Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 66

Race report: Moab Road Tri 2012

This is the gorgeous scenery that I got to see at my Moab race this weekend. It was a long drive from where I live, but 16 came with me to keep me company on the drive and also to volunteer at the race. The night before, we went over to check out the lake and I swam for a bit. Then it was out for dinner to get some carbs in.

The morning of the race, I tried to sleep in as much as possible. Sleep is so important to racing well. I might have nipped things a little close. I just had time to warm up in the lake, but not long enough to think through things carefully. I depended on everything going smoothly. It didn't.

I checked the night before to see who was racing with me and saw my nemesis was on the list. It didn't look like anyone else would be competition, but of course you never know until the race starts.

The water was a bit choppy, but after St. George I feel like I can handle just about anything. I just kept going, knowing it wouldn't be my fastest swim time.

Meanwhile, my daughter was keeping people off the carpet that led to transition so athletes could run without falling over people. I grabbed some sandals to run through the rocky, sandy transition area. I had trouble with my wetsuit, darn it! That took extra time. Then I struggled getting onto my bike. I'd left it in the highest gear, which wasn't good for starting on the hill.

Once I was on my bike, one guy passed me, but no one else. I could see about 11 people ahead of me and started to pick them off. My bike computer wasn't working so I didn't have my regular data, but I felt fast. Then I hit the first turnaround and realized why I'd felt so fast. The tailwind became a headwind, all the way up the mountainside, about 12 miles straight. It was a suffer fest, and I just put my head down, stayed in a rigid aero position, and counted pedal strokes to 2,000.

I was the lead woman at the turnaround, having just passed nemesis, but it was marked "sprint turnaround" and there was no one there. I kept going, thinking that Olympic had to go farther, but I ended up on a dirt trail, so I turned back. That lost me some time on my nemesis, but I passed her again. I had to go through sand to get to transition and ended up falling over. Doh!

No injuries, though. Then I got to start the trail run. I've never done a trail run quite like this before. It was gorgeous! Also, sandy, hilly, rocky and wet. We jumped over rocks, climbed big boulders, got lost in the sand, and went through streams. This is an Xterra course, offroad, with a road bike component for the chickens like me. I wasn't fast, and nemesis passed me about 30 seconds into the race at quite a clip. I figured she would beat me pretty bad if she kept that up.

She was 2 minutes ahead of me at the second loop, and then I lost track of her. There was a guy I'd passed who was trying to keep up with me. He kept running hard, then walking. I asked him if he wanted to pass, but he said he was just using me to pace himself. Finally, I could see the finish line and I really sprinted in. The guy behind me pushed me hard. I love that ending feeling. Then, of course, I collapsed into 16's arms. I drank 2 full bottles of water, very dehydrated because I hadn't brought enough water for the bike, which was so much harder than usual and longer. I went out to the lake and cooled off.

Then I came back for awards. It turned out that nemesis only beat me by 42 seconds. If only I'd done better at transitioning! I always say that, I know. There was a phantom woman who supposedly took first, and so I ended up with the third place award. But after I looked carefully at the results, I emailed the race director and he corrected them. So I was actually second. I feel silly arguing about something like that, but it matters for my USAT ranking.

Next year, if I come again, I'd love to drag the whole family and make a weekend of it, touring Arches National Park. So much fun. And sushi for recovery food afterward.

Writing Wednesday: In Media Res

Years ago, before I got my first book published, I was at a writing group meeting when an infrequent member appeared. He listened to my first chapter, looked at me and said, You think you're starting in the middle of things, but you've actually started far too late. All of this happens after what should be the climax of your book, after all the interesting changes in the character have been made. You need to go back to the beginning and make this chapter one of the last ones in your book. Or maybe he didn't say that at all, but that's what I remember him saying. As I said, he wasn't one of the normal members of the group and I didn't immediately think that he was brilliant. It was weeks and months later, as I worked through a revision that I realized how incisive he had been and appreciated his willingness to say bluntly what others were likely thinking but trying to think of a nice way to get at.

