Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 90

butt kicking and being kicked

I did a neighborhood 5k this weekend with my kids. We made them all do it, though 3 walked rather slowly. It was a bit of a competition between different parts of the neighborhood, but our part for whatever reason has all the best runners in it. I wonder sometimes if that is the reason that I bought the house I bought or if, looking at it from the other direction, I became more obsessed with exercise because I bought this house and there were so many runners around me. Sadly, many of the best runners in our part had decided to run with their kids, since it was a low key race. I don't know what they were thinking. This was a competition and we needed all our best people to cross the finish line ahead of anyone else. I talked one of my friends into running "with" me, when I told her I planned to run about 23:00.

The race started and we ran, oh, maybe 4 minutes together. During which time, she checked her watch about five times, no doubt because I was slowing her down. Then she took off and beat me by a couple of minutes. And she wasn't really in her best form because she'd just done some intervals a couple of days before. After the race, she came up to me and explained that there were some guys she felt "needed" to be schooled and so she chicked them. Hey, I was all for it. I chicked a few guys, back where I was, too. And we ended up with the "golden Adidas" shoe to show off next year.

My friend is a runner. She went to Boston this year with her husband and met Kara Goucher. She runs every day. She runs multiple times a day. She doesn't work out. She runs. When she gets injured and can't run, guess what she does? She runs anyway. Because she is a runner and that is what runners do. At one point we ran together, years ago when she was slower and I was about the same as I am now. We had lots of interesting conversations. She told me about a news story in which a woman was described as a "jogger" who had been kidnapped while out one morning. She turned to her husband and told him that if she was ever kidnapped while out one morning, would he please refer to her for news events as a "runner" and not a "jogger."

So this morning, we went swimming together. She wants to learn to swim better. Why? Because she thinks it will improve her running. And maybe also just because she is cool and is still willing to try new things, even ones that are scary and that she doesn't do very well. Obviously, this is a project that I would like to encourage everyone to take up. So I was at the pool with her, gave her what tips I could, and am still thinking how to help her. She swims as you might imagine a runner swimming, attacking the water to "push" past it. It's hard when you're used to running to realize that swimming is about glide and technique and sometimes harder is not better. Also, the whole problem of breathing doesn't exist while running. Yeah, you can feel out of breath. But you don't worry you are going to drown. Air is everywhere running. You don't have to make a special motion for it.

In a way, I suppose it was nice to have a chance to beat her at something, since she so regularly beats me at any running matchup. I'm not an Olympic swimmer, despite what some fisherman suggested to my kids at the reservoir last night. But I am comfortable in the water and I am pretty good at all three disciplines of triathlon. Sort of an all around. And of course, it depends on who you are comparing me to. There is something to be said for finding races that you can win, and then finding a few more races where you know you will lose. You need a little of both.

the mid-life crisis

So, I've spent some time analyzing why it is that it feels like I have become worse rather than better. And it struck me that this is a mid-life crisis.

When I was in my twenties, I had figured out what I was good at. I threw myself into academics, into becoming a parent, into writing. Those were things that I had always wanted, and in my twenties, I finally had the skills and the courage to go ahead and do them. I spent fifteen years becoming more and more proficient at all those things I had always been good at, but perhaps not an expert in. I suspect most people in their twenties and thirties focus all their time and energy on getting better at their proficiencies. I think it's a great time of life. I enjoyed it, anyway. Maybe I was more blind to my own flaws than most. No, not blind to them. I just decided I didn't care about them, and I was plenty busy working on making my good points even better.

And then things changed. For me, it was about 35, but it seems to hit anywhere around 40. I suddenly realized that all that time I had spent making myself better and better at the things I was already good at had done nothing at all for the things I had been bad at. I was still bad at them. In fact, I was probably worse at them. All of them.

It's not a pleasant realization. I could go on being bad at them. Well, mostly there's no choice, is there? Why? Because it's almost impossible to figure out how to become good at something you're really wretched at. It's a lot easier to become better at something you're already good at because you've got a beginning place. That is probably why I went back to sport.

