Amy Butcher's Blog

This isn’t a post about writing, but something more perso...

This isn’t a post about writing, but something more personal. Please read on at your pleasure . . .

I’m fundraising to find a cure for blood cancers

and I’m asking for your help.

The quick version: 

I’m doing a triathlon with Team in Training on April 19th, 2015. My goal is to raise $2500 by January 17th. Please help support my fundraising by making a tax-deductible donation at http://pages.teamintraining.org/gba/s...

Every little bit counts!

The long version:

In 2007, I did my first Team in Training. The year before, my cousin Susan Butcher—the 4-time Iditarod Sled Dog Race winner—had died at age 52, of acute myelogenous leukemia. When I learned there was a x-country ski team, that it was a fundraiser for leukemia, and that the event was a ski marathon in Alaska, I knew I had no choice but to race in her honor.

If you’re a female athlete who grew up in the ‘80s, if you’re lover of dogs, or if you simply follow amazing courageous endeavors then you’ll recognize Susan’s name. Her athletic achievements were an inspiration to many. But she couldn’t win her fight with blood cancer and, unfortunately, she is not alone in that battle: there are an estimated 1.1 million people in the U.S. who are living with, or are in remission from, a blood cancer.

In 2008, I joined the TNT Ski Team again, but this time I wasn’t able to ski. Earlier that year, just before my 50th birthday, I had crashed my bicycle. From the outside, it didn’t look so bad—a few scrapes and bruises, a chipped bone on one elbow, and a badass story to tell—but the invisible injuries were more significant. The simplest way to describe it is that I sprained my pelvis. The cartilage, the soft tissue, the pelvic floor muscles—all sprained or strained or torn. Barely able to walk, let alone ski, I found myself in the midst of a full-blown identity crisis: if I wasn’t an athlete then who was I?

It took over a year before I could run without stabbing pain. During that time, my clever body came up with new ways of moving and stabilizing my pelvis. Who knew you could run moving only from the knees down? Who knew that the back/hip flexors could be almost as good at core stabilization as the regular abdomen/butt combo? But then these compensations became as problematic as the original injuries. It took several more years to unwind these compensatory habits. It was a long time to be out of commission.

But it wasn’t time wasted!

Spraining my pelvis led me on a fascinating physical (yes, perhaps even spiritual) journey. I learned to advocate for the unusual truth of my body’s injuries in the face of otherwise skilled practitioners who wouldn’t treat ‘down there’ (it’s just another set of muscles!). I found talented medical practitioners with obscure training and knowledge made me curious about this somatic language and led me to become a certified as a massage therapist. And, with the familiar bold athleticism subdued by injury, I learned to listen to the subtler ways bodies can speak to each other, and the surprising things they can know: subtle body, energy systems, and all the complex ways mind and body collaborate. Even understanding what it was to injure my root chakra (see, I really did go all woo here in California) opened new terrain. All of these experiences—ones that never would have happened without the injuries from the bike crash—brought me into my body in new, subtler but more profound ways. All of this was a gift.

So now it’s 2014 and I’ve come back to Team in Training once again. This time, it’s on a quest for wholeness and integration. Now that I’m injury free, can I come back into my athletic self without loosing my newly gained sense of subtle embodiment? Can train with my rationale mind (training schedules, techniques, etc.) and my intuitive heart (gut instincts, fears, compassion) as equal partners? Can I become the exuberant animal that is really what I long to be?

This triathlon is the test of that integration.

In 2015, on April 19th (Patriot’s Day to you Concordians), I will participate in the Silicon Valley International Triathlon. It’s a 1.5K swim, 40K bike, 10K run. Crazy right? Your support—in cheers or in dollars—will be what gets me to the finish line.

So will you consider donating to my fundraising campaign? I’ve pledged to raise $2500 by January 17th. I need your help. Every contribution, no matter what size, will make a difference.

How to Donate:

All donations are 100% tax deductible (LLS Tax ID is 13-5644916).

1. Best way (by credit card): Make a secure donation with a credit card at http://pages.teamintraining.org/gba/s...

2. Alternative way (by check): If you’d prefer to write a check (made out to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society) you can then send it to me so I can submit it to LLS as part of my fundraising. Let me know if you’d like to do it this way and I’ll send you my mailing address.

Thank you in advance for your support,

 

 

 

 

P.S. Do you know someone who has battled leukemia or lymphoma? If so, let me know I will be happy to add them to our team’s list of honorees and to swim/bike/run/crawl in their honor!