In fact, that was the novel that was first published of all the attempts that I made. I did the hard thing and rewrote it entirely, starting months back in the storyline, and moving up to the point of the first chapter. The book is The Monster In Me.

The reality is that when I do critiques now as a professional, I end up making this very same critique about half of the time. It especially happens in sf/f. I think that writers are so eager to show off their cool world and all the cool stuff that is going on there that they forget that first and foremost a story is about a character. And not a character in isolation, either. If you think about stories that have done well that have a single character (Castaway, for instance), they are almost always filled with setup about the character's relationships and show why the character wants to get back to those, or they have a fake relationship (with Wilson the soccer ball or a computer of some kind). We audience members need relationships to care about characters. If we don't have them, all the cool stuff in the world falls rather flat.

The advice to start a manuscript "in media res" (in the middle of things) doesn't mean that you should start chapter one with the climax of the book. It means you should start your novel without spending pages and pages explaining everything about the world. Now, I know that in a lot of YA sf/f that has come out lately, the explaining is exactly what the first chapter does. In first person, there is often the temptation to let a strong voice do explaining because it's faster (and easier) than showing. But I urge writers to resist this temptation. Instead of telling the reader from page one about the big bad world out there, try showing how that big bad world affects a relationship the main character is deeply invested in. Show the protagonist's strength or vulnerabilities. Show what matters.

If you must have a rule of thumb, then do not use more than one paragraph at a time of explanation. And keep the jargon down to 5 new words per chapter. Jargon especially turns readers off. I think it is one of the main reasons that YA sf/f is more popular among the wider world than standard sf/f, where writers and readers are more used to the barrage of new jargon in the first 50 pages of a book. It takes mental energy to wade through that and it weighs your manuscript down. The reader wants to read the book and enjoy it, not analyze it for hours before getting to scene two. IMHO, anyway.

Race report: Women of Steel 2012

I tend to do the same triathlons over and over again, because I feel more comfortable if I know the course. I can also track more easily improvement or problems in improving if the course is actually the same. Yes, weather can play a role, but I try to take that into consideration. This year, I decided to try a couple of new triathlons.

A couple of weeks ago I did Women of Steel, a short pool triathlon that is only for women. There were almost 700 participants this year, and that is a lot of women. Many of them are beginners, which is so cool. I love to see people who are doing a triathlon for the first time. It brings back great memories for me of some of my first races about 8 years ago. Not everyone needs to race to have a healthy lifestyle, but it helps me stay motivated. A pool tri is great for people who are nervous about their swim skills and don't want to face the fear of an open water swim in addition to other fears for a first triathlon. The race was dedicated to last year's "Woman of Steel," who had raced while she was undergoing chemotherapy. She had died in the meantime, but the race director wanted to remember her. It was a nice note to start on.

We had to figure out where we belonged in the start. I didn't choose the best outfit for swimming and ended up slower than I would have wished, but I didn't end up having to pass anyone, so that was good. Then I was out and running for my bike. A long transition zone (with 700 bikes) and I was out on the course. The first thing I noticed was that I was at the head of the race. This doesn't usually happen because even if I place high for women, there are guys ahead of me. I discovered that being in the lead was actually quite unpleasant for me. I like to be able to see someone ahead of me so I know I'm going in the right direction. Especially if I haven't done the course before.

I got a little frustrated on the bike because we were told we had to stay to the right of the cones. The streets were open to traffic, so it was dangerous to go out into a car lane, but when I called out "on your left" or "passing" the riders ahead of me did not respond. To be kind, I will assume that they either didn't hear me or that they did not understand what they were supposed to do. If it's your first race, you might not know what the rules are. In fact, not moving right is a blocking violation and should get you a time penalty, but there are few of those handed out in any race. I ended up moving into traffic and feeling guilty because I wondered if I would get kicked out of the race. I do not know what you should do in this situation, break the rules yourself, or stop worrying about your time. My husband thought I should have been more aggressive and forced the other riders over by positioning my bike more closely to theirs. That would freak me out.

