Gym Archives - Laurell K. Hamilton

Edits, Travel, and the Injury at the End

I finished the edits on the next Anita Blake novel, Serpentine at the beginning of March. Jonathon, my husband, and I were already on a romantic vacation, but he helped me take time out to finish the edits that I hadn’t managed before we had to leave for our getaway. At the end I went old school: writing the changes long hand on sticky notes and handed them to Jonathon for him to type into the manuscript edits. I hadn’t written that much long hand in years, but it felt right. I’d already written the book, the edits were small things, or a scene here and there that needed changed for plot or character development. I took out one side plot that had started off as a red herring, but turned out to lead nowhere, so it had to go. I even had to cut a great new character that I hope we get to see later in another book. Larry Kirkland was a character that was actually in one of the rough drafts of the first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures, but he wouldn’t actually get on stage until book three, The Circus of the Damned. One of my favorite things about writing a series is that characters and plot lines that have to be edited out of one book can still see life later on. Interestingly, Anita, Micah, and Nathaniel try to have a romantic trip in the book, but both her work and Micah’s interfere with it. I wrote that months before Jonathon and I would be on our own trip and my work would cost us the first few days of relaxation, as if my muse knew it was coming. Of course, Anita’s work was a missing person and murder, and Micah’s work was a type of lycanthropy that we’d never seen before. My edits seem so tame in comparison.

I proceeded to take the longest purposeful break from writing that I’ve ever taken. Jonathon and I finished our trip without more work interfering. Then I got to spend our daughter’s spring break with her. My sister and her wife were able to fly into the country and visit with us. I spent all my “vacation” traveling. I’d finally get on the first plane towards home, but in the all out run to make it, I fell.

I was running full out, I was even thinking, “Wow, I can really run now. I’m so glad I can move like this, yay gym!” And then I wiped out. I did a good job of it, because kind strangers came to stand over me, making that face you make when someone hurts themselves in front of you. Thanks to the kind man who offered me a hand up, because I could not have gotten up without help. I wasn’t even sure that I’d be able to stand at all, until I tried. I was finally able to limp to my plane like Igor from the Frankenstein movies, but I was just happy to make my plane. I enjoyed my travels, but I was so ready to go home. I made my plane discovering that I was bleeding from the skin I’d lost, but I was able to walk better as I moved more. I still hurt, but I got to my seat. The flight attendant got me bandages, alcohol wipes, and eventually ice bags to put on my knee. Thanks for the care and attention Delta. Thanks also to my seat mate, Charles, who was a gentleman in the best sense of the word, putting my bag overhead for me when he saw I was hurt and helping the flight attendant pass me things to do some first aid. He also kept my mind off how much I was hurting by having an intelligent and calm discussion about our different paths of faith.

The skin is growing back from the scrapes, but I’ve either scraped my meniscus, or got a micro tear in it, which means no gym or martial arts for awhile. The page proofs of Serpentine have come back for one last chance to read over and catch any small things. It hurts to even sit at my desk for too long without propping my leg up. Sigh.

I’m looking forward to finishing the page proofs and getting back to the gym and dojo, and onto writing the next story.

My Ass, and Bare Faced Beauty

I posted this picture on twitter. I was pleased that I could tell the gym work was paying off, so I posted. I figure if those of us with curves don’t post, as well, that too many people will keep thinking that only thin women exist. Besides, at 51 I’m pretty pleased that gym work can still make me want to show my ass on line. It was sort of a bit of happy silliness, and then another woman on Twitter said, “That was very brave.”

Brave? It was brave to put up a picture of my ass on line? I thought bravery was running into burning buildings to save people, or putting a gun to your shoulder and defending the constitution of this United States, or holding the hand of someone you love while they go through chemo – all that takes bravery. I really didn’t think my picture went in the same category as things that can win you medals, or give you the stuff of tragedies. But other women echoed the sentiment, and I sort of understood, but not really.

When did body issues become the stuff of medal worthy bravery? When the hell did it become an act of courage to show our bodies unretouched to the world? Then Robin McKinley, another writer, put up a link to a story in the Guardian. It was about Botox celebrating it’s twelfth anniversary, and how common place it had become. The article further stated that one of the reasons Botox is so common and popular is that teenagers are using it so their selfies on line look smooth and ageless. What? I mean, What the Fuck? Teenagers are injecting themselves to look “ageless”? They’re teens for Gods’s sake, how much more ageless do they want to look?

