirit was willing. Those gym-fails were due to two blizzards, two days of dangerously low negative temperatures (I walk to my gym), one injury, and now bronchitis. I'm bummed. I'm also just a little impressed with myself for having not wonked myself up worse than I may have out of blind determination. As one of my yoga instructors likes to tell me as I'm triangle-ing, I hyperextend.

Basically, it'll be a miracle if my bronchitis goes away by Monday and I can make it in for a final Gymuary workout. Trust me, I'd love nothing more. I have cabin fever like you wouldn't believe, plus I do my best story brainstorming while I'm exercising. I'm itching to work out. And so sadly, Discipline Year's first month is sort of a big fat FAIL, but for legitimate reasons.

Onward and upward! It's nearly Face-Off February, and luckily, I can't fail that challenge due to circumstances beyond my control. A cosmetics tsunami won't sweep through and force foundation onto my face. The only thing that can cause me to fail is an acute attack of vanity. In fact, February is one of few challenges this year that will actually save me time, and demand less of my effort and energy than normal. I've got my before-and-after mugshots ready to go, so tune in on Tuesday as I kick off the next Discipline Year challenge.

Gymuary FAIL

So I mentioned yesterday that I did something to my left leg while running balls-out on the treadmill. Well, by the time I went to bed, it was feeling pretty normal again. This morning, still normal. Then I went out and got groceries (there's a blizzard a-comin'!) and while I was lugging the bags up the front stairwell, I felt it again. A certain not-right-ness in my shin. Carrying the extra weight made my leg's unhappiness perfectly plain. So I am fessing up now, I'm not going to the gym today. Better to be a slacker than a dimwit, better to perhaps make it up later in the month than to go today out of stubbornness and risk really wonking myself up and spending the rest of Gymuary in traction. So there, I've confessed. I'll try to make it up by doing a double shift—perhaps some cardio following a yoga class—in the coming weeks, but for now, rational choices need to outweigh anal-retentive persistence. Not my usual m.o., but maybe there's an unforeseen lesson to be extracted in this first month of the Discipline Year experiments: I am capable of not crippling myself for the sake of fulfilling arbitrary commitments. Wow, I feel so grown up. Now where's my Advil…

Uncle!

Gymuary day ten, and the inevitable has come to pass. Little Miss Overachiever-Pants pushed too hard and hurt herself. Not badly, nothing grievous…but my left shin, ankle, and knee are not amused. It wasn't a super crazy workout. Half hour on the elliptical, then my beloved ten-minute sprint-fest on the treadmill. I did awesomely, injury nowithstanding…two solid minutes at 7.5 mph, an overall average speed of 6.8. Blazzow! But clearly, I shouldn't be celebrating. In fact as soon as I get the laundry in the dryer I promise I'm going to pop a few Advil and head to bed to elevate my leg and while I self-edit a sub. My left knee has a history of being a prima donna, so at least I know what to do. Looks like Gymuary's about to turn into Swimuary, at least until my leg gives me the all-clear. If anyone catches me tweeting or posting about doing anything aside from swimming or gentle yoga for the rest of the week, feel free to lambaste me in all caps.

I Cry on a Treadmill

Unimportant facts: it's Gymuary day nine. My body's pretty beat so I decided to just speed walk on the treadmill for forty minutes and catch up on some back podcast episodes of The Archers (the super long-running, super nerdy BBC Radio 4 rural-set soap opera that I accidentally got addicted to about five years ago) whilst fulfilling my promise to go to the gym every day this month.

Important! I finally caught up to the January 2 Archers double-episode. I'm way behind, so this shouldn't be a spoiler for any other listeners. Holy shit! Helen gets preeclampsia during the party at Lower Loxley and the baby is delivered by emergency C-section six weeks early! Oh, the fear! But they're fine! It's a boy! Amy's a hero! Helen and Tony finally reconcile! Hoorays! Then OH MY CRAP! Nigel falls off the roof! And he DIES! Oh, the blood-chilling SCREEEAM! Poor Elizabeth! Poor David, who'll surely be guilt-stricken for pressuring Nigel into getting the stupid sign taken down that night! Poor Lily and Freddie, suddenly fatherless and already prematurely stressed by their own inherited poshness!

So many exclamation points, and I am not an exclamatory person!!!

