Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 76

Thursday Quotes: Stephanie Perkins Nola and the Boy Next Door

I was just talking to a friend about what I find romantic, and it's always the anticipation. The tiny movements. The first time your hand touches his. The first time you see him looking at you back. Not a lot of romance novels seem to get that, at least in a way that works for me. They seem to be about sex, but to me, sex isn't romance. Then today, I was reading this, and I thought, yeah! That's it. That's romance.

"I slide one hand behind my back. I feel him jerk away in surprise, but I find his hand, and I take it into mine. And I stroke the tender skin down the center of his palm. Just once.
He doesn't make a sound. But he is still, so still.
I let go, and suddenly, my hand is in his. He repeats the action back. One finger, slowly, down the center of my palm.
I cannot stay silent. I gasp."

Writing Wednesday: Book Proposals

I remember before I got published, how frustrated I was that most agents and editors only ever saw a couple of pages, a synopsis, and a query letter. I felt like if only they read the rest of my book, they would see how great it was. It wasn't fair. They weren't giving me a chance.

And then something happened, the year I got published. I reached a point where I didn't want to send around a full manuscript to everyone. It was too expensive for me (this was back in 1999, when everything was still on paper). So I sent out a serious proposal instead of a full manuscript, even to those who asked for a full to begin with. I figured they could still ask for a full later if they really wanted it.

I really focused on that proposal package. I tried to make it as true to the story as I possibly could. I didn't want to grab attention by pretending that a certain part of the story was more than it really was. The Monster In Me is a quiet book, about a girl's stay with a foster family after her mother is sent to rehab for drug abuse. It's a story about her relationships with the foster family and with her mother.

I looked carefully at the book and the first chapter in particular. Was that the best first chapter? Not, was it going to grab people immediately, but was the language in it the best it could be? I rewrote that first chapter again and again. I don't mean to overemphasize the importance of a first chapter. It isn't everything. But since I planned that it was going to be the only thing people saw, I wanted it to be the best it could be. I also wanted it to be true to the rest of the story. I wanted the voice to be true.

I admit, that book has a prologue. But I made it as short as possible, and I made sure that every word in the prologue was necessary.

I sat down to write a synopsis and I wrote the first draft really, really quickly. I didn't think about how good it needed to be then. I just thought about getting the plot down in some way that would make sense. Then I let it sit for a while, and went back to it more carefully. I didn't put nearly as much effort into the synopsis as I did the first chapter. I tried to remember that mostly, a synopsis shows that you're not going to end the novel with "and then everyone died" or worse, "and then she woke up from her dream." I tried not to sweat it. It needed to read clean. I think the synopsis was a couple pages long. That was it.

My query letter was a professional, business letter, explaining what the novel was (contemporary YA of 60,000 words) and in one paragraph, explaining who the main character was, what her conflict was, and what the setting was. I didn't go on and on. Just kept it simple. Then I wrote a couple of sentences about a handful of writing contests I had won in the last couple of years that I felt were pertinent. This only mattered to me to try to make sure that it looked like I had done a little more work than the average beginner. I didn't want to try to make it look like I was pretending to be a professional already. I was a first time author, no shame in that.

In the end, I think that book proposals make sense. There are a lot of publishers who can't take your book because it simply isn't going to fit on their list. It means nothing when they reject you. The others will look at the book seriously and a book proposal will tell them everything they need to know. It will tell them that you are a rational human being (not insane--you'd be surprised how many crazy people think they are writers). It will tell them that you have done some work at improving your craft. It will tell them the kind of story you are telling, and give them enough of a taste of your voice to see if it might be something that they would connect to. That's all it is supposed to do.

I was asked to send in a full manuscript three times. Once that happened, I ended up with an offer from a small publisher (Holiday House). A one in three chance is pretty good, in my view. I think a lot of writers make the mistake of believing that they want to grab attention in a query letter. You don't want to grab attention. You certainly don't want to pretend that your book is something it isn't. You don't want to pretend you are something other than you are. Don't go on and on about who likes your book or how good you think it is. Just offer it, say if you've published something else or have won a contest. That's all. Your pages will do the rest.

