August 26, 2006

YIKES

That was a tough one! The Whistler Five Peaks race started at 6,000 ft, took us up another 1,571 feet through glacial moraine, snow fields, wild flowers, alpine bog, trickling creeks, rolling rocks, sheer climbs and tricky and dusty descents with some of the most spectacular and varied scenery in this world — if you could stop watching your feet long enough to take a peek.

And sheesh was it ever hot. And sunny. I got way sunburned, dehydrated and very seriously thought about quitting, after which my body almost did it for me by getting me so dizzy that for a few scary moments I began to look for safe spots to fall in case my world went suddenly black. My stomach hurt, my collar bone felt like it was broken, my toe broke through my sock which proceeded to strangle my appendage  …

I just was not in top form for this one, and as usual, I was in awe of how many people out there are. I am still scraping the bottom of the fitness barrel — and those folk are my inspiration. So is DD#2 who again placed third in her age category in the shorter course. I am also in love with DH for running along at her side. But what is it about some guys who can do anything without training?

You can see part of the route in the photo above — the little trail that leads up to the edge of the glacier and then back down. The saddle in the rock ridge up top (under the scoop of the flag) is where my race eventually led me after many more miles, but we came up the back side of the peak pictured above, ran along the ridge at the top …. and then headed into a mean descent. Well, it was mean to me. I’m still a weeny in this game.

That would be DD (waving) getting ready to accept her medal.

Um, that would be me. Kaput. Note the dust-caked legs and shoes

August 25, 2006

WEEKEND OFF!!

Wish me luck I’m uploading at 9 a.m. tomorrow, along with almost 500 other runners for the  Five Peaks race on Whistler Mountain.

And if I’m still alive come afternoon, I’m meeting with a writing friend from Vancouver whom I have not seen since RWA nationals in Reno. I have my edits in the bag, and the day off. Yeah!!

Have a great weekend, and thanks for visiting.

    Victoria Marathon — 44 days to go!!

    Honolulu Marathon — 107 days to go.

August 24, 2006

FEY FOLK AND THE MAGIC OF SUCCESS

My Horoscope for the coming week: - (Cancer June 21-July 22)

“Throughout history there have been secret schools that don’t advertise their existence. To enroll, students must either be invited or else stumble on them by chance. In post-Renaissance Europe, for example, Rosicrucian mystery schools taught an esoteric form of Christianity at odds with the Church. Seventeenth-century English poet Andrew Marvell and his cohorts had their underground School of the Night, and ancient Greek poet Sappho stealthily gathered young women at her Moisopholon, “House of the Muses.” In recent years the Sexy Bratty Genius School has periodically convened classes at 3 a.m. under a highway overpass in San Francisco. According to my reading of the current omens, Cancerian, you’re close to making contact with a similar source of teaching. Whether you end up actually matriculating depends on how you answer the question, “Do you want to learn about things you’ve considered impossible?” 

Well, yeah :). 

Do you think I can learn how to attract faerie dust? Because according to Tess Gerritsen, that’s what it takes to hit the pinnacle of writing success.

“Yes,” she said in a blog post a while back, “there are some things you as a writer can do to help along your success. You have to write a good book. Then you make sure you hook up with a great agent …….you insist on a great cover and a great title. You make yourself available for media. You plow into the publicity circuit with a can-do attitude. You try to be NICE to people ….. But then something else takes over, something that’s totally out of your control …

“You get sprinkled with some fairy dust. You can’t ask for it. The fairies have to decide you’re the chosen one. Your book release is scheduled during a week when no blockbusters are out. Or Oprah reads it on vacation. Or the zeitgeist is just quivering for a book of your subject matter. Or your name is Dan Brown. Whatever the reasons, the fairies have decided you are THE ONE. Your book hits the bestseller list while other equally well written books don’t. Are you better than them? Maybe. But what you really are is a whole lot luckier. ”

Oh yes please!! A secret school on how to attract the blessing of fey folk!!

Then again, I don’t really trust faeries — capricious creatures.

I prefer to think along the lines of my hero, guru Joseph Campbell, who maintained that when you find your “bliss,” your true passion in life, and pursue it with all you’ve got, you somehow become aligned with the universe and “magical hands” in the form of friends, offers, grants … or those little ‘coincidences’ that Tess mentioned … appear to help you along your track.

Or to be a little less spiritual, there’s the famous quote from producer Samuel Goldwyn who said: ”The harder I work, the luckier I get.” And there’s Benny Goodman who – when asked if luck had anything to do with where he was in the music world — smiled and said: “Practice makes you lucky.” Or U.S. president Thomas Jefferson who was a great believer in luck. “I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

It’s in the semantics — it’s all the same thing. Or not? What do you think? Do you make your luck, your magic? Or are simply chosen at random by the faeries?

I love Free Will. His horoscopes have a way of noodling into the subconscious. Check yours out here.