But it turns out that the list of things I am bad at is very long. And I'm starting to realize that there is limited time left. I could try to become better at all the things I am bad at, which would be impossible. I could get even better at the things I am good at. Or I could find some compromise. But the things that I am bad at bother me more now than they did before. Why? I think because I have time to look at them at last rather clearly, and it turns out they are not as insignificant as I thought they were, or wished they were, anyway.

trying too hard

When I was in high school, I learned that I was good at academics and I was bad at sports. I worked hard at school, but I didn't spend every minute of the day at it. I never felt like I was in over my head. I did a couple of hours of homework at night, rarely had homework on the weekends, and I got loads of scholarships. On the other hand, I killed myself swimming 5 hours a day and showed almost no improvement after six months and didn't make any of the goals I had set for myself. Clearly, my hard work didn't matter in one area and it did in another.

Conclusion: I was simply naturally bad at sports. But obviously, that turned out not to be true, in hindsight. It turned out that trying hard wasn't the only thing that matters to success.

When I look back at high school, I can see clearly now what I did wrong when it came to swimming. I didn't have a plan. I didn't understand anything about the importance of recovery. I didn't think about how important it was to workout year round. And the advice I got seemed to me to translate into trying harder. Trying harder, as it turns out, is not really great advice for people who are already trying hard and failing. I suppose it's not always easy to figure out if someone actually is trying hard. But if you are trying hard and failing, it might be worthwhile to think about trying something differently. And possibly even trying it less hard.

This translates into writing in a very specific way. I have been seeing more and more writers at conferences and critiques who listen to me and to others give feedback, then are extremely frustrated because it turns out we are telling them to do the opposite thing that their writing group has told them or the last workshop or last editor they talked to. It feels to them like all their willingness to work hard and listen and take feedback is actually making them farther and farther from the goal than doing nothing would have done. And guess what? In a way, they are right.

If you have workshopped a manuscript already, I don't think you should bring it to another workshop. I'm not saying you have to give up on it, but you need some perspective. And I'm talking about possibly years of perspective. It will eventually come clear to you what is wrong and probably how to fix it. But you need to do something fresh to get to that perspective. You need to read and you need to stop getting feedback on that manuscript. You need some recovery.

It may feel like that makes no sense, that you should just keep working on that manuscript harder in order to whip it into shape, but I haven't seen that happen. Ever. What I see happening is writers giving up writing entirely and never coming back to it because they are so frustrated. Or alternatively, I see people letting it go and then working on another manuscript that they will be able to take farther.

Over-working a manuscript is as likely as over-working pie crust. You can feel it when you read it. The joy is missing. There are strange mistakes, missing details that would help everything make sense. Characters jump around, fervently doing things to show that they are active, not passive, without the interiority that would make us care about them. And nothing matters, somehow. I can describe it, but it's hard to point out a sentence on the page that is the root of this problem. It's in the writer rather than the manuscript.

So take a vacation from writing. Read some books. Watch the TV shows that you've been meaning to get to. Laugh. When I signed up with a coach to do my first Ironman, about 3 months before the race, the first thing he told me to do was take a half week off. He wouldn't let me do anything. I went a little stir crazy, and ended up taking time to learn some things like changing a tire to help me deal with other anxieties about the race. I had been pushing myself too hard for too long. And he needed me to be able to start fresh. Let me tell you, he pushed me plenty hard. And I pushed myself. But when it was the right time, and when I was recovered enough to go into it optimistically.

If you want to throw your manuscript away, if you are ready to give up on your dream, your mind and body are telling you something important. You don't need to work harder. You need to work smarter. After you've rested and relaxed and remembered what it is that writing is about, anyway. And guess what that is? Fun.

#8 TV female character--Sharona/Natalie from Monk

I loved Sharona. I loved her accent and her style, her impatience with Monk and her compassion for him at times. I loved that she had her own problems that Monk could not understand, though the audience certainly did. I loved how the writers consistently made her actions important to the resolution of the mystery plot. She wasn't the "great" detective that Adrian Monk was, but she mattered. I also loved the insistence that she was not and never would be a romantic partner to Monk. Other shows do that sort of plot terrifically well (I love Bones, for instance), but Monk was not that kind of show. It did its own thing and it did it superbly well.