And don't take rejection personally. It just means that wasn't the right person and you need to find the right one. Agents and editors who ask for book proposals instead of fulls are smart, not annoying. Don't freak out about every word. But don't send in sloppy work, either. Be a professional in the way you treat your writing and you will soon be a professional in truth.

Gender Masquerades #3: Vincent in Gattaca

Gattaca is about two brothers, Vincent (the elder and genetically inferior) and Anton (the younger and genetically modified, superior) who compete with each other throughout childhood and then live very separate lives. Vincent has been told that he is likely to live only until age 30, that he has a heart defect, and that he is myopic and has a high probability of developing mental disorders. As children, Vincent and Anton have frequent swimming competitions in the ocean and which Anton always wins until late adolescence, when at last Vincent wins. Then he goes on to find a "valid" (Jerome), who will allow him to take his identity and become an astronaut.

There is an obvious masquerade going on here, in that Vincent is taking the place of Jerome, using his blood samples, his hair, his fingerprints in order to have the life that he wants and which he eventually proves that he deserves. But like the best science fiction and fantasy, this metaphor can't be taken literally. The real masquerade here is a different one. I think it should be read as a gender masquerade. Now, before people start accusing me, as my kids have started to do, that I see a gender masquerade everywhere, let me say that I think there are actually very few gender masquerades going on. Lots of fiction deals with gender in interesting ways without being a gender masquerade. But here, the actual masquerade is at least the beginning of the hint that there is a gender masquerade going on. You will have to decide if you think my argument is compelling enough that it ought to be read as a gender masquerade.

First of all, Vincent is a character who is deemed genetically inferior by the most advanced of science, and yet who proves that he is not inferior at all. In fact, by his hard work, his cleverness, and his willingness to disguise himself, he seems quite clearly superior to all the other astronauts who have gotten into the program without these steps. Vincent is the classic woman in a job who has to work twice as hard in order to get half the credit and pay. He has to disguise himself as what he is not, like a woman disguising herself in one way or another in the workplace as a man who can get things done. He can never reveal any weakness, any hint that he is not who he says he is.

Second, let's look more carefully into Vincent's supposed genetic defects. He has a "heart" condition. Metaphorically, this seems to hint that he feels more than others, and that this sympathy is deadly. This is another classic female character trait. Women are supposedly more sensitive to emotion, more likely to sympathize with others in difficulty, more nurturing, more "spiritual," even. Perhaps Vincent does, indeed, have a heart condition, but the real effects we see of this condition are the fact that he understands better the oppressed characters in the film. One of them is the woman, who is the other main character who has been deemed genetically inferior and would like to be an astronaut, Irene. But she has declined to take up the masquerade that Vincent has chosen, and therefore she seems doomed to remain on earth. (One note here--Vincent comes from Latin and means "he/she conquers." Irene means "peace.") My belief is that if women are more sympathetic, more spiritual, or more emotional than men it is because they are trained from birth to read body language because it is their only way of expressing their own feelings, since they are not allowed to do so openly as men are.

The other genetic defects that Vincent has are a tendency toward mental instability and his myopia. The word "hysteria" is linked to the female sex organs, and in previous centuries, scientists have assumed that women are more inherently inclined to mental problems because their minds are smaller and therefore weaker. This has no real basis in scientific fact, but it is easy to see why women might be more prone to mental problems since mental problems are often triggered by trauma and because of their lack of power, they experience trauma more often and more severely and without as much ability to react against it or avoid it. It is also a fairly common way of dismissing a woman's complaints to say that she is simply "mental," or "crazy."

As for Vincent's myopia, this short-sightedness literally is what makes him figuratively more focused on his own needs rather than on the needs of his society. He does not put himself second and society first. He puts himself first, and he has to do so in order to achieve his dreams. He is selfish, which is often thrown at women who refuse to do what society tells them to do, and take up the traditional female role. Women who wear glasses and then take them off are also a trope of Cinderella movies, in which women give up their metaphorical intelligence in order to take power in a more traditional female way, through beauty. Vincent reverses this by showing that without his glasses he is utterly powerless, but he remains fearless and continues his masquerade.

