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Birthdays, Marathon Running, and Life

This time last year I turned 49 years old – a few weeks after our youngest kid went to college and in the middle of the FORGE book tour. Immediately I started to think about what it would mean to turn 50.

In the decade between my 40th and 50th birthdays, I wrote and published six novels and three picture books. I also spent roughly one thousand days – 2.7 years travelling to schools, conferences, and on book tour. And I got divorced, remarried, moved twice, took care of dying parents, cheered from the sidelines as our first three kids navigated the shoals of high school and college, survived cancer, and read a lot of books.

I was tired.

As I hurtled towards my 50th, it was time to recover, reevaluate, and regroup. One of the first things I did was to give myself permission to exercise as much as I wanted. Shortly after that, I signed up for a marathon, something that I’ve always wanted to do.

My Beloved Husband is a born runner; he nearly qualified for States in high school, and is not all that much slower at age 53. Me? Not so much. I am a turtle. The back-of-the-pack runner. When God was handing out speed, I was in the library reading. But running does not have to be about winning. Running is best enjoyed when you stay in the moment, the child-like moment of play, heart pounding strong, hair flying, grinning from ear to ear. Zen running. It’s much like writing, when it works.

BH and I decided that we had two marathon goals: 1) to complete the darn thing, and 2) to complete it without needing medical intervention. We decided to try to run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC.

We headed down to DC well before dawn last Friday. I was nervous. I had trained hard this summer, but had it been enough? I was so nervous, I ordered a big plate of fettucini Alfredo for dinner the night before the race.

I also forgot to eat or drink anything between my 3am breakfast and the 8 am start of the race. I was nervous about everything, but I was super-nervous about the Beat The Bridge rule. Anyone who didn’t make it to the bridge at Mile 20 by the cut-off time would suffer the heartbreak of having to ride the Straggler’s Bus to the finish line.

Given my natural lack of speed, this was a distinct possibility.

And of course, I was nervous about the notion of running 26.2 FREAKING MILES!

Thankfully, the race started before I collapsed from anxiety. It was cool, crisp, and sunny, perfect running weather. The first seven miles flew by, then the fettucini Alfredo kicked in. I will spare you the graphic details. Let’s just say I now hold the record for Number Of Panicked Port-A-Potty Stops During A Marathon.

But racing alongside so many soldiers and veterans, in the capital of the United States, kept my belly woes in perspective. I was surrounded by people who sacrificed more than I could even imagine. It was an honor to run alongside them.

One of the best parts of the day for me was that we shared it with two of our daughters and their partners. This is me catching my first glimpse of the whole crew around Mile 9 in Georgetown.

I ran into my family a few times on the course, which was a much-needed boost, especially between Miles 15 and 19.95 when I was having serious doubts about my ability to Beat the Bridge. But I had no idea what they had prepared for me. They had changed into these shirts….

…..pointing out that 26.2 Is The New 50. I did not start crying until I was past them. I cried because I was so happy. My blessings overflow my cup; love, family, friends, health, country, the chance to do good work, the joy of being very, very alive. I was, and am, deeply grateful.

We made it! Both my husband and I finished the race and neither of us needed medical intervention. The sight of him running down the hill to greet me as I crossed the finish line will stay with me forever.

Running a marathon felt exactly like writing a novel. I was scared. I was exhilarated. I doubted myself. I had supreme confidence. I cursed myself for a blind, arrogant fool. I leaned on my family for encouragement. I whined. I dreamed. I struggled. I took inspiration from the people around me. I laughed. I sang. I prayed. And I celebrated.

Here’s to the next fifty years!!

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Buy Art! Help a Good Cause!

Start your holiday shopping early! Bid on a piece of original art by some of the best illustrators out there!


Details:

“The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the bookseller’s voice in the fight against censorship, is conducting an online auction featuring over 70 pieces by leading artists in the children’s book industry, including Peter Brown, Susan Jeffers, Wendell Minor, Adam Rex and Paul O. Zelinsky.

The eBay auction will culminate during Banned Books Week (Sept. 24-Oct. 1), the only national celebration of the freedom to read. One-third of the art will be auctioned each week with new works posted on Fridays. Items can be located on ABFFE’s eBay page.

In addition to sponsoring Banned Books Week, ABFFE co-sponsors the Kids Right to Read Project with the National Coalition Against Censorship. ABFFE has created a flyer for the Banned Books Week auction that it hopes booksellers will download and distribute to their customers.”

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The Last Day of WFMAD 2011

It’s a celebration!!!!!

You made it! Thirty-one days in a row of writing at least fifteen minutes a day!

::dances with abandon, horrifying everyone in the room and embarrassing the dogs::

Wait.