I wear light makeup most of the time, and for photo shoots I wear what my makeup artist puts on me, hairstylist, too, but enough was enough. I took a selfie of myself without any makeup on, my hair in it’s natural fuzz of curl, and I put it up on Twitter. There, done! I got some lovely compliments, and other people echoing my surprise that teenagers should be worried enough to take Botox, or anything else to look smoother. Then I ran into a strange controversy that seems to have come up around the #barefacedbeauty campaign that was originally supposed to help support money going to cancer research, but had also been high jacked by women on both sides of the makeup divide, those who do and those who don’t. Apparently, some anti-makeup women were trying to bully those that wore makeup, telling them they were a selling out the modern feminist movement, or some such nonsense. The movement to raise money for cancer research is still a good cause to support, so if you want to contribute, please do. I thought the issue of some women arguing about makeup at almost a moral question level was just another example of how we, as a group, seem to let differences divide us, rather than letting our common ground unite us.

How about everybody leave everybody else alone? If you want to wear makeup, do. If you don’t want to wear makeup, don’t. Do what makes you happiest. The same goes for curves vs no curves. Be whatever is a healthy weight for your body. Some women struggle to gain weight their whole lives, and other’s struggle to lose, and some people have wonderful genetics that helps them stay at whatever weight they want. Let’s stop the body shaming and just own that women come in all shapes and sizes. No one size, or body type is better than the other, just be healthy, whatever that means for your body.

Keeping my New Year’s Resolutions

The First Day of 2013:

Today I meditated and performed a ritual to welcome in the first day of the year. This goes with my goal of doing more rituals for my faith in the coming year. I meditate almost daily, but actual ritual is less frequent.
I worked on Affliction which is the next Anita Blake novel. I’m in the end game of the book, but I’m having to throw out part of my outline and redo plot points from here on out. The major mystery has remained the same, but the clues and how-to catch the bad guys have been impacted by the book to date. I’m an organic writer which means the book grows and changes. The writing goals are always part of my new year thinking.
Then the rest of the family was finally up and we had breakfast together. That’s another goal, to do more family stuff and enjoy the real people in my life more this year. That includes friends, as well, as family.
Jon and I went to the gym and worked out. That hits the exercise goals that we’ve set for the year. I’m proud of us for going on New Year’s Day, I think it’s a first?
I think I’m out of daylight for reading part of a book that I did not write today, but I’ll try tomorrow.
I did make a start on planning my next tattoo which I’m wanting to get this year. I’ve been working on the idea for about two years and finally think I’ve found an artist to help me design it.
There are other goals for the year, but I’ll stop here so that I can go to bed with Jon, and cuddle on this the first full night of 2013.

The Second Day of 2013:

Jon and I went to the gun range. We put rounds through my two new hand guns that have been languishing in their boxes since my wonderful husband bought them for me. One of my goals for this year was to go to the range more.
I went to the gym again today, and along with the weight lifting, squats, etc . . . ran! I’m running more and better every time. I did not appreciate it before I injured myself and couldn’t run. Now, every time down that track is a gift.
My sister, Chica, had her foot surgery today, and that gets her closer to the goal of being completely healed this year. No more accidents!
I have not hit my writing goal for the day on Affliction. I’ve written, but I haven’t hit the point in the chapter I wanted to be at before I went to bed.
There is no time to read for pleasure today. I’ve given up on that until tomorrow. I’ll try again then. That whole reading for pleasure is a New Year’s resolution that usually dies a quick death. I’m determined this year to do better than last, but as I type this I can’t choose reading someone else’s book over working on my own, especially with a deadline fast approaching. Since I’ve spent most of the last decade on deadline maybe that’s why I stopped reading for pleasure. Hmm . . . it does seem to be a pattern. *laughs*

I’m Back!