One of the most interesting moments in the film comes when Jerome reveals that he did not have a car accident, but that he tried to commit suicide. An Olympic swimmer, it turns out that he cannot live with the pressure of his genetic superiority. In the end, he kills himself while Vincent goes into space to return to the stars, which are his home. Jerome dies because of a kind of hyper masculinity which does not allow for any weakness. He cannot live his own life any longer, once he is in a wheelchair. There is no place for those men who reject their own superiority. Again, I think this shows that it is not just women who are oppressed by our society's strict rules of gender identity.

The final replay of the swimming race between Vincent and Anton is a tricky read. I'm never sure as I watch it if Vincent ends up needing to be rescued by Anton or the reverse. I think in the end that ambiguity is the point. Who will need to be saved? We don't know. We can't know. We all will need to be rescued from the gender race.

Friday Tri: Why People Fail

So last week, I talked about my belief that you can get what you want, that there isn't any magic in it, that other people don't have some special power or talent that you don't have. But people often fail to get what they want, and I thought it would be useful to talk about why. I was going to make up a big long list, but in the end, it only came down to variations of one thing: Ignorance. If you don't understand the process, you are far more likely to give up before you've had a chance to see the real effects of the long-term changes in your life. This is part of the reason (maybe the only reason) why people are encouraged to get mentors. A trainer is a workout mentor, someone who keeps giving you the right messages. Sometimes it's great to have a writing mentor or a mentor in your job situation.

OK, but I still have to make a list about this. What are the common beliefs that people have that are wrong that make it impossible for them to actually achieve the goals they want in terms of exercise and health?

1. Losing weight (for women) is the only way to measure being healthier. Also correlated: women should be as small as they can be without dying.
2. Building big muscles (for men) is the only way to measure being healthier.
3. If I don't lose x number of pounds the first week, I must be doing something wrong.
4. If I'm not hungry, I must be doing something wrong.
5. Working out can't be fun. It has to be drudgery, so I will read a book while I do it.
6. Cardio is the only way to lose weight.
7. Never drink anything but water while working out, because that will make you lose less weight.
8. If you want a flat stomach, you should do lots of crunches/situps.
9. Girls shouldn't do weight lifting because they will end up looking like men.
10. The more I work out, the better.
11. Running every day is the way to be healthier.
12. I don't have to plan out my workouts. I just have to do them.
13. I don't need to reward myself. A better body will be my reward.
14. I should weigh myself every day and if I gain weight, that means I need to cut back on food.
15. What works for someone else will work for me.
16. If I eat fewer calories, then I will lose weight.
17. I should push myself until I can't go any farther every day.
18. I should be in pain all of the time, every day, or I'm not working out hard enough.
19. I shouldn't eat carbs (I hate this one) or they will make me fat.
20. I have to eat salad every day for lunch and nothing else.

I can't tell you how many times I have had women come up to me and say, "Well, I tried exercising and I only lost two pounds, so I stopped doing it." Seriously? That is just so wrong-headed. If you want to be healthier, then you need to get a scale that measures your body composition, not just your weight. Then you can watch as you exercise to see that you are losing fat and gaining muscle. If you have to have some objective way to measure that. Or you can just measure that you are more capable of running, that you feel better, and that your clothes fit you differently. You can also measure things like your blood pressure or your cholesterol.

Mostly, I wish people would take the long-term view. If you want to publish a novel, you aren't going to expect to be able to do it in a week or a month. It's going to take a long time. There will be times when you need to stop working on the novel and think. You may need days off with your workout schedule. You need to vary your routines, partly for sanity, but also partly because it's good for your body. And you need to keep at it. You will see the results eventually. And by results, I mean you will feel better and be more capable. If you want an even better body, you are going to have to work out more intensely, so you burn more calories.

Thursday Quotes: Neil Gaiman's Dream Country

I believe that writer's block has nothing to do with writers not having ideas, and everything to do with fear blocking those ideas. Sometimes the fix is external, figuring how to change your life so that you can deal with the fear. Sometimes it's internal, figuring out for the first time (or the eightieth) how to get past the voices in your head that tell you you can't write. So when I read this, I felt it really resonated:

"I haven't written a word in a year—nothing. I haven't thrown away! Do you know what that's like? When it's just you and a blank sheet of paper? When you can't think of a single thing worth saying, a single character that people could believe in, a single story that hasn't been told a thousand times before."