I was very sad when Sharona left the show and Natalie stepped into her shoes. As sad as Monk was, I think. (I love how the show seemed so aware of its viewers and would write them into the story, like when they changed the theme song.) It wasn't anything Natalie did wrong, but she just wasn't Sharona. She didn't talk like Sharona. She was too nice to Monk. She seemed like she had no backbone. Her backstory with her husband dead was not as compelling to me in some way. She seemed to need time to grow into her part.

It wasn't until the final season that I realized that Sharona had only been in the show for two years. The other six years had all been Natalie. And yes, she did grow into the part. The writers were smart enough to give the audience time to like her, to watch her gradually see Monk's problems and to work around them. I loved how Julie became part of the show at times. I liked that Natalie became smarter and stronger. We got to see her whole developmental arc, whereas Sharona had been more of a static character like Monk himself in many ways. And when I look back at the show, I think more of Natalie than I do Sharona.

Natalie is a single mom. I think there are very few shows where moms are more than "MOM," like in the Brady Bunch. You know what I mean. Moms with super saccharine fix it all solutions to their kids problems, but with no character of their own apart from their mom-ness. I have been known to complain that America doesn't seem ready to see a kick-ass mom as the main character in a detective series, but Natalie comes closest to that. I think it's important for girls to see mom characters who don't have motherhood take over their entire lives. Mothering is important and it does seem to swallow us up, but we fight against it. It is an important fight, because motherhood will eventually recede and what will remain after that?

Natalie has money problems. I love real world touches in bigger than life stories. Monk is a bigger than life character and he doesn't care about money in the least. But it's great to have the reminder in Natalie (or Sharona) that these sorts of things matter to the rest of us who aren't super heroes. I love that Natalie is always the driver, not Monk. It's not because I long to drive more (I don't). But I hate the typical assumption that the man is always the driver. It's more than just about driving the car, you know? It's a metaphor, and it's one that needs to be given up. (Think of the arguing about driving that Brennan and Booth go through--but he still drives, even in England). I like that Natalie is one of the least made-up female characters on TV. And yet she dresses up and is very feminine at the same time.

What female characters do you love and why?

my favorite Austen characters

I was thinking about one of the reasons I love Austen is how her characters feel so real to me. It's not that I think they are a stereotype or that I think they match up with people I know. They do, in some ways, but they just feel like they are part of my life now somehow. Here are some of my favorite (non-heroic) characters from all the Austen novels:

1. Mr. Collins
2. Mrs. Elton
3. Mrs. Jennings
4. Fanny Ferrars Dashwood
5. Mr. Woodhouse
6. Miss Bates
7. Mr. Bennet
8. Mr. Elliot (Anne's father)
9. Lucy Steele
10. Mr. Elton
11. Lady Catherine
12. Mrs. Bennet
13. Mr. Wickham
14. Captain Benwick
15. Frank Churchill
16. Henry Crawford
17. Lydia Bennet
18. Charlotte Lucas
19. Mary Elliott Musgrove
20. Mrs. Norris

I don't know anyone who I would say "is" Mr. Collins or Lady Catherine or Mrs. Elton, but there are parts of them in many people that I meet. My guess this is precisely what Jane Austen would have wanted.

anxiety of influence

While watching some of my old favorite clips from Jane Austen movies this week, I have felt a kind of despair. This has happened numerous times over the last few years, this sensation that "I will never be as good, so what am I even doing?"

There are times when I shrug off the feeling and healthily remind myself that I do things that Jane Austen could never do, and that there is no point in being another Jane Austen anyway. The world has had its Jane Austen and does not need an imitator of her, no matter how good she strives to be. If I'm going to write well, then it has to be my own way of writing well, not hers.

Then there are other days when I wonder what I am doing. I think of Mr. Darcy or Mr. Knightley or Captain Wentworth, how enduring those characters are, how people are still quoting Jane Austen's dialog directly from books written some two hundred years ago now. She has already done everything I want to do when it comes to relationships, characterization, commentary on society, and just plain fun. She is the standard of good romance writing. Poignant without ever being sentimental. There are some writers whom I have loved in the past and have gradually come to see the structure behind their works, so that when I read, the writerly part of me sees what they are doing, the machinations behind the scene. Jane Austen is not one of these writers. I can still read her books and fall into them unconsciously.