Once I was on the run, I started to feel the real difference of an all women's course. There were a lot more people congratulating everyone on the great job they were doing. Not spectators, but other racers. And the sense of competition was somehow--different. Look, I love chicking guys. I love it when guys get annoyed that I passed them and try to catch up. I like to "guy" people as I run through a race, picking off guys to pass and annoy. I don't mind the idea of guys looking at my body while I race. If they want to see the backside of a 42 year old woman in bike shorts, so what? I have a bit of a muffin top and I don't care. This is a race. But an all women's race just doesn't have that component at all. I could see why women would like a race like this. I thought it was about feeling uncomfortable being seen by guys, which didn't make sense since men are on the sidelines cheering. But it's about the support an all women community can provide.

And it didn't hurt that at the finish line, there were chocolate bars, necklaces, and diet Coke being passed out, instead of the standard medals and Gatorade/bagels.

At the finish line, the announcer continued to talk about the racers who were women of steel. Lots of cool stories about people losing weight, coming back after a divorce, coming back after a delivery, tragedies turned into triumphs, and sisters supporting each other by signing up for a race and then training for it as a team. I ended up ninth overall, out of those 700 women. I was 1st in my age group, which is nice, but first place was my continual nemesis, who is 32 and beats me at every race we meet up at.

Question to Readers

I have never had a lot of traffic on this blog, but I think it has been falling off to Twitter and possibly Tumblr. I have created some separate sites for my triathlon life, in preparation for some new books coming out on that topic and I wanted to ask my blog readers here if they want me to continue to cross-post triathlon reports and thoughts here or if you'd rather go to the other sites if you are interested. If you have a second to make a comment, I'd appreciate it.

Monday Book Recs--Ashfall by Mike Mullin

I was complaining recently about how few “dystopian” novels published in YA today I like. I am particularly sad about this because I *love* dystopian, at least the way in which I imagine dystopian ought to be written. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer is one of the all-time great YA’s. I love it so much we’ve done a LAWKI month where we live off our food storage for a month for the past 4 years. But when pressed to name any other dystopian novels that I liked, I found it difficult.

I love Carrie Ryan’s zombie apocalypse novels. I love Janni Simner’s fairy apocalypse books. I like Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, also apocalypse dystopians. Ursual K. LeGuin’s books beginning with Gifts are great. The Giver by Lois Lowry, of course. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I love Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. And after that? I have difficulty coming up with any others. I can list some adult dystopians I love. There are books that might or might not be apocalyptic, like The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. Hunger and Gone by Grant.

I think I end up having problems with so-called dystopian novels on two ends. One is that a dystopian that is all about solving the problems and ending the dystopia is a book that needs a lot of world building. YA often tends to be short on world building. I do not mean this necessarily as a criticism. I like the fact that I don’t have to wade through pages of introduction to get to the characters. But this also sometimes means that the world building is sketchy. I sometimes feel like authors who never read sf/f in their own teens have decided it looks “easy” and so they just throw in a few futuristic tropes and call it dystopian. On the other hand, dystopians that are not about changing the world can be really depressing.

Ashfall by Mike Mullin is a book that in my opinion avoids both problems. There is a laser point fine focus on the main character Alex, whose family has gone on vacation after he refuses to go with them. He is thus alone when the supervolcano in Yellowstone erupts and begins to snow ash over thousands of miles of landscape for the next several days, and triggers a nuclear winter. Alex is determined to find his parents and younger sister, despite the hundreds of miles he must traverse to get there, and the unlikelihood of finding them alive in the first place.

I love the strength of Alex’s character, his determination and his skills. He’s taken Tae Kwon Do for years, so I believe it when he gets into battles with people who are stronger than he is, and gets out of them bruised and bloodied but alive. I love it that he meets good people along the way. I loved the feeling of up and down in the book, that there would be stopping places along the way where Alex and the reader could rest and recover for the next horror. Because it wasn’t far away.