A week ago I was in the hospital for my second day. I caught a virus, just a stomach virus. We’ve all caught plenty of them in our lifetime, but I’ve never had one like this before. I spent about two weeks throwing up, and a pretty solid week of being unable to hold anything down, including water. I now understand why they think dehydration killed many of the victims of flue epidemics in the early 1900s, before there was such a thing as intravenous fluids to give the sick, and stop that spiral downward. I was never so happy to be on an IV in my life. I’m feeling much better, though still surprisingly tired with very little effort to show for it. My doctor warned me to increase slowly back to a normal activity level. What he didn’t say was that I’d feel so weak and tire so easily that I would have little choice but to behave myself. But everyday is a bit better, and so am I.
A funny thing happened during this illness, it sort of cleared away a lot of mental debris. Put things into perspective, as it were. I found a quote that says a lot of what I learned, and what I’m still enjoying.

“Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.” – Mary Jean Iron.

You would think I would have learned this lesson by now, but I hadn’t. I thought my mother’s death when I was six had taught me this, but maybe there was too much pain attached to that “lesson”, so that it taught me other things. Some things helped me appreciate what I had and take chances and set goals and DO THINGS! But it didn’t teach me to lay in the dark and listen to my husband’s breathing, and cuddle tight to the smooth, warmth of his body, and be grateful that I wasn’t hurting. They gave me morphine in the hospital for the pain, I’d never had morphine – warm, trickling through my veins, the weirdest feeling, like I could trace it through my body, and then the pain abated for the first time in days. I was able to sleep with enough medicine in me, and that, too, was a wonderful thing. Death didn’t teach me to appreciate sitting in my office and typing this to all of you, but life did. I love the view from my office now more than ever before, I no longer bemoan that it’s not a lake, or an ocean, which is the only thing my dream office lacks. I’m happy with my tall green trees now. I no longer think wistfully of that Dalmatian, or English setter, that I’ll never own because I’m not runner enough to keep them happy, but am thrilled with the silky fur of our two Japanese chins, and the comforting snoring of our pug. I realize that the desire for the Dalmatian that came when I was twelve, after reading Dodie Smith’s book “One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” is really a wish to be a different person than I am. I’ve worked too long and too hard to be who I am to wish for such changes. I go to the gym, but a marathon runner I will never be, and that’s okay. I guess there was still a tiny part of me that wanted to be tall, and blond, and gazelle like, but I am short, dark, and . . . and what? Certainly not gazelle like. *laughs* Zebra like? Something sturdy . . . a horse? Pony? In old vaudeville slang I would certainly be a pony, tall leggy girls were stallions.
When I was a little girl I wanted to be either tall, blonde and leggy, and a natural athlete, or darkly exotic and ethnic anything but my Northern European background. There’s still part of me that wants to be that tall athletic girl that I will never be. I am competent in the gym now, but it’s not natural. I will never put a hand out in a slow, easy arc and catch a ball, and throw it without thought, easy as breathing, but then those girls didn’t read much. They certainly didn’t write. I’m not saying athletes can’t be writers, but I think I would have made a choice, been different, aimed outward, rather than inward, and in the end that’s what a writer is – we aim inward. The real world effects us, Gods know, but it is our processing of that reality inside our heads, our hearts, our very souls, that makes the difference. In the last few years I’ve learned to live in my body in a happier, healthier way than ever before, and make peace with the fact that I have to work a little harder to do what some people take for granted in the gym, but that’s okay, they ask me, “How can you write a whole book?” I ask, “How can you run marathons? How can you lift four hundred pounds?” I guess, we all look at the other half and either wonder about them, or even wonder what we might be like if we were them.
It’s okay to wonder, even day dream about being other people, which is part of my job description, I guess. I put myself in other people’s lives, thoughts, what if . . . what if . . . But today I am grateful for what is, because what is, is pretty damn good. I will endeavor to hold this lesson tight and close and not forget that the ordinary is actually pretty extraordinary.

The Plan

I’m going to try and do a blog at least three days a week from this point on. I do not plan to go back to a blog a day, that became burdensome. But so many of you have said how much you enjoy the blog and miss me posting one regularly that I’m going to try.

Proposed topics for future blogs:

Hair care for curly hair. This is actually one of the most requested.

Skin care. People want to know what I’m doing. Again, a strangely popular request.

Gym: what am I doing to stay in shape.

Nutrition and healthy eating.

Writing:

Ideas, how to get them, what inspires me.

How do I write characters with so much real life in them? (I’m honestly not certain I can answer this question. If I can’t figure out how to explain it, then I won’t blog about it. Fair?)