And don't think I'm above crying on a treadmill at the YMCA in front of two dozen relative strangers. Then I had to walk home across the icy sidewalks in bitter winter wind, trying not to slip and fall myself…oh, the trauma! This will take some time to recover from. And to think I'd been so eager to see where Fallon and Harry's romance might be heading… Oh Ambridge, you surely do know how to kick off a new year.

Snowy Saturday Whatnots

It's a lazy, snowy Saturday. It's also day eight of Gymuary and I must confess, I feel it. I'm now over a week in and the experiment is more than a quarter complete. Between the running and elliptical machines, Zumba, and yoga, I feel as spring loaded as I did back when I practiced Taekwondo. My body's starting to change shape, if I'm not mistaken. That wasn't the point of Gymuary, merely a side effect, but I won't complain. On the flip side, I'm at a point where I groan like an eighty-year-old when I get out of bed. Not sports-injury bad, but distinctly sore. They're pains of accomplishment, so I welcome them…though I do move slower in the mornings than I did a couple of weeks ago.

But step aside, Gymuary. Make room for Januquery!

So in equally painful and sweaty news, I've officially begun my search for a literary agent. I'm going about it slowly, one query at the time, perhaps five queries a month. A Twitter friend and fellow Blaze author recommended I query her agent, who represents both category and single-title romance, and she even gave her agent a heads-up about me. What a doll! So I'll be starting there in the next few days, once my all-time favorite manuscript's partial is freshly polished and its synopsis whittled down by about 200 words. Gah. If there's anything worse than writing a synopsis, it's shortening one you already slaved to construct. I did get my query drafted and synopsis shortened considerably this morning, so I just need to keep the momentum up.

I haven't queried agents in over a year, and I will admit, I've been putting it off. I'm still a new writer, and I'm intimidated. I don't tend to write high concept books, so I'm very easy to reject. I've had my fair share of rejections and I'm a big girl about them, but they still hurt. Especially when it's my favorite thing I've written, as this manuscript is. But like my 5K time goal for the end of the month, no pain no gain. If I don't get a-queryin', I won't ever be able to share the good news of finding the right agent. Funny how that works.

Goal Within a Goal

First off, God love you if you're still following these posts. I know there are few things more boring than listening to someone tell you about how they went to the gym, so I dread to think how much worse reading about it must be. It's even more boring than hearing about people's dreams, so bless you. I promise February will be better, as you'll get to watch me suffer through a whole month without makeup.

But anyhow, today was day five of Gymuary. My evil conjoined erotica-writing twin has a release out today (not a plug—don't read her book, it's filthy and full of swears and naughty bits being ground together) and was driving me up the wall with her spastic lack of concentration, so heading to the Y for a good brain-wiping workout was just the ticket. I decided to set a little goal within my greater Gymuary goal. Since it's January 5, I ran a 5K on the treadmill. Then, on January 31, I'll run another 3.1 miles (that's how far 5K is, if you didn't know) and I'll see if I can top today's time.

I'd hoped to run it in under 30 minutes, which was a bit of challenge as I underestimated how, um, effective a workout Zumba is. Dude, my ass was grass. But, with the help of a lung-bursting final quarter mile…

Today's 5K time—29:31
That's an average speed of 6.4 miles an hour.

My goal for January 31—28:30 (or better)
That'd be an average speed of just under 6.6 mph. Doesn't sound like a huge leap, but I'm pretty sure it'll suck. Which is good. Fitness goals always suck while you're meeting them, though they do rule afterward.

Now, must shower.

Zumba'd!!

Gymuary, day four. Quick note to say I succeeded in not psyching myself out and finding an excuse to not go to a Zumba class today. All of my first-timer anxiety was ill-founded, as of the eight or so women taking part, I believe four of us had never done a real class before, and everyone was at a different level of fitness and coordination. So I looked no more a clumsy clod than most anyone else might have, plus I'm sure everyone was only paying attention to their own moves or the instructor's. As long you have fun and keep moving, you're doing it right. Participating also made me feel I'm taking better advantage of my gym membership, instead of just treating it like a big room full of home exercise equipment. Oh and a bonus—I finally get to make more use of the spendy aerobic dance shoes I invested in when I took a Latin dance course a few years back (though don't let that trick you into thinking I'm especially good at Latin dance).

Not my actual Y, but this is very much what the 

class looked like. 