And yet, I did not love Jane Austen as a teen. Nor even in my twenties. I think I might even have agreed with the critics' assessment that she wrote about an insular world. She was a woman who wrote as well as she could, but she didn't write about "important things." I remember that I did not like Pride and Prejudice at all, and preferred Emma. I had not read the other books. I did not feel anything for Mr. Darcy and when I watched the 1995 A&E version, I was perfectly prepared never to warm up to Colin Firth. And then something happened. A radical change in my perspective. I read everything Austen and became a fierce fan.

The truth is, there is no way for a writer of today to know what works will emerge as the "best" ones in the future. Nor any way of knowing how long that fashion will last. Jane Austen has become a fad in the last twenty years, but perhaps she will fade in the next generation. After being in academia for so many years, I became pretty skeptical about their judgments. In addition, I stopped caring about such things. Or I tried to, anyway.

Reading about Van Gogh and Gaugin this week, and reading about JMW Turner last week, has reminded me of the importance of doing what you do well. Turner's early work is the work of a prodigy. He imitated other painters openly, doing "retellings" of sorts of their paintings in his own way. But they were still derivative in a way, until his very late works, which are my favorite. Van Gogh admired Gaugin so enormously that there was a period in which some of Van Goghs works look so much like Gaugin you would never guess they are Van Gogh. They aren't good Gaugins, nor are they Van Goghs. And there was probably something important that Van Gogh learned in the process. But it seems to have affected him deeply, this concern about what he couldn't do that other artists could.

So I guess I'm not the only one, and I should shut up and sit down and go back to what I can do. Because, really, there isn't anyone else's writing that I can do. I can only write my own. The next question is really just--what is my own? And how do I know when it is speaking to me? And how do I get closer to it?

More stuff about London

London Attractions Recommended:
Squirrel Feeding in St. James and Hyde Park
"Eat" Restaurant
National Gallery
The Tower
doll house at Windsor Palace
the tube
Phantom, Les Mis, Much Ado, and Wicked
scones with cream and jam

Edinburgh attractions recommended:
University of Edinburgh
St. Cecilia Hall museum of instruments
Reid Hall museum of instruments
Deep Sea World (not my favorite, but my daughters loved it--sharks overhead)
men in kilts
Scottish shortbread

London Attractions Not Recommended:
Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace
St. Paul's Cathedral (according to my daughters, a big disappointment)
Westminster Abbey (too crowded)
any audio guides (which will tell you useful things like 'look up, here is a beautiful ceiling decorated in blue and white')
standing in the yard at the Globe
double decker bus rides
fish and chips

Edinburgh attractions Not Recommended:
Edinburgh castle (which we didn't see)
endless cathedrals (which we walked by, but didn't go inside—no, not once!)
haggis (for which we could only say that it wasn't so bad we spit it out)

Souvenirs brought home by me:
Van Gogh book
JMW Turner book
prints by Van Gogh and Turner
purple and green kilt (MacRae hunting)
David Tennant/Catherine Tate T-shirt

Souvenirs brought home by 17:
Mind the Gap T-shirt
London tube map T-shirt
London tube map mug
I love London sweatshirt
royal Stewart kilt (yeah, I know for women they are just tartan skirts)
David Tennant/Catherine Tate T-shirt
real Scottish yarn

Souvenirs brought home by 15:
Wicked T-shirt
kilt
her "shiny" Crown Jewels glass bauble things
cool London 6 inch heels in velvet with ribbon ties up the front
cool London sandals with shiny jewels

I set out on the trip with the idea that we would be allowed to spend 60 pounds a day on food. If we saved any money from that total, I would divide it up three ways and let the girls have extra spending money. They both brought money from home that they had earned and saved, but I do like to give them a budget and allow them to "earn" something. I love to see the sorts of choices kids make when they have to make them. Call me evil, but I do this all the time with my kids and always have, even when they were tiny. Sometimes I'm the one who learns the lesson, as when my two year old batted her eyelashes and found the store clerk would let her have whatever she wanted even when she didn't have the money for it. Some days we spent all our food money on nice restaurants. Most days we ate sandwiches and yogurt (which is fabulous in London--I hate American yogurt. I really, really do!)