——————

MORE ABOUT LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY

In Created 23 years ago, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Team In Training (TNT), has prepared more than 500,000 people to achieve their dream of completing a marathon, half marathon, triathlon, 100-mile (century) bicycle ride or hike adventure. Those participants have raised a remarkable $1 billion to support blood cancer research and patient services.

LLS has made critical contributions in many areas:

Last year alone, LLS invested approximately $70 million in cutting -edge research.
For more than 60 years, LLS has invested nearly $1 billion to advance cancer therapies and save lives.
Since the early 1960’s, five year survival rates for many blood cancer patients have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled.
LLS helped advance Gleevac for patients with CML; this oral drug is now helping patients with other cancers.
LLS partners with academic centers and biotechnology companies to get new treatments to more patients, faster.
LLS advocated for state and federal legislation to ensure patients have access to quality, affordable and coordinated care.
LLS is the leading source of free blood cancer information, education patient support.

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I am celebrating with a free giveaway!

Paws for Consideration won the Gay Category at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival. That now makes Paws for Consideration an “award-winning novel” . . . who knew?

It’s also National Novel Writing Month. Another cause for celebration for all the crazy writing happening and because that’s where Paws for Consideration got it’s start.

So throughout November, you can download a free copy of Paws through Smashwords. Go HERE and enter your email and we’ll send you the download code. And if you enjoy, please write a review on Goodreads.

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Done.

All month long, I’ve been keeping a calendar. Each day, I mark the number of words written and the running total. I color it green if I’ve exceeded the daily goal (1,667 words) and pink if I have not. I get a gold star whenever I have a green day.

I look at that calendar now and see the results: 56,204 words reached on Day 30. I look back to Day 1 and see 965. It’s kind of incredible to imagine what ideas, whimsy, surprises spun out in the 55,239 words in between. And that is the part of the process that is most satisfying to me: the surprises. I think I’m writing a little scene about two friends on a walk and it turns into a meditation on women’s fashion, a character goes into a bagel store and encounters a first-generation man of vague middle-eastern descent who has ambitions to higher things, a business meeting ends with a fire alarm, characters force their way onto the page from where I do not know. Who is Senora, why is her name misspelled, is she some sort of astronomy buff to have named her twins Deneb and Altair? None of these things existed at word 965, they weren’t even in my imagination. But now they are on the page.

So I feel gratitude for the creative endeavor, quiet pride at having spun a yarn out the full distance yet again, and curiousity to return to my work in a few month’s time to find what my psyche has shared, unbeknownst to me.

Thanks reader(s) for following my 30 days of writing adventure. I feel seen and that matters to me a great deal.

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No wake zone

Have you ever been in a motor boat coming into a harbor?

The engine is at full throttle and you are cutting through the chop–no, pounding through it–but as you come in past that first buoy, you cut back on the engine because you have reached the wake free zone. The boat slows, bow tips back down toward the water, and your wake catches up to you, washing under the stern as you slosh to a slow crawl.

That’s kind of where I am right now. I’ve been cranking out words at full throttle. Over 2000 words each of the last 12 days, save Thanksgiving. I’m well past 50,000 words, have submitted my novel for validation, and been declared a winner. But there is still one day to go. I’m not at the dock yet. I have not completed the plot. I do have the last scene already sketched. It’s kind of sweet and perfect for everything that has happened thus far. Now I just have to drift the novel slowly forward to those final words.

The No Wake zone has arrived.

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50,000

. . . pushing . . .

Yes, that was it, the 50,000th word. Sarah, our protagonist, is having a fashion crisis at the Noah’s Bagels (of course there are bagels in this novel, it’s my book after all). She’s contemplating if it’s possible to kick someone in the balls while wearing a power suit.

Please discuss while I keep writing. Still two more days to bring the plot line to completion, even if only in a rough sketch. Wish me luck!

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Out there

Output. Lots of output. Words the pour out. Outlines that collapse. Outright lies masquerading as truth (within the context of fiction). Putting myself out on paper each day. Out of ideas. Out of nowhere. Outlandish plot points. Out of my mind. Outer truth, inner reality. Out on a limb. Out after dark. Out all alone.

I am close now. 796 words away from the finish line. Many more words away from the finished plot finish line (I’m guessing that’s closer to 60K) but that’s OK. Each day–before, during, or after I write NaNo–I sit down and write this blog. It’s a personal commitment because I want to track how it is all feeling in the moment. The blog posts are like little travelogue snapshots–fuzzy at times, oddly framed perhaps, but nice souvenirs to have.