Neil Gaiman "Calliope"

It's not that this character isn't writing anything. It's that he's throwing everything that he writes away as not good enough. This is what we do when we have had a little taste of success. We begin to expect ourselves to be able to write something brilliant on a first draft and it just doesn't work that way. We want magic to take away the fear, and even wanting that is a dangerous thing.

Writing Wednesday: Authenticity

In the years I was depressed not so long ago, I remember talking to my therapist about what it felt to have interaction with other people. I felt as if they were all robots, bumping into my robot shape, and trying to figure out how to get me to "function properly." That is, they were looking for a certain basic response to a question--will you do this for me? And I either did it or didn't do it, and was thus either functioning correctly for them or not. It seemed to me that all human interaction ended up being about whether or not I would do something or react in a certain way to someone else. They were distressed when I didn't, happy when I did.

It took a long time for me to figure out how to have more real interactions with other people, but one of the things I learned was that if I didn't want to feel like a robot, I had to stop acting in ways that did not feel authentic to me. It may sound ridiculous, but I actually still sometimes ask myself simple questions like, do I feel sad now? Do I need to cry? Do I feel happy? Do I need to celebrate? Do I feel stressed? Or frustrated? Or angry? Because I spent years in childhood and more years when I was depressed ruthlessly suppressing my emotions and making it truly difficult to tell even from the inside what I was feeling. My husband still claims it is extremely difficult to tell what I am feeling and my kids say that there are only two emotions for me--happy and mad. But I stopped caring so much about whether they can tell what I feel and started thinking about what I am feeling for myself and expressing those feelings in some way that matters to me.

A strange thing happened as a result. When I was having a conversation with a friend recently, we were talking about the common experience of feeling like an imposter. I certainly felt like an imposter in graduate school, and after that, as a writer, as well. But I haven't felt like an imposter for a few years since I started working on figuring out what my feelings were. One of the things I made myself do was to refuse to do what other people wanted me to do, and to express verbally what I felt even at times when it was uncomfortable for me.

For example, I spent some time as an atheist and am still not so sure what I think about God. Yet I have a family and married with certain obligations religiously that meant that I felt obligated to continue to attend church and participate. It was excruciating for me to sit in church each week, fulfilling jobs and never speaking the truth about what I felt. I spoke in church, taught lessons, and it was an act. Or at least, it was not fully authentic. As part of my need to stop feeling robotic around robots, I went and spoke to our pastor and explained to him that I wasn't believing anything at the moment. I also began telling other people in my life about the problem to varying degrees. The more I was able to speak the truth, the less often I ended up fleeing church meetings in tears. Now, I try to remind myself that there are probably others who think like I do, and that speaking out is an important part of finding those others, getting a real community within the church again, and showing myself as I truly am. It isn't easy, and this is probably the last place where I still struggle with imposter syndrome in my life.

In the end, imposter syndrome is about truly being an imposter. The solution is, I think, to be more authentic in everyday life, even if it is scary. I am not saying we have to tell everyone everything, but we need to stop choosing to wear masks simply because it is more convenient to do so. This is especially vital to do as a writer. We cannot write well, we cannot write what is uniquely ours to write, unless we know who we are and are willing to show who we are with our words. Yes, it is scary to do this. Yes, it may cost us things that we are reluctant to give up. But if we refuse to make this choice, we will feel like imposters because we will be imposters.

I was playing a party game with some friends recently where some people are secretly mafia and some people are secretly detectives. I hated the game because I hated pretending myself and I really don't enjoy trying to figure out if other people are pretending. I tend to be pretty up front and blunt (though that doesn't always mean I have been authentic). Anyway, I thought about whether or not actors could be authentic, if they spent all their working time pretending to be someone else. And it occurred to me that in some ways, putting on a mask helps us figure out where the lines are between masks and reality. I think for authors, there can be something of the same discovery. Writing fiction is a way for us to draw a line between real and fake. But the more we do so, perhaps, the more we figure out the ways in which we can make the fake real by infusing it with our real self. This is the gift of acting, and of writing. That when we are fake, we can also be the most real. Yes?

