Pushing Past Personal Limits

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a post called Writing Advice, in which I listed the (few) things I believe are necessary for writing well.  I still stand by that post, although I think I’d like to add one item to it:

Writers, get more exercise.

If you’re anything like me, you have a tendency to sit for ages in front of the computer or with a notebook, which is great if you want to look like Jabba the Hutt but not so great if you want actual blood flow to your brain.  So you just sit there, getting stupider, when twenty minutes of exercise would cut right through your writer’s block and overall make you a happier, healthier person.

You’ll also learn a lot about writing action sequences and their after effects.  Have you ever worked out until you wanted to puke and faint?

I did, last week, because I did a high-intensity Zumba . . . my first really serious exercise in seven months.  15 minutes in, I honesty wanted to puke and faint.  I had to put my head between my knees for 30 seconds.  Then I kept going, and the endorphins kicked in.  After 45 minutes of Zumba, I felt like I could dance forever—and love it.

(Boy, was I sore the next day.)

And that’s something a lot of writers don’t bother with: action sequences leave you sore and aching (and often bruised and cut and broken and headachy and weak), and this effects not just what you can do physically, but what you can do mentally.  That hour of Zumba pretty much knocked out my brain for the rest of the day.  But after a week of getting lots of exercise, when I went back . . . I didn’t feel like puking or fainting.  I just felt fantastic.  And it totally worked out my soreness from the strength-training yoga two days earlier.

So exercise not only improves your brain and body, it also teaches you what certain types of exertion feel like.

But that’s not what I sat down to write about—it’s just what reminded me of it.

In my life, two instances stick out to me where I (out of character) exerted myself far beyond what I might have believed possible.  These aren’t necessarily the most exertion I’ve ever gotten—just the ones that I’m amazed at myself about.  Because I didn’t have to do them, and (beforehand), I couldn’t imagine wanting to try.

The first happened when I was maybe eleven years old.  I was a competitive swimmer.  One Saturday, during our dry land training, one of our coaches decided to run a contest: whoever could do the wall sit, with good form, for the longest would get a free PowerAde.

After 15 minutes, she begged us to stop, and promised that the six or seven of us left—er—sitting would all get a PowerAde.

I literally couldn’t walk after that. 

I have never, before or since, done the wall sit for more than a minute.  I’ve never enjoyed the wall sit.  But I did it.  And I got a PowerAde.

Yay?

The thing is, in the end, it wasn’t about the PowerAde.  It wasn’t even about my fellow competitors.  I just kept going because I was keeping going.  I think I would have been there for twice as long, if she hadn’t stopped us.  What madness is this?

The other time was last July 4^th.  I’d been doing Zumba for a couple of months by then, and I was friends with the woman who owned the dance studio.  She asked us to Zumba for the Fourth of July parade through town: 3.5 miles at noon in 95° weather.

I hate heat.  I’m not huge on physical exertion.  I wasn’t in that great of shape.

Our instructors dropped out halfway through.

I danced the whole way.  I was the only one who danced the whole way, and one of only two dancing at the end (my sister danced most of the way, but came over faint near the beginning and had to stop).  I danced through the puke stage, through the elation stage.  I danced through the fatigue stage and through the collapse stage.  I danced until my body’s air conditioning kicked in and I had chills running down my limbs.  I danced beyond all sense, beyond all endurance, and I smiled the whole time.

Why?  Madness?  Masochism?  No: because the people at the end of the parade deserved to see dancing as much as the people at the beginning.

How strange and uncharacteristic those two events—that wall sit and parade Zumba—were for me.  I never would have believed them of myself, but they’re true.  And now I know a little more about myself, and about what will drive me to push myself beyond endurance.

What would push your protagonist to that level?

Story Hook

Went to a writing workshop yesterday, which included a section on hooks. As an exercise, we were told to write a hook, "enough that a reader could get at least a sense of what kind of story it is. A romance? An epic fantasy? A horror story? A story about your cat? An epic horror story about your cat?"

So naturally, I wrote this. And when he asked for volunteers to read aloud, I couldn't resist  . . .

The eyes watched me.

The rest of the cat stalked down in the valley, disemboweling cattle and tormenting sheep, but the rest of the cat didn't matter. It wasn't dangerous. Only the eyes could hurt me now, because the eyes were the windows to the soul, and I was already dead.

I wrote another prompt too, for the fun of it, for a short humorous story I've been meaning for years to write -- "Financial Wizard."  It's about time to do that.

Bribing Cops

 

Three books I love.  One satirical literary fantasy, one Gothic romance horror, one epic high fantasy.  What do they have in common, aside from being amazing?  They’ve all been translated from another language—in these cases, German, French, and Russian.  And I’m currently rereading The Count of Monte Cristo, which is what prompted this post.

About two years ago, I went on a modern books-in-translation binge, especially Russian books.  Since 2016, I’ve read at least twelve books in Russian translation (the best of which is definitely the aforementioned Chronicles of Siala, beginning with Shadow Prowler by Alexey Pehov, translated by Andrew Bromfield).

One of the most fascinating things about this is one starts to see trends.  Most of the books I’ve read are either British or American (with the occasional Australian/Canadian/Irish/ etc. author thrown in).  Every nationality and culture has its own unique flavor, but all of these, ultimately, came out of the British empire, and so aren’t that different.  I’ve had a little more diversity through editing—I’ve edited for quite a few native Chinese speakers, whether they now live in China, Singapore, the U.S. or elsewhere—but my only real encounter with Russian culture was the semester of Russian I took my first year of college.  (And Russian Sherlock Holmes, of course).  Then I later had more exposure through a friend of mine who is a professional chess player and teacher (and with whom I wrote Game of Kings.)  But learning about a culture in class or hearing funny chess stories is much different than engaging with literature.

Here’s an example:

In every Russian book I read, police officers and guards could be bribed.  Almost all of them, almost always.  Didn’t matter if the books were high fantasy, sci-fi, or low fantasy, you could bribe law enforcement.  In none of these books was this made a big deal of; it was simply a fact of life.

Compare this to British/American stories.  When you find any bribable cop, he’s the exception, and scandalous.

That’s one of the fascinating things, to me, about reading books from less familiar cultures, especially in translation.  Not only will a good translator give you a taste of the language, the writer will give you a taste of something foreign—not through explaining it to you as in a class, but through trends of basic assumptions.

(Well, that and the fact that you have a higher probability of finding higher quality books in translation, since otherwise no one would have bothered to translate them.)

And through those basic assumptions, you begin to see your own assumptions—which may be more or less interesting.