But like a traveler, I want to share the pictures from my trip (oh, we all fear the deadly dull evening that promises to be, don’t we?). A blog is supposed to be a forum, a soapbox, a way to speak to the world. It’s wildly public, or can be, if anyone is listening. So I’m curious. Are you out there (like the Gucci knockoff spammers who comment every day)?

Leave a comment. I’d love to know if all this out is being taken in.

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Applied courage

50,000 words is just one, maybe two, days away.

It has come so much easier this time. I’m not sure why, but I am grateful. Perhaps last time it was because 50,000 words was unimaginable. Could I write that much? I never had. Let’s find out. It was arduous, like wading through waist deep waters thick with blood suckers. But I crawled up on the shore completely elated! This time it took less courage. I new what that far shore felt like, what suffering must happen in-between here and there. It hasn’t been easy, but it has been part of ordinary life (and I fear that the writing reflects that ordinariness too, but that is for another day).

However, I am grateful to be reminded that each time we do the unimaginable, our realm of possibilities expands. What once beyond our wildest dreams is now doable. This magic transformation happens, each and every time we take that risk, almost without fail.

So what is unimaginable to me now that I hope to make be totally doable one day soon? Where is the next frontier ready for the steady application of courage? Where is it for you?

I know my answer.

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Out of the fog

Ocean Beach - Day 25 of NaNoWriMo

What is interesting (and slightly embarassing) about my writing is how much of my own psyche seeks to express itself through my characters. I find this especially true when it comes to writing dialogue. Sometimes I steal words from the real world around me but more often than not I let my imagination drop into my characters and, like a cheesy seance, I let them speak through me. No doubt it’s just me speaking through me, but perhaps it is a part of me to which I normally would not have access.

Does that make writing fiction a form of journaling? Therapy? Self-discovery? I suppose so. But then most artistic or creative endeavors are attempts to bring into reality, into form, something that only exists in the imagination.

Good thing I get to edit before y’all get to see it.

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Unanticipated

Today, I spent a goodly amount of time not generating words but strategizing plot. If you’ve read any of my previous posts then you’ll know that I’m not at all convinced that my story has any sort of dramatic arc. Rumor has it that’s a good thing to have. I didn’t want my characters to feel bad or unworthy, so this morning I set out their futures.

The three major plot lines aren’t woven together yet but atleast each of them has a general outline. Even with that, the writing still produces surprises, like the unspeakable behavior of the guy in line at the salad bar scene. Really? Touching yourself in public? Think of the children! I never saw that one coming.

So still there are surprises–in the writing and in real life. Yesterday I met a man outside the coffee shop who, had he been 30 years younger and not, well, a man (and a gay one at that) then we would have fallen in love. He had long flowing white hair, skin like silk crinkle chiffon, had been in theater in New York, and now performed poetry in San Francisco. Our connection was so immediate, playful, and sparkly that I have to assume that the muses were just playin’ with us, reminding us that the separation between reality and fantasy, between expectation and possibility, is a thin, gauzy illusion. I’m so glad they did.

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Quickly, quickly

First off, happy thanksgiving.

I was comatose after all yesterday’s eating and wrote neither a blog post nor a word of NaNoWriMo novel. It’s OK, I’m still on track thanks to some high volume writing over the previous 5 days. Just shy of 40,000 right now.

Because my plot has been feeling flat, my characters dull, their lives mundane, I’ve adopted a new strategy: writing by storyline rather than chronology. The idea is to follow one idea through to completion. For example, follow poor Sarah and her love life. The upside is that I’ll atleast have one plot line that reaches a conclusion. The downside is that the writing won’t be informed by all the crazy things happening in the other plot lines. Those interconnections are often the richest part of the writing. They are the places where I find the most delight since I never would have guessed that the tuna sandwich in scene A would be critical to resolving her love life in scene B or the finding the murderer in scene C.

In other words, I am not convinced this is the best approach but I know no other way of getting some sort of completed story arc. It’s either this or write another 50,000 slow-paced words, to come to truly understand my characters, and to help reveal where their fates will ultimately lead.

Meanwhile, I share this emergency double-delivery of Waxie’s outside my office. It’s an popular item in cubicle life and an item that already appears in my story. It’s also a reminder that my life could definitely be worse.

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