Gender Masquerade #2: George in Being Human (UK)

Some of you are already anticipating the posts I have planned for the future, and I will get to Bones and The Fringe, along with some romantic comedies. But today it's George from Being Human. I don't know how many US viewers have seen the series, and I have to warn you, there will be spoilers in my discussion here, so sorry if you're planning to see it or in the middle of it.

I was already thinking about George as a cipher for womanhood in the early episodes of this series. His scream is one of the first reasons for it. He screams like a girl, high-pitched, with no control, and because he is in pain. He isn't stoic about the pain of transforming into a werewolf. He is terrified.

I thought at first that the game being played here was that George was the metaphorical gay partner of Mitchell. There are a bunch of wink-wink jokes about them being roommates when Annie isn't visible. George is more than a little OCD, obsessed with cleanliness (except when a werewolf) and with details. He is a hopeless geek when it comes to dressing, going on dates with girls, and generally, making a place for himself in the male world. But I think, like Miles Vorkosigan with his physical handicap, he isn't meant to be read as gay. He's meant to be read as female.

He is constantly being rescued by the obviously masculine character of Mitchell. In fact, that is how they meet. Although he is supernatural, he is physically weak, except when he is a werewolf, and that is only one day a month. Otherwise, he is completely helpless. He doesn't seem to have any advantages of being a werewolf, only the disadvantages. Unlike Mitchell, who gets eternal life and eternal strength with his vampire qualities, what does George get? Not much.

George's physical vulnerability is displayed clearly in those constant shots of him naked, with a hand over his penis. There is nothing sexual about that. It is painful to see, isn't it? But this is also a visual clue about him as a female. He covers his penis to signify that he doesn't have the power of it, like a woman. He is without male parts when he is human and not werewolf.

He calls being a werewolf "the curse." Ever heard that phrase used before? That was what my mother's generation called menstruation. I have thought for a long time that while vampire is the metaphor for male testosterone, werewolf is the paranormal metaphor for femininity. Once a month, we are forced away form our civilized faces and we become the beast within. We snarl, snap, hurt those around us. Sometimes we retreat and tell everyone to go away-to protect them. We build walls around ourselves to keep the monthly insanity to us. We drug ourselves, if we can, to prevent it from coming to us.

And George gives this curse to whom? To Nina. There are maybe a couple of scenes between George and Nina that are shown sexually, but most of their relationship is more about mothering. George is literally Nina's mother in the curse of being a werewolf. He is devastated by this, and weeps when he realizes he has made her like himself. He says he never wanted to give the curse to her, and I thought how in that moment, I remembered how it felt when each of my daughters began menstruating and how I hated that they were cursed with the same thing I had been cursed with. I had given it to them, and on the one hand, I love that we share this thing, on the other hand, I feel horribly guilty that they have to face the same problems of womanhood that I do.

There is clear talk in the some of the episodes around this one about mirrors and mirroring. George tells Mitchell that he can't be seen in a mirror and that this is part of what takes his humanity away from him. (Think about mirrors and how important they are to women and how little import they have to the stereotypical male.) George says that Mitchell is drawing humans to him to use them as mirrors, so that he can see himself. Well, George is doing the same thing with Nina. She is his mirror image. Less his mate than h
is daughter.
The most obvious clue that George is meant to be a woman is when in the final episodes of the third season, we find out his name is "George Sand." Who is George Sand? A woman who masqueraded as a man to write literature in France. George Sand is one of the most famous literary masquerades of all time, and to use her name was no coincidence. I was jumping up and down when I saw this, so excited that I had anticipated George's masquerade correctly.

The end of the third series shows George staking Mitchell to save him, and this is one of the moments that I cheered. At last, George seems to have taken power for himself. On the other hand, this seems to automatically make George more masculine and less a symbol of femininity. Or maybe that is only what my assumptions do to him.