Running through Europe

I think I could write a great book on touring various countries in Europe as a runner. The idea would be that you get up before everyone else and no matter where you are, you can find a cool path to see something that no one else will be able to see. So, not all-day long tours, but mini tours that you can take for an hour or so no matter where you are in major European cities. Not the "big name" tourist sites, which you would presumably get to see during the rest of the day, but just slice of life sorts of places to go and enjoy nature or possibly an interesting building or technological marvel that you wouldn't otherwise even know was there or care about.

I didn't get to go running every day I was in London and Edinburgh. There were some days when I decided I simply didn't have time and wasn't willing to wake up at 4 a.m. to go jogging (though in Edinburgh it was certainly light early enough--about 3 a.m.) We spent several hours every day walking and I admit, I am still recovering from my Ironman and sleep is always a problem for me, so I didn't think I could function without it. I did run 6 of the 9 days we were there, and I really had a great experience. It wasn't about running fast or getting in a workout that I could count as training for a race. It was just about getting to see parts of the city that I wouldn't otherwise experience.

The first day I went out running was near Earl's Court, if you know the London tube. I ended up at the Bromptom Cemetery. I didn't have a cell phone or a camera, so there are no photos. I kind of like it that way. I wouldn't normally think of a cemetery as a good place to go jogging. I don't run in cemeteries in the US. Maybe it seems wrong. Or maybe I am a little spooked by cemeteries. But this one had posted some rules for walkers and bikers, so I figured that applied to runners, as well. They asked that we only use the thoroughfare, marked clearly on a map (how I loved maps in London!), and I ran up and down that section. I still got to see how closely the graves were placed together, the names on the graves (interesting in and of itself, since I'm working on some books places in England) and rather elaborate statues and mausoleums. I had expected a lot of graves to be from one of the two world wars, but actually very few of them were. I suspect those graves may be elsewhere. These were just people who had lived and died naturally.

The next day I set out to run over to the Thames River because I knew there was a lovely path up farther north by the Tate Modern, which we'd been to the day before. It turned out that there was no way I could run that far in the time I had (about an hour and a half), but I did get to run past the Chelsea Physic Gardens, through a couple of small parks, and see a number of bridges, including the Albert Bridge. And I got to see what the banks of the river looked like at low tide. I've read about that in books, but I've only ever seen it at high tide, I guess. It was interesting to see what the tide left behind on the sand and to see the boats above the tide line, waiting. I also got to see a bunch of other runners on this path, most of them dressed pretty much as I was, in close-fitting capris and lycra tanks. I even saw one woman who looked like she was in her seventies out jogging along. I saw her and hoped that I looked that good in thirty years. There was a man in his seventies who kicked my butt. He must have been hitting seven minute miles.

Up in Edinburgh, we stayed out in Duddingston and I ran through Duddingston Park and then around and up to Craigmillar Castle. My girls were tired of castles by then (who would ever get tired of castles?) so they elected to go to Deep Sea World instead of paying the fee to get inside Edinburgh Castle. This was my mini rebellion. Mostly I did what they wanted, serving as a guide to help them get where they wanted to go. I had already been on my own and I figured I was happy to see whatever they wanted. I didn't love Deep Sea World, but it was all right. I was a little sad to miss the castle, but seeing Craigmillar was my consolation. I didn't go inside because it wasn't open yet, but I ran all along the edge of the fence line and I felt a little bit like I was experiencing the castle and grounds like Queen Mary herself might have on a morning walk.

The second day in Edinburgh, I ran up along the Innocent Railway, which apparently was an early railroad powered by horses rather than steam engines. Didn't last long, as you might expect. People embrace technology pretty quickly, no matter how scary it seems, as long as it makes their lives easier. I also got to run through Holyrood Park. I didn't make it all the way to the palace, though Prince Chales and Camilla were reportedly in residence at the time. In fact, Camilla was on one of the same streets shopping that we were. But no, we didn't bump into her. And yes, I think I would have recognized her.