I'd recommend Zumba to people interested in a fast-paced workout that flies right by. I don't particularly recommended the official Zumba DVDs—they're pricey and really boring compared to a real class, and the instructions aren't especially easy to follow, if you're looking to learn the basics. I'll be reselling my set soon. The interwebs in general also makes Zumba look like something only Fly Girls and seasoned salsa dancers are into, but my class was very low-key and consisted mainly of middle-aged women. If you're curious, look for an intro class, or just toss yourself into a regular class and risk looking foolish. I promise you'll be fine.

Today's class was forty-five minutes long and I really liked the instructor, so I'm going to check out her hour-long class tomorrow, bright and early. For now, I've earned a shower and some lunch.

Sugar Rush, Humble Pie

It's Gymuary, day three! Nearly ten percent done with this first of the twelve month-long experiments comprising Discipline Year. I took it fairly easy today—forty minutes on the elliptical while I caught up with a bunch of Archers podcasts. I did a lot of it in the backward motion and now my butt feels funny. Good funny. Burned about five hundred calories if you count the walk to and from, and just in time. Waiting for me when I got home was my pen pal Gerry's Christmas package from New Zealand, and it was stuffed with Almond Gold bars of various sizes—my favorite Kiwi candy bar, which he sends me dutifully a few times a year. I ate about a quarter pound's worth just now. That may even be an underestimation, sad but true. Very dangerous to get candy in the mail when your body's begging for carbs.

Also from the pen pal, this excellent retro Kiwi tee-shirt.

So tomorrow I've resolved to finally go to my first real group Zumba class, whether I'm prepared or not. I attended an intro class a month ago and did a few sessions with DVDs, but a large part of me is still suffering from the old fear of looking foolish, unable to keep up. That class moves quick and they won't explain the steps as they did in the intro. But Gymuary for me is more about intention and follow-through than getting in shape. I'm already in reasonably decent shape, a shape that demands a level of maintenance I know I can comfortably fit into my life. This month is simply about making the decision to go each and every day, and doing what I set out to. And, trying new things and stepping out of my comfort zone. So, ready or not, I'm off to Zumba tomorrow, bright and early. More than likely, since it's resolution time, I won't be the only amateur fumbling through the steps. Plus it's not like anything bad will happen if I do look like as asshole in a class full of perky experts. No one will point or laugh, and I'll end the session a bit better at it, and bit less intimidated for the next one. So there but for the gracelessness of my legs go I.

Just a tiny bit extraordinary…

Gymuary, day two of thirty-one.

Resolution-makers were out in full force today, which was nice to see. I like that my gym—it's a YMCA—is so unpretentious. We've got body-builders and the usual sporty, perky young women with bouncing ponytails and distinctly un-bouncing bodies, but also eighty-year-old men who walk on the treadmill at two miles an hour in khakis and suspenders and boat shoes, excitable senior ladies who gab in the locker room in their dripping swimsuits after a water aerobics class. We've got people of all races and ages and sizes, who nearly all adhere to the rule about wiping down the machines when they're done with them.

Then there's me. Unremarkable. Short brown hair, not quite five-foot-six, size eight in both jeans and shoes, 140 pounds, just about textbook averageness in every physical sense. Except maybe my boobs. They're sort of average and a half. I'm thirty-one, an age at which no new privileges are granted and people no longer ask what you think you'd like to do with your life. These aren't complaints, mind you. Average is a nice enough thing to be.

But for ten minutes each day, I can make myself feel exceptional. Before I do, I spend thirty or forty minutes on the most central elliptical machine I can find. I scout. The row in front of the ellipticals is treadmills, with big screens and large red numbers displaying the incline and speed and time and such of the people using them. I scout for a pace car, usually a twenty-something guy, and I try to spy on him and see how fast he runs. I pick a guy, because the women who run have an eerie synchronicity in which they all seem to top off at six miles an hour. As though they were all made privy to some stone tablet passed down from on high that proclaims 6.0 to be the optimum and perfect setting for every woman. But usually there will be a fit guy that hits seven or faster, and he is my pace car.

After the elliptical-slash-voyeurism portion of my workout is done, I've already burned a few hundred calories and my heart is going at a nice fat-burning pace and my muscles are warm and primed. I switch to a treadmill and set it for ten or fifteen minutes. I pick the interval workout setting, which asks you to enter your jogging speed and your running speed. I enter six and seven. I cue up Kylie Minogue's "Get Outta My Way" and "Aphrodite" and for ten minutes, I am a tiny bit extraordinary. Well, I feel like I am. It's mostly the music and the adrenaline, but when I hit the interval button and it goes to run-mode, I feel like an Olympian. If I saw a guy running at 7.2 during my stake-out, I make it a point to nudge myself up to 7.5 for sixty seconds toward the end. Finish strong, the cheesy inspirational poster on the wall tells me. Okay, I will, I say.