One other note on the series--which is so brilliant in terms of gender relations that it can't stop with just George--is Annie. She begins the series as a ghost who can't be seen by anyone but other supernaturals. And what happens with her story arc? It turns out that she can't actually die until she discovers that her fiance murdered her and she has a chance to face him and make him see her. I love that the metaphor for womanhood here is someone who is actually invisible, since women are constantly being given the message by media that being smaller, thinner, and talking more quietly, being more dainty, is better than making their presence known as men do. I love that Annie learns what has happened to her, and then refuses to go through the door. I love that she becomes more substantial, goes out and gets a job and starts to finally live the life that her fiance tried to deny her. I love that she tries to save her fiance's new girlfriend by telling her the truth.

I don't love so much that she falls in love with a vampire and ends up unable to make love to him in any substantial way. Or that she has to be rescued from Purgatory by Mitchell. Or that she ends up running a sort of matchmaking business for old lovers. But perhaps the metaphor of being a ghost takes over. Not sure. I'd love to hear other thoughts on any of these three characters or any of the others, really. I think the series is brilliant in other ways, including the way that minor characters are so real that they never just fade away. They keep coming back in another episode, because they are too rich to leave alone.

Monday Book Recs--James, Dobson, Kirby

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

Yeah, so I love Pride and Prejudice and this was an easy sale. It did a lot of the things I wanted, like do a passable Jane Austen voice so that I could almost imagine this is what Jane Austen would write, if she did murder mysteries. It also brought Wickham, Elizabeth, and Darcy back together in tense circumstances. Wickham was not quite a villain, but never the hero, either. I don't want to ruin what happens, but it was a fun read. Not a romp, really, because everything goes at a very staid, Austenesque pace. What it didn't have was any of the romance I love with Jane Austen. It had some fun ties to other Austen books, and the mystery itself worked well. I enjoyed going back to Pemberley. If you are a diehard Austenhard, you probably will, too.

Scribe by Ben Dobson

This is, as far as I can tell, a self-published book on Kindle. I can't tell you the last time I read all the way through a self-published book. I'm pretty sure I never have, unless it was because I felt an obligation to a friend to do so. But this was no obligatory read. I really loved this book. It had a first person narration, which is always a draw to me, and one of the reasons I tend to prefer YA. It's also a book that is contained in one volume, another draw. And it isn't tedious in digressions, making it a thousand pages long. The "Scriber" of the title is Dennon Lark, a flawed hero who doesn't know his own worth. He brings death to all around him, and he hates himself for it in the way that all heroes should. But my favorite part of the book is probably Bryndine and her band of women warriors. These are women who for various reasons no longer have a normal female place in the world, some abused, some simply misfit. But they come together for a cause and under Bryndine as their leader. She is physically large, nearly 8 feet tall, but also large in heart. She protects her women fiercely and even her kingdom, though it has rejected her. There are some sweet romance moments, but it isn't a romance. It's an epic with a lot of the updated kinds of notes that I need to love epic.

Icefall by Matthew Kirby

I read and love The Clockwork Three in 2010 when it came out. Icefall is similar in some ways. It feels like a fantasy, but doesn't actually have any magical elements except perhaps some vague legendary hints. On the other hand, instead of The Clockwork Three, this one has a single narrator, Solveig, who is telling her own story as she learns how to become a storyteller. Now, normally I am annoyed by movies about filmmakers and novels about writers. But this story really worked for me. I loved Solveig's journey from undervalued daughter to heroine. I also loved the deeper threads of meaning about what storytellers do and who they are. Liars, yes, performers, yes. Twisters of the truth depending on who is listening, that, too. But the act of storytelling as heroic is dealt with in a multi-layered way that I am still thinking about as a storyteller myself. Kids will love it, too, with plenty of action, suspense, a forbidden romance, the Nordic setting in winter, and the happy ending.

Friday Tri: I Would Do Anything to Look Like You

We all have our vanities. I do not care one little peanut about wrinkles on my face or gray hair. I don't care about how my hair looks. I wash it and comb it and that's about it. I sometimes wear nice-ish clothes if I feel like it and they are also comfortable. Don't even get me started on the subject of shoes. But I suppose I do have certain vanities. I am a little vain about my stomach. I wish it were flatter. I am really vain about how many pushups I can do, how long I can stand without assistance on an exercise ball, and my split times at triathlon. My kids are all vain about their own things. 17 is vain about getting into MIT. 16 is vain about her singing voice. 14 is vain about his Christmas ham.