I loved the character of Darla. She is one of the all time best female heroines in YA fiction. Alex meets her while she is on a bicycle which she has hooked up to a corn mill. She designed this contraption herself and she is not hungry. She may not have much to eat, but there’s plenty of corn for her and her mother. I loved Darla’s reaction when horror strikes close to home, and I loved that she chases after Alex, not because she loves him but because she and he connect in their strength. She wants purpose to put her skills to use.

I also love the ending. The first ending when Alex and Darla get to the FEMA camp, and they think everything will be all right—and isn’t. And the ending when they get to his uncle’s, and think that everything will be all right—and isn’t. This is the stuff great dystopians are made of. The level of research done on the fallout of a volcano like this seemed superb to me, a lay person. I loved the landscape of the escape. There’s no need to do massive worldbuilding until Alex gets out of the hot zone, but once we’re there, enough is hinted at that it feels that the author has done a lot of thinking about widespread consequences of this singular event. And to me, the more important notes of characters in an apocalypse were right on, too. I cared about this dystopia because I cared about Alex and Darla. A lot.

Friday Tri (from last week): Addicted to Exercise

My daughter Sage, 16, has recently become addicted to running. We ran a 1/2 marathon on Memorial Day together and she talked about how hard it was for her to taper. She just felt itchy, full of energy, and wanted to run every day, even though she knew she needed to rest up to get her goal time. She ended up making it by about 20 seconds, after I cracked the whip a lot the last 2 miles to help her along. Now she is hobbling around on a sore foot, but I suspect she will be up and running again tomorrow.

Some reasons she gave me for why she loves to run that really resonated with me:

1. Running has a measurable marker of improvement that other people do not control and that is not subjective—unlike, say writing or singing.

2. While there are obvious physical and genetic reasons that you may be better or worse at running, still improving at it is something that sheer work can achieve.

3. Running can get you into a zone where you don’t easily get distracted by other thoughts. This can feel both cleansing and healing. For a creative person, the idea that some other part of your mind will be used can be very attractive.

4. You are rarely bored by running.

5. Running releases endorphins and makes you just feel better.

6. While running, you feel tough, like you are conquering the world.

7. It’s nice to think about your body as DOING something rather than as looking good in a particular, rather artificial way.

Friday Tri: The Experience of Racing

A friend recently suggested the idea that we as humans need more experiences and fewer things. I tend to find myself collecting skills, rather than mere experiences. I don't try things perhaps as often as I should, simply because I am aware of the fact that once I start something, I tend to do it rather obsessively, until I become good at it, and then it is part of my collection of skills. I don't tend to do things once.

But triathlon, perhaps more than other things, is both a collection of skills and a collection of experiences. I suspect that one of the reasons I find racing so addictive is that it is is memorable. There are parts of every race that get blurred, sure. But training is far more blurred on a regular basis than is racing. Racing tends to stand out like a sharp light in my head. It stays with me. In many ways, I feel that some of my first races are just as clear in my mind as my last race. This is partly because I like unpacking old races in my head at night when I am trying to fall asleep. It is also because races are like being transported into another world. They are a kind of magic.

When I am racing, it is like I have entered another dimension in which time does not move in the same way. I can't say that time moves more slowly or more quickly there. Sometimes one, sometimes the other. But time feels different. It feels more like a substance and less like the air that I breathe. That is, it forces me to notice it more. Maybe this is because time is the stuff that matters most while racing. It is the way that we judge how well we have done, and so I pay a lot more attention to it than I would in ordinary life. Each second matters, and so I notice that I must not allow the seconds to dribble away. I must take hold of them and dole them out wisely. No, that isn't quite right. That makes it sound like I have control of time, and I'm aware that I don't at all. But it is like a creature and I have to learn its language and feed it somehow, to use it.