My regret on the last day we were in Edinburgh was that I hadn't made it to the Waters of Leith pathway which runs for some 13 miles along the Leith river. I have to admit, a little of this desire was fueled by the Proclaimers' song "Sunshine on Leith." On the last day, our tour bus to the Highlands dropped us off downtown and I was good enough at the map of Edinburgh at that point to figure out it was only a half mile walk to the entrance to the walkway, so I dragged my daughters over there without telling them what I was doing. Here is a photo of me, which I thought justified the extra thirty minutes out of our way. My girls didn't necessarily agree with me, but I had gone to Deep Sea World for them.

Books Read and Recommended for May 2011

Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik
R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton (a)
The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner (reread)
Pocket Scottish History
Turner by Michael Bockemuehl
The Making of Pride and Prejudice by Sue Birtwhistle and Susie Conklin
The Lathe of Heave by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Iron Throne by Caitlin Kittredge

An American in London

I went to London for the first time when I was 15, almost exactly 25 years ago. For the past two weeks, I have been in London again with my two daughters, 15 and 17. I'll write about highlights of this recent trip later, but I wanted to write a bit about my experience as a teen myself first.

I was in Germany my sophomore year in high school as a nanny/foreign exchange student. I lived with my oldest sister and her husband, who had been born in Germany to a German mother and a father who was an American serviceman. He had eventually moved to the states and forgotten most of his German, but went back later as a Mormon missionary, where he met my sister. I had helped babysit when he was gone the day his son was born for maneuvers and went to help them when my sister was expecting again. I earned the money for this tip from babysitting and my parents sent me off to a year in Germany at 14 though I had never been on a plane before.

For the next nine months I was enrolled at the local German Gymnasium. I had learned German before, but it took me several months before I could understand anything being said to me in a school setting. I was put in the eighth class instead of ninth because they were hoping it would help improve my German. I was way ahead in math and literature and English, of course, but behind in Physics, Biology, and Chemistry. I really had a hard time reading the textbook at night and then trying to understand the teacher the next day. I struggled with both the language and the material. I tended to spend most of my lunch breaks reading Shakespeare and eating food brought from home. I would definitely not help anyone cheat in any class, though it was honestly very common.

There were a lot of school breaks, one of which was spent in the Alps for a week with the whole class, learning how to ski. That was one of the best experiences of my life. Another break, I realized I had enough money to pay for a bus and the ferry to London. A family friend was there as part of a university Study Abroad and she offered to let me to stay with her for free, so I scheduled the trip there by myself. I don't remember being all that nervous about it, though maybe that has faded with time. I do remember that the day I arrived, it was so early in the morning that nothing was open. I had about 50 dollars in my pocket to survive two weeks there, and I couldn't afford to spend it on anything but what I absolutely had to, like a tube ticket. The family friend had asked me not to be at her house between 8 am and 8 pm so as to avoid disrupting their family schedule, so I spent the next 12 hours wandering London on my own, most of it in the National Gallery, which was free. I carried my backpack full of stuff all day and ate food I had brought with me from Germany. Then I finally got back to the house and collapsed in bed.

I loved London. I loved the tube. I loved the buildings. I loved the city life. I went to only one play, Les Mis in its first year. I loved it, of course. I spent a little time on the weekends with the family. They took me to Stratford on Avon and a couple of other places outside of London. We also roamed Hyde Park in the rain (which was frequent) and saved worms. This was a life changing experience for me. I had already been to Paris and Switzerland and had learned that I could survive a European school experience. But London was the next step. At 15, I was alone most every day, doing whatever I wanted. I felt capable and safe and secure in a huge city. Though this was a time of threats against Americans, I felt that we were loved in London. I remember a woman stopping me on the street one day and asking if I was American. When I told her I was, and how she knew without me saying a word, she told me it was my teeth. Americans are obsessed with straight teeth. Well, yes, I suppose we are. Though if she had seen my teeth before braces--she might have pitied me.

When I got back from this trip, people who had known me before felt like they didn't recognize me. I wasn't shy in the way I had been before. I was confident and I had a different world view. My mother used to tell me that I grew up in Germany. When I tell people that, it's confusing, since I was only there a year, but in a way I grew up in London. The experience was so powerful that this year, when I realized that my two oldest were 15 and 17, I felt like it was time to take them to London, too. I didn't throw them into the deep end, I suppose, since I was with them the whole time, but they fell in love with London, too. I guess we'll have to see about the growing up part.