The other day, a woman stopped me at the swimming pool in the middle of a set by pulling on my feet. This is usually the signal that one is being passed. It does not happen to me very often. Actually, I can't remember the last time it happened to me. But there was a guy next to me swimming a little faster, so I thought it might be him and stopped to find this woman who wanted to know why I wore those "things" on my hands and on my feet. I told her they were called paddles and fins (or flippers) and that I bought them on line. They help me keep my body position high and they increase resistance to build up my muscles. Some days I use them more than others. I try not to become dependent on them.

Then the woman asked how many days a week I swim. I told her twice a week, that I swan about a half hour to an hour, which meant 30-70 laps. She was just astonished that I could swim so well and then she asked how old I was. I told her I was 41 and she was just more agog. In a way, this was fun, so I encouraged her to ask a few more questions. She asked if my husband was in super good shape, too. I told her he was in pretty darn good shape and that he is doing an Ironman this May. So she asked if we worked out together a lot, but I admitted that I am usually too impatient to bike with him or even run with him. We can swim together and stay the same pace, but with kids, that doesn't happen often. And so she found out I had 5 kids, too.

At the end of the conversation, she said, "I would do anything to look like you." Which is flattering, really. But also really confusing to me. It took me 8 years since the first time I worked with a trainer to do what I can do. I probably looked pretty good even after that first summer with a trainer. How do you do it? You work out every day. But you also workout smart. That means getting a training plan from someone who knows what they are doing and will help you make sure you don't get injured. If you get injured, you don't just give up. You find something else you can do to keep in shape. You sign up for races and you go out and do them, not because you are going to have any chance of winning, but because you want to challenge yourself. You spend time reading about training. There's a lot of good information on line. You don't give yourself excuses to not do your workout daily. Take Christmas off. Maybe.

It takes time and commitment, yes. But it doesn't take miracles. I am annoyed when people assume that I have always been an athlete. I haven't been. I started doing this eight years ago. I wasn't an athlete in high school. I didn't lift weights ever. If you want to look like me, all you have to do is start where I started and move up from there. It isn't mysterious. It isn't about talent. I am relatively healthy, although I struggle with sinus infections all winter long, migraines, and skin problems in winter. I also had a terrible back and bad knees before I started exercising. Some of these problems have gone away. Some are still there.

When I came home and told my kids about this conversation, they nodded and agreed with me. (And with 4 teenagers in the house, that is a pretty rare thing and I celebrate it). They all remember the summer about 6 years ago when I made them all come with me to the track and run laps three or four times a week. They all hated running the mile. In fact, they could none of them run a full mile without stopping. And I thought that was just plain sad, although it had been true of me most of my life, as well. I was determined to teach them the simple rules of learning how to run a mile, and I gave them some hefty prizes (up to $100 cash) if they could run a mile in under 7 minutes. And the kids who wanted to, I've given training plans to complete triathlons. Easy training plans that anyone can complete, three or four days a week, almost entirely painless workouts that slowly ramp them up. Their friends are so impressed they can do a full Olympic triathlon, but they know there's no magic in it. It's just following a plan.

It is like people who say to me that they would "do anything" to be able to play the piano. Well, guess what? No one is stopping you. If you are missing fingers, you will have difficulty. But other than that, it is only a matter of time commitment. Yes, there are plenty of people who work too many hours to devote time to playing the piano or even to the kind of athletic lifestyle I have. I understand that. But it is largely a choice. If you want something, why do you think you can't have it in the same way that I have gotten it? It isn't just piano and exercise. It is everything in life. There are a lot of things I don't know how to do. But I believe absolutely that I could figure out how to do anything. I might not love it. I might not be an expert at it. But I could do it. You just have to find the steps that take you there. A book probably has them laid out for you. Find it and read it and do it.