When a race is over and I cross the finish line, there is both a sense of elation and a sense of sadness for me. Elation that I've finished and that I feel good about what I've done. The sadness is there because the race is over and because I loved the race itself, the experience, not merely the accomplishment. I love what it feels like to be racing, the intensity and the lightness. I like being able to let go of the other parts of myself, the mother, the wife, the writer even. I am only the racer, a tighter and more animal version of myself, a version of myself that does not stand overhead and make judgments about good and bad, but only pushes more and more and lives now. Living now is something that does not happen easily for me or often, but it is good.

Writing Wednesday: Two Reviews of The Princess and the Hound

This review is up on amazon and really introduced me to the delights of reader reviews, one of the first really nasty ones (but by no means the last!). It comes with the tag "A dog of a book," which is clever, right:

I was expecting an original, subtle, and thought-provoking tale to unfold as I read the first quarter of this story. The writing felt solid. The characters full-breathed with promise of better to come. The conflict, as it had been developed to that point, original and subtle.

Then it just degenerated into a confused muddle. The subtlety became vagueness, and the vagueness was not dispelled when the author began telling me what to think at every step of the way. Chapter thirty five, in particular, was excruciating. It absolutely squelches with mushy dialogue and soppy reactions. I held out reading right to the novel's end only because of the promise in those early pages. I kept hoping that the author would regain her footing and prove that there was actually a point to all that aimless wandering.

Instead, I kept being told in the most blatantly contrived manner why the characters were doing what they were doing. They felt more like sock puppets than people. There were exchanges on nearly every page that, according to the author involved great pathos, but somehow I just couldn't buy it. In fact, the emotional pitch of most of the latter three-quarters of the story approached hysteria without making me feel anything.

Now the nice review:

"With this stage set, Utah resident Mette Ivie Harrison gives us a rich, elegant retelling of the old fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. Only this time, she turns the tale on its head, making the Beast the woman. (I’m not giving away anything that isn’t on the book’s cover.)

With a spare, deliberate use of language, Harrison explores the relationships between parents – both functional and dysfunctional – between nations, man and animal, and lovers. There is not a word wasted in this story. But this isn’t Spartan by any means. She just knows how to use language efficiently, making every word pull its own weight. (Think of how deliberately J. S. Bach used music and yet gave us such moving, powerful pieces like "Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring," or "Sheep May Safely Graze.")

The characters here are expertly defined – especially for a first novel – well-rounded people of good nature, who also make mistakes. Of course, there is an evil wizard as well, but he’s not just a cardboard cut-out.

The story reads easily, and it’s hard to put down. It also moves the reader. This is storytelling at its best and brightest. "
[link here: http://www.suindependent.com/article/...]

On regular days, I don't think of myself as either an elegant, sparse writer who reminds people of a musical genius like Bach nor as a soggy, muddled writer who hits readers over the head with my obvious points. On bad days, I suppose there are times when I think I am that bad writer. On good days, yeah, maybe I think I'm that good writer. I don't know where the truth lies for readers. I suspect it has nothing to do with me and my book and everything to do with reader expectations and experiences.

I am learning slowly not to categorize books I like as good books and books I dislike as bad books. It's hard not to, since all my years as a grad student were about praising the canon and dissing everything else. But the reality is that the judgment of my writing isn't my job, anyway. It just gets in the way of my writing when I think I'm either a great writer or a horrible writer. In order to get the actual work done, the best thing to think of is of myself as a worker. Just like I can get on a bike and put down x number of miles at a certain pace, I can sit down and write the words that tell my story. They may tell the story well or badly. But my job is to get them down first of all. Then my second job is to figure out which ones are the right ones and which ones aren't and try to figure out better ones if I can. If I can't, I do my best.

In the end, that's all I can do. My best. I can't write like someone else. I can't write with pressure on me about how great or horrible it is. It's just putting words to the page. Bricks and mortar. Stirring eggs up for an omelet. Putting one foot in front of another. There's no magic in the actual creating of the words, not really. I enjoy my work, but I don't believe in the cult of author genius. I believe I am good at what I do, but it is a skill like other skills. I happen to have this one and I use it when I need to. Results for different readers are guaranteed to be nothing other than varied.