I'm not a distance runner. When I run outside I rarely go more than three miles, because I hate carrying water and my knees just aren't the marathon types. But for ten minutes, I can run my ass off. For ten minutes, I can run as fast as a college guy. And for ten minutes, in a gym full of relative strangers who probably aren't paying me any attention, I feel pretty exceptional. I pump my arms and sprint as though I'm in a character in a movie, sequestered in an underground training bunker, taking some high-tech stress test with electrodes taped to my vital bits. The white noise of the popular media that's always buzzing in the back of my Western brain, always murmuring to me about thinness and grooming and brand names is utterly drowned out, and I don't care that I'm stinky or red in the face or what my little pockets of excess may look like to an observer. I don't care that my track pants and tee-shirt and bandanna make me look like a frump compared to that trim woman in the form-fitting, matching work-out gear. I don't care if anything's jiggling because I am running an eight-minute mile, and I just blew right past all those pointless voices, too quick to hear.

When I am done, I am sweaty and pink and probably not attractive beyond the pheromonal level, but it is the best and most desirable I will feel all day. High on endorphins, I do an A+ job of wiping down the machine, even the parts I didn't touch, and for this short sliver of my time on the planet, I am damn-near perfect.

A Year of Lents

When I was a kid, I was always secretly jealous of my Catholic friends who, in my mental wording, "got to do" Lent each spring. It seemed so romantic to me, this notion of doing without for a month. So noble and selfless. My consciousness of Lent started in the late eighties as well, which meant I was also being bombarded with media mentions of "dieting". How grown up the women on TV were, always suffering for their diets! Suffering and going without seemed so sophisticated. Clearly Catholicism is genetic, as I was raised agnostic yet inherited all the guilt and self-loathing enjoyed by my foremothers.

Already, I'm going off topic. The point is, I've decided to do an entire year of Lent-like experiments. Every month in 2011, I'm going to either go without a vice or luxury, or else commit to doing a certain positive thing each day. No moral I'm trying to prove, here—there's no point to this exercise aside from challenging myself and giving myself a healthy shove toward the edge of my comfort zone. I've come to realize in past few years just how adaptable humans are, and I want to explore that a bit more, and hopefully surprise myself with my own flexibility and will.

Here's the schedule for what I'm calling my Discipline Year (you may take that in either the punitive or reverent sense, as I expect it'll be both):

1 GYMUARY For January, each and every day I will go to the gym—a twelve-minute walk from my house. Probably not the best month to pick this one since the weather in New England can be Russian roulette, but I've been slacking badly the last few weeks, so the sooner the better. And don't worry, I won't go nuts. I'll switch between cardio and yoga and group classes and swimming so I don't injure myself.

2 FACE-OFF FEBRUARY In February, I will forgo wearing make-up the entire month. There is a reason, aside from consonance, that I picked this shortest month to not wear make-up. I like the stuff and I've been wearing it since I was about fourteen or fifteen. But I'd like to see just how differently I'll feel about myself if I go without it for a few weeks.

3 MEAGER MARCH No frivolous purchases for the month of March. That means clothes, silly stuff from CVS, coffees or drinks while I'm out and about, iTunes or book downloads…spending on necessities and groceries only. (Alcohol counts as a grocery item, however, as the hideousness that is temperance is coming later in the year.) I'm not too worried about this one.

4 NO #&$%@! APRIL For April, I'm putting the cabash on my potty-mouth, from "damn" and "hell" on up the line of profanity. This will go for out loud swearing as well as tweets and blog posts, though my characters are still allowed to cuss their everloving heads off in my manuscripts, as always. I honestly have no clue how hard this will be, and since my swearing is more habitual than willful, I will have to come up with a penance system for when I inevitably slip up…a dollar to charity or something like that.

5 MEAT-FREE MAY I'll be going vegetarian for the month of May. For now this means no meat, including poultry and seafood. I'm open to tossing eggs and dairy into the mix and upgrading to vegan… I'd miss having cream in my coffee each morning, but if I'm feeling brave at the end of April, I'll up the ante.

6 NO JAVA JUNE That's right, no coffee. I'm dreading this one. I'm allowing caffeine, but substituting rooibus and green tea and maté will not make my grief any more bearable. Coffee is as much a comforting ritual to me as it is a chemical fix.