August 23, 2006

SUCKER FOR PUNISHMENT …

That’s what I am. Truly. Because this is where I’ll be running come Saturday, atop Whistler Mountain in another of the Five Peaks enduro series. I’m afraid I’m hooked. I’m also dead sure I’m going to come dead last — I’ve checked the results from last year. The total race elevation gain is 1,571 feet, and that’s some heavy aerobic breathing at an altitude of 7,160 feet (2,182 metres).

Plus I’ve been truly wicked … I signed DH up for the sport course. HAH!!! Just wait until he finds out he’s not going fishing on Saturday :) :).

What is everyone else up to during these ‘dog days’ of summer? Writing hard? Waiting for the yellow bus? Waiting for news?

My Path: Tin Pants, and Lost Lake

My Time: 1 hour and 14 mins

My Beat: Break On Through — The Doors

    Victoria Marathon — 46 days to go!!

    Honolulu Marathon — 109 days to go.

August 22, 2006

TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR WRITERS …

Lee Goldberg’s comment about not being able to force creativity got me thinking — because in a sense he’s right. While it’s one thing to sit down daily at 3 a.m. and force the words to come … year in and year out … it’s quite another to get burnt out, hit the wall, or bonk – as they say in endurance sports Writers do. And then sometimes they simply quit. Even good ones, well-pubbed ones.

I don’t believe you can vibrate with fresh, edgy, creative, energy when the fire inside is, well, dead. The inspiration is simply not going to come if you’re that physically, emotionally, mentally drained. It goes to the heart of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You need the fuel first.

And you need your habits, to be sustainable.

So while the discipline is clearly necessary, so is pacing if you plan on going the marathon haul. As is nourishment and care of the writer — both body and soul. So today I leave you with this – scriptwriter Derek Rydall’s Ten Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters.

It’s been around for some time. I have a copy pinned up on my bulletin board, and I think it truly covers all the bases. While it’s written for screenwriters, I believe it serves just as well as a Ten Commandments for Novelists who plan on going the distance.

Maybe that really is the secret of the giants in the industry — they’ve found a way to contiually feed the fire.

And let’s hope I’m over this naval gazing by tomorrow, eh?

My Path: Old Mill Road, Panorama

My Time: 51:02 mins — interval training.

My Beat: Simply The Best — Tina Turner

Victoria Marathon — 47 days to go!! (eep)

Honolulu Marathon — 110 days to go.

August 21, 2006

THIS I CAN DO …

I found this on  Alison Kent’s blog this morning –> she got it from Paul Guyot, and I’m going to steal it because I love this:

“Discipline. The single greatest asset a writer can own. Better than talent, better than imagination, better than anything.

“If you have discipline, you are light-years ahead of anyone trying to write without discipline. It is no coincidence that the best writers I know – both prose and screen – are also some of the most disciplined.

“And it’s no coincidence that the majority of people I know who have yet to taste any real success as a writer lack discipline. And most of them don’t even know it.

“Stephen J. Cannell, of TV and multiple novels, is disciplined. Up at 4:30am EVERY day, works out for an hour to an hour, showers, eats and WRITES. Every day.

“Sheldon Turner, one of the “hottest” screenwriters working in Hollywood, is up at 3:57am every day. Yes, 3:57. Like the gun. He writes for ninety minutes, then works out for an hour, then back to the keyboard. Every day. Ridley Pearson, Nora Roberts, Michael Connelly, John Grisham. Disciplined. I was going to write “extremely disciplined,” but realized that is wrong. There are no levels of discipline. You are or you aren’t. It is black and white, despite what your ego may be telling you.  And it’s not simply sitting in front of the keyboard every day. I do that and I have the discipline of a six-week-old Irish Setter. It’s getting up at the same time every day, and doing the same thing every day. A job. Sometimes I’m at my keyboard at seven, sometimes eighty-thirty (like today), or sometimes nine or even ten. If I did that at a regular job, I’d be fired.”

So why do I love this so much? Because, given the vagaries of the publishing industry, this is one thing truly within my control. I can do this — discipline. This is what endurance sport has taught me, and continues to teach me — and it’s partly why I run.

Lee Goldberg, however, argues that you can’t always force creativity. Then again, Nora Roberts – in the last RWA Romance Writers Report – says if she waited for inspiration to strike, she’d be without a job. “Inspiration’s bullshit in my opinion,” says she. “I have plenty days when the words don’t want to come. I push until they do … keep at it until that wall crumbles or you break it down.”

Moi? I like to clutch onto the notion that — given equal dollops of talent and desire — it’s drive that will win out over pure dumb luck. Maybe that’s wishful thinking?? Maybe I’m just control freak? Still … the track record sure looks impressive

My Path: Lost Lake Trails

My Time: 47.12 mins

My Beat: Like a Woman — Nina Simone