The people who are doing what you want to do? They started in exactly the same place that you are starting in right now. There is nothing they have that you can't get. I can't guarantee that you will have all the breaks, all the success that they do. But you can figure out how to do it. You can demystify it. And I daresay that after some 10,000 hours, you will discover that you have a few things to tell the very people you once looked up to as so far above you.

Writing Wednesday: It's the End of the World as I Know It--and I Feel Fine

Years ago, I read Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold when it first came out, one of the few hardcovers I allowed myself to buy at a time when I was desperately struggling financially. I love almost everything by Bujold, but this book holds a special place in my heart because it was about a character who was giving up everything he thought he ever wanted, hit rock bottom in all conceivable ways, and discovered that he finally had the freedom to get what it turned out he had grown up to want in the meantime.

When I read it, I had just been nudged out of an adjunct position at my local university and had been in a lot of emotional pain at this rejection. At the same time, I was able to keep a clear enough head to realize that I was at last being given the chance to pursue my writing full-time, if I had the courage to do it. I had been kicked in the teeth, and I could have chosen to try to prove myself to these people by getting a job teaching German Literature elsewhere. There were several other local universities around who would probably have been glad to have a Princeton graduate there. But I didn't do that because I finally saw that I had been using teaching about other people's writing as a distraction from doing the courageous thing of writing my own literature.

It was time for courage, and I threw myself at my own career with everything I had in me. This was not an inconsiderable amount of energy. I wrote 4-5 books a year for the next five years until I finally had a book accepted for publication. And then began a long, long time figuring out what publishers wanted to publish. I did not intend for this to have an effect of my writing. It is hard for me to put a finger on precisely what the difference was. It may not have changed what I wrote, but it may have. It certainly changed how I felt about writing. I was anxious a lot and tended to have to make elaborate rules about not talking about my books or promising myself this wasn't the "real" book.

Then this year, a whole series of books was cancelled by Harper. And another contract was cancelled. And I was really upset for a while. I couldn't talk about it in person to friends, to my family, to my agent or editor. But the strangest thing happened. I was suddenly filled with ideas of books I wanted to write. Though it was the middle of the Holiday season, I ended up writing an entire novel in a few hours a day. It is a novel that will never sell and I keep calling it the unsellable novel. I could probably come up with a tagline that would make it less unsellable, but there is a delicious freedom about the idea that it won't sell, that I wrote it purely because I wanted to write it. And then I started to work on another novel, which had already been rejected in idea form by agent and editor alike and I didn't care. I like it. So I am writing it.

What happened is that what seems to be the worst possible thing in the world was not the worst possible thing. I mean, of course, it is terrible financially and I am extremely lucky in that we will survive perfectly well (minus MIT tuition costs) without my writing income this year and probably in foreseeable years, too. I am married to someone who supports my writing, but doesn't care if it makes money. He wants me to be happy, and to be an interesting person who finds good things to do in the world. I have a modest lifestyle that I have no interest in increasing. I don't want a bigger house. I am happy with junky old cars. I like doing my own laundry.

And I can write whatever the hell I want. I used to take everything I wrote to a critique group to ask if I was doing it right. That was a useful thing, I admit. But I don't really care about that anymore. I don't want to do it right. I just want to do it the way I want to do it. I like to get feedback from people who read my books and enjoy them. Not so much people who don't enjoy them. Mostly, I am back to writing because writing brings me pleasure. I spent some time this year wondering if I should do something else with my life. Maybe I should, but the truth is, I can't stop writing. I am a writer. I write because I have stories and they must out. They come to me and I find satisfaction in writing them down as best I can. I love words and I love characters and twisty plots and secrets and magic. I write what I love to write--again.

The anxiety is, I'm sure, not gone forever. But it has been a blessed relief for it to be gone for now, and to accept that whatever happens next, it will be what I want it to be because my books will be my books again. So like Miles, who loses a whole identity in Captain Naismith, I have discovered that while I was busy being "author Mette Ivie Harrison," I may have actually become someone else who wants someone else. Not a completely different person, mind you, but a more grown up one. And there will be other jobs waiting out there for me that are so perfect for me, so wonderful and exciting, that I could not have conceived of them before. And even if they don't come, it doesn't matter. Because I have what I have done, and what I have become. Me.