7 JUJUBE-FREE JULY That is to say, no candy. No extraneous sugar. If a food such as wine or fruit contains natural sugar, that's fine, but no candy, sweet drinks, pastries, or packaged food with sugar as one of its top five listed ingredients.

8 UP AND AT 'EM AUGUST For August I will set my alarm and rise promptly at five a.m. each morning. Normally I get up around six thirty, but I want to see exactly what I might get accomplished in those bonus ninety minutes before the rest of the world wakes up and demands my attention. Perhaps it will just be a lot of yawning, but perhaps it will be an entire extra novella.

9 SWITCH OFF SEPTEMBER In September, I will go without TV. Considering I don't own one, this should be easy, right? Hell no. Thanks to Hulu and Instant Watcher, I've got a mean TV habit going on, and I'll need to figure out other ways to enjoy my lunch hour or unwind at five aside from tuning in to my beloved crappo reality shows. Movies will be acceptable.

10 OMMM-CTOBER For October, I will commit to practicing yoga either at home or in a class for at least forty-five minutes each day. It's something I used to do before writing became my sacred daily practice, and I'm looking forward to reconnecting with it.

11 NOVEMBOOZE That's right, no alcohol for the month of November. I'm dreading this almost as much as the coffee month. And I did pick a holiday month on purpose, just to make it tougher. If I wind up with a contract or a release date in November, I'll just have to get creative with my celebrating. Perhaps a cupcake or a new necklace in place of the usual champagne.

12 DONATE DECEMBER Each day in December I will go through my clothes and other possessions and pick one nice thing to add to a Salvation Army-type donation box. December's usually stressful, and this is an easy one for me. Getting rid of older stuff feels good, and it makes room for new and exciting things to come into one's life. Seems like a good choice for the end of the year and the holiday season.

So that's the deal! This blog will be like my 12-step meetings, so expect lots of whiny posts as I struggle through my various withdrawals and am tempted by seductive relapses. The first week of June should be especially entertaining as you watch me break up with my precious codependent lover, coffee. Oh how I will plead to get him back! And as early as next week you'll probably see posts about how very little I feel like sloshing through the icy slush to go to the gym. Stay tuned and watch me crumble. Or if you're similarly masochistic, join me for a month! If you do, let me know. I'd happily welcome any guest posters who wish to share their own self-denial experiments.

New Tricks

I have no personal affiliation with this excellent dog.

While thirty-one in dog years only amounts to a reasonably spry pooch of four and a half, the theme of this past week for me has definitely been learning new tricks. There was an excellent On Point on yesterday on the topic of aging, and it featured 91-year-young Canadian Oga Kotelko, who's a medal-winning track and field star—an active one! She sprints and throws the hammer, javelin, and shot put, among many other pursuits. Apparently after her kids were grown and she retired, she decided it was time to take up exercise, and now in addition to some enviable genes, she credits all the physical activity with her enviable longevity and energy. So, it's never to late to learn new skills and cultivate challenging hobbies. Here are mine:

Touch-typing. I know, I know. I'm a writer, and I don't know how to touch-type? How did I ever manage to finish a single novella? Well, I'm a very adept hunt-and-pecker. So adept, I can hunt-and-peck without looking at the keyboard, with reasonable accuracy. Or as I mused on Twitter, perhaps that just makes me a pecker. So that works and everything. I mean, I hit my 2–4K writing goals most days and the speed of my typing doesn't inhibit my ability to keep up with my thoughts, so what's the problem? Well, the problem is that I've been having pain recently, in my neck, shoulder, and arm, accompanied by a numbness in my hand. I attribute it to a variety of things—the crappy desk chair in which I slump for eight hours a day, my annoying hair pulling habit, and my screwy hand positioning, brought on by my unorthodox typing practices and lame desk set-up. Well, having a disconcertingly numb hand and sore arm is no way to go about being a full-time writer, so on Tuesday I changed cold-turkey.

I got lucky on the hair-pulling front—my recent arm pain made that stupid activity too painful to indulge in, so that habit has faded nearly to nonexistence this week. As for my shitty work station, I've ordered a new Balance Ball chair like the one I used to use at my old graphic design office job. It's nearly impossible to slump on one of those—you'll go rolling backward or topple over. While I wait for it to arrive, I've been using my manfriend's adjustable-height backless desk chair. He's sort of a posture nerd. Good thing to be nerd about. I raised it to the height the ball chair will be, quite a bit higher than the crappo Ikea five-dollar folding chair I usually sit on. I had to completely rearrange my work station, too, as my keyboard drawer is far too low to comfortably type on from a dizzying seat height of twenty-five inches.