Why aren’t you dancing? Why are you looking at me like that? I know that I dance like Dorkasaurus Rex, but I have fun while I’m doing it, so it’s all good. ::resumes ghastly dance moves::

::stops dancing::

You mean you didn’t write for fifteen minutes every day during the month of August?

::Kool and The Gang stop playing and stare. A waiter drops of tray full of champagne glasses::

So?

I’m not going to scold you, silly. (You’re already doing a good job of that.) Besides, scolding has never turned anyone’s mood from anxious to creative. Listen up. You tried. That’s all any of us can do. I bet that if you’ve been (more or less) following these blog posts this month, that you’ve written more than usual, and you’ve thought about writing more than usual. And I bet that there are few of you (Carrie?) who managed to write every single day, or something close to that goal.

WFMAD is the time for us to come together and commiserate about the missteps we make with time management. When the self-flaggellation ends, I hope we can get down to the business at hand; restoring creativity to our lives, in whatever form feels right and good.

I’m not going to give you advice today. Or a quote. Or a prompt.

OK, I lied. I’ll give a little advice.

Life is short, my friends. Way too short. There’s not nearly enough time to love as much as we want and laugh and watch the stars and hold babies and eat good food and hang out with friends and express the creativity that God put in our hearts. So get to it.

If you want to write, make the time to do it. It’s as easy and as hard as that. When you’re done writing, I hope you’ll come back and dance with me. And with these two guys…

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WFMAD Day Almost The Last

First things, first. As I post this, Muslims on the other side of the world are waking up and celebrating the end of Ramadan. Eid Sa‘eed!

If you are celebrating the Eid, I hope you have a blessed day. I also hope (if you’ve been following this blog for the past month), you’re able to take fifteen minutes to write. That goes for all of you who are not celebrating the Eid, too!

Indonesian Muslim children in a parade celebrating Eid al-Fitr in Jakarta. Photo credit Dita Alangkara/AP

OK, time to change the topic and think about writing.

I live in a rural, poor area that has been hit incredibly hard by the last couple of years. I find myself thinking about poverty, and its causes and effects, a lot. One of the frustrating things about the state of literature (at least in the United States) is that it is largely a product of the middle or upper class. Working people; farmers, carpenters, factory workers – not to mention the chronically unemployed generally have bigger issues to deal with than “My Muse is being a bitch and won’t talk to me.”

Maybe this doesn’t frustrate you. But it frustrates the hell out of me. Hence, today’s prompt.

Ready… If you need some hard numbers to help you think about the class structure in America, check this out. Or read about what America’s economic crisis looks like from England.

Set… “I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.” Richard Wright

Today’s prompt: Either write about your character coming in contact (and/or conflict) with someone who is from a different economic class than he is, or write about your own class experience. Can you remember the first time you realized that some people have more money than others? Class differences can spark strong emotions, but we are often taught to suppress these feelings and to guard our behavior in these situations. The strong emotional currents this creates provides the writer with a wealth (ahem) of material.

OR

Write about what you don’t know about a social or economic class, or a lifestyle that is completely different than yours.

Scribble… Scribble… Scribble…

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WFMAD Day 29 – Slaying Demons of Doubt

I’ve heard from a number of you recently about the struggle to maintain your confidence during the writing process. Many (all?) of you are beset by doubts about your talent, your current project, the competition, the marketplace, your future, and pretty much everything related to being a writer.

So am I.

Frankly, it’s amazing any of us manage to get out of bed in the morning.

I think that being plagued by the Demons of Doubt is the hardest part of being a writer. (Please note – if you are writing, you are a writer. It doesn’t matter if you are published or not.)

So what are we supposed to do?

Ready… We’re just about at the end of the 2011 WFMAD Challenge. If you’re looking for a writing buddy to help you keep up your writing momentum until next year, post your email address and name in the Comments section. Get yourself a new, writing-only Hotmail or other address if you don’t want to publicize your real one.

Set… “It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.” Virginia Woolf

Today’s prompt: The Demons of Doubt will always sit on your shoulders. Sorry. It’s a law of writing physics.

You cannot banish them, but you can defang them.

Think about the best day writing you ever had; that perfect storm of creation during which you lost track of where you were and the passage of time – the best day when you lost yourself in the world of your novel. Write about that day in beautiful, loving detail.

That is your shield. You will wave this in the face of the demons when they rise up and try to infect you with their bile. To hell with them!

Stop thinking about the marketplace. It doesn’t matter how old or young you are. It doesn’t matter if you have an MFA or not. It certainly does not matter if you think what you are writing is any good yet. (You are a WRITER, for the love of Pete! That means you’ll be REVISING. A LOT!!! Stop wasting energy judging your work and then beating the crap out of yourself because it sucks. Instead, use that energy to lift up the shield you just wrote. Fasten onto the memory of your best writing day. Then summon another day like that and get to work.

Scribble… Scribble… Scribble…