TV Tuesday (and Movies): 13 going on 20 Versus 17 Again

Sunday night, our family sat down and watched these two movies back to back. I had seen them both before and liked them both before. But I was also a little disturbed by what I saw as gender differences in two movies which basically had the same Freak Friday-esque plot. I will admit that there was some difference, because the female character is going forward in time while the male character is in the same time, but in the body of his 17 year old self. I'm not sure that accounts for all of the problems.

13/Girl Hero
I think Jennifer Garner did a great job of making me believe she was actually a 13 year old in the body of a 30 year old. I thought her being confused and naive worked well. The part about the boyfriend in the apartment was funny, if a little uncomfortable. We all knew that Mark Ruffalo would end up getting the girl. That's not where the suspense was.

I didn't like that when the Jenni character finally has realized how much power she has in the adult world, she goes out shopping. And buys a ton of stuff. There is the typical movie scene where she looks at all her wonderful clothes and then, best of all, a whole row of shoes. I know that a lot of women are into fashion, and it makes sense for a fashion editor to care about that. But I wanted more from this character than that. Isn't there some other way than adult women prove they are grown up than buying clothes and putting on makeup?

I also disliked the female friend who turns out to be the bitch/enemy. Yes, Jenni lives in a world she has created for herself, where she is as bitchy as her friend is, at least the old version of herself. Still, it felt like such an easy plot device, the girlfriend who is the betrayer. I wish there were more movies where female friendships were portrayed positively. Not perfectly, but positively. I know, we live in a world in which women do actually compete with each other for jobs, but men do, too, and they don't seem to discover that all their friends are secretly back-stabbing them.

17/Boy Hero

When Mike messes up and gets kicked out of his family's world, he has a best friend to fall back on. I loved that this best friend was a nerd who had made good. I loved that Ned was rich and also had lots of Star Wars paraphernalia in his house. I loved that he was able to give his friend advice about the Spirit Guide and what was going on in his own magical world. There was no sense of this meta-story in 13 and the movie was better for it. More than that, I was envious that Mike had such a good friend as a male, when it did not seem that he had done much to deserve a friend like that.

It was interesting that there was an awful lot of having fun with the cougar/older woman with the younger man metaphor. I don't think this was accidental. The story kept veering toward it and then pretending it wasn't, that it was embarrassing. Not sure what the meaning here was, except that Zac Efron is hot and even an older woman must want him. This didn't happen in 13. Why? The 13 year old version of Jenni was uncomfortably awkward. Having her with an older man would have been even yuckier, I suppose. But it does say something about societal expectations of gender roles, yes?

I was also a little disappointed that Mike/Mark has to make his son into a mini-version of himself in order for him to be successful. Obviously, he needs some help not being bullied. But does he have to join the basketball team and be a star like his father was? Couldn't he be good at something else, something a little less stereotypically male?

And does the daughter have to fall for her father in some kind of weird Freudian twist? Does she have to be involved with such a creep? I loved that she decides for herself that she doesn't want to have sex with someone pressuring her to do so, but I wish she had been into something, I don't know, like motorcycle riding. Something crazy, but that shows her power. Instead of making female power always about which guy they get.

Monday Book Rec--Vodnik by Bryce Moore

I expected to like this book, since it was edited by a friend of mine who has great taste. I expected to find smart, ethnically diverse characters. I didn't expect how funny it was, nor how smart the relationships between the main characters (good and bad) were. I loved the interspersed quotes from the book on death. I loved the gradual unfolding of the mythology of the world. I loved how everything came together and made sense. I also loved how smart it was to have the main character an American who is going back to the old world. This was a great way to give the reader a way to see the old world from the beginning (a more typical way is to have the character from our world and time use a wardrobe or other magical device to go into the other world). What else can I say? The mysteries were clever. The details about the castle and the Roma were excellently done, not too much but enough to make me feel like I was there. This is Europe, a Europe I've both lived in and written about and the novel was able to make me feel like it was both the same Europe and a new Europe at the same time. A great book.