The same morning I fixed my desk situation, I began a touch-typing regimen. Aside: when I was in second grade we were supposed to learn how to touch-type, using the PAWS game software on our lab's Apple II-Es. The lessons were timed, and you had to race a cat. I got so worked up by it, I hyperventilated. It absolutely stressed the hell out of me. Just ask my mom. But that was twenty-four years ago now, and I decided it was time to move on from those old traumas. I found this excellent website with step-by-step graduated typing drills. After going through the basics I soon learned it's far easier to type real sentences than random letters, so I've adapted my own daily program, about an hour's worth of writing out whatever sentence pops into my head, then touch-typing it over and over until I get every letter right without any mistakes. I've also forced myself to tweet and chat strictly while touch-typing. I have a deadline at the moment, so my professional writing is still of the break-neck hunting-and-pecking variety, but I'm getting better at proper typing by the day. Next week I'll probably force myself to blog only while touch-typing…look forward to those uncharacteristically concise posts.

Zumba! Their exclamation point, not mine; I'm not that perky. If you don't know, Zumba! is the new hot exercise trend, much the way Tae Bo or Jazzercise were in their heydays. I love the idea of it—high energy dancing to hip-hop and Latin beats. I went to an introductory class at my gym last weekend, and realized this is something I will a) probably love and b) make an ass of myself trying to do in a normal, fast-paced, non-instructive class. So after the intro I dug out my old dance sneaks from salsa class and found some how-to step break-downs on YouTube. I ordered a used set of Zumba DVDs as well, as I'm one of those anxious people who like to enter into new realms prepared. I hope in a couple of weeks I'll feel grounded enough in the basics that I'll be able to walk into a proper class without fear. I know, nobody would care if I walked in and looked a total idiot except me, but it's my personality. I don't like not being good at things, so I think I'll suffer my no-nothing days in privacy, thanks.

Conversational Italian. My Pimsleur CDs just came in via inter-library loan this morning! The manfriendiTunes and learn them while I cook dinner each evening. Even if we never go, it's supposed to be great for the brain to keep learning languages, despite the fact that our noggins are faaaar better at that sort of thing when we're young and spongy. Anyhow, I'll let you all know how that goes.

The weather has taken a distinctly December-in-New-England turn of late, so it feels like a perfect time to keep myself occupied, even as the gray skies and frigid temps try to seduce me into the cozy clutches of laziness. Anyone else trying something new this winter (or summer, to you lovely Southern Hemispherians)? Tell me about it! Just don't tell me in Italian just yet.

Brain-Body Balance…

…I does not have it.

This is more a rant than a blog post, so bear with me, or go elsewhere until I return tomorrow with a regularly scheduled angst-free installment of Thrusty Thursday.

I think there's such a thing as a healthy brain-body balance. I mean those days or even weeks when your body and mind are both feeling settled and performing capably. I think more often than not, I have this balance, or something approaching it. But this week…and indeed last week… Dear God, I don't. Not even close.

I don't know what's up with me. My brain is burned out, largely from being stuck on a romance proposal that I just cannot seem to tailor to get my editor on board. I want to be successful, so I'm thinking of ways to fix it, non-stop. It's exhausting, and naturally the franticness isn't actually helping to generate anything new and fresh. After today I'm just taking a break and switching to edits and admin until next week, lest I give myself a nervous breakdown.

Body-wise, I would hope that if my brain's doing crappily, my body's at least in decent working order. It's so not. I've been jittery and irritable, and sleeping terribly (which is not like me). I'm also blessed a sort of low-level but chronic stomach issue, which gets set off by stress. It leads to abdominal and back pain. Oh joy! Jittery, under-rested, and achy all over.

On the other hand, now that it's getting to be too cold to run outside, I joined my local gym. And I love it! My body may not be feeling stellar, but I'll give it credit for performing. I've been using the elliptical machine and treadmill and today I took my first Pilates class in several years (man, there are some muscles in my core I haven't dusted off in ages) and my body's largely cooperating. And I do think all the exercise refreshes the brain a bit…though I've still yet to wow my editor.

Like a bad mood or a shitty weather pattern, I'll just have to wait this out, I suppose. Though I hope it moves on soon—us writers get mental constipation when our creativity stays blocked for too long.