Muse, the Muse, the Muses, or my Muse/Muses – A lot of people seem to believe that the Muse is a real person in my life; sorry to disappoint, but nope. But apparently I need to explain in more detail what I mean by the muse, or my muse.

Is there going to be more Anita books, yes, I’m currently writing next one. Ditto for Merry, and yes, she’s talking in my head again. But a lot of you want to know news, and insights about one, or both of my girls. If I can do it without huge spoilers I will.

Maybe I should just do a blog about the most common questions asked, like will there be more of, and such.

Wiccan – what it means to be Wiccan and how our family follows our path of faith.

Wiccan – books to recommend.

The Holidays, and do we really have to be so bloody cheerful?

Favorite books of mine.

DragonCon – what Jon and I did this year.

The Anne Rice Vampire Ball and New Orleans

The Anita Blake comic/graphic novel. I’ll try to post some line art. It’s yummy!

These are just a few of the topics people have requested that I blog about. I reserve the right to come up with brand new ideas and blog those instead of the above. The blog, like all writing, is better if a little inspiration is included, or at least it’s easier for me to write, and as I’m on a very tight deadline right now, easier is better.

Willpower at the Gym and at the Desk

A lot of people have been asking me how do I write all those pages, and how I keep going to the gym, well, I just finished an hour on the treadmill. It’s the first time doing that in at least two weeks, maybe more. I’ve been doing treadmill as warm up at the gym three days a week, but that’s like ten minutes – it’s a warm up. Now, I’ve been making a choice between getting to my desk to write pages on the new book first thing in the morning, or doing treadmill. As the book deadline approaches I’ll be choosing writing over treadmill, sleep. Lots of good things go away when the book eats the world. During this recent period of no treadmill, I fell on the stairs, just missed my footing. I was so far in my head and my imaginary world that I wasn’t paying quite enough attention to the real world. I ended up on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, landing on my knee, and arm. It made enough noise that Jonathon, my husband, came out of his office to see me crumpled there, and well . . . the whole “Are you all right?” and try to help me up.

I waved him away, not because I didn’t want the help, but because I wasn’t sure that I should move yet. He asked again, “Are you all right?” I gave the only real answer I had, “I’m not sure yet, give me a minute.” I lay there paying attention to my body as the shock of the fall wore off, and then gingerly, with Jonathon’s help I got to my feet. I could stand, I could move. My knee and ankle weren’t happy with me, but everything worked. That happened at about 1:00 in the afternoon, by early evening I was at the gym for my regular workout. My only concessions were the patella bands I wear almost always, and I found my old ankle brace from when I did the original ankle injury that would lead me to the gym in the first place. The bruise and swelling on the knee seemed the worst of it, but I did the whole workout and my trainer made me promise to ice things when I got home. I did, and it was better. In fact, I used the ankle brace all week. And yesterday my ankle hurt a lot. This morning when I got up for the treadmill I left the ankle brace off, and the ankle was better. If the injury isn’t that bad wearing the braces and things can actually hurt, or cause an injury. But because of how badly I’d injured my ankle years ago, I had been overly cautious: lesson learned.

I hadn’t fallen like that in years, because all the injuries and the gym time have made me aware of my body in a way that I hadn’t been before. So important safety tip, no matter how deeply absorbed in the book, I must pay attention to actual walking in the real world. But more than that, I believe that going so long without the treadmill was beginning to cause all my injuries to hurt more. Some of my injuries are permeant, there’s no fixing them, which is why I’m nearly religious about the gym. Because putting muscle around my joints has been the best remedy for all of it, with the extra bonus of looking great, and feeling better and more energized. So, with the belief that no treadmill was beginning to eat away at the progress I’d made physically, I got up this morning and hit the it. I was happy to be doing it again, but somewhere around fifteen minutes in, I began to feel less happy. I’d just done two weeks of not going much over ten minutes at a shot, and now my body, my will power, was going, “Aren’t we done yet?”

By thirty minutes in, I almost stopped, not because it hurt, or because I wasn’t moving at a good pace. I actually got the speed up to a new record. It was a pace that five years ago I’d have had to run to manage, now I walked it well, and it felt great to loosen up everything and get moving. I’m beginning to be a believer in if I don’t sweat on the treadmill I’m not working hard enough. Today the sweat wasn’t just about the workout though, because when I came into the gym it was 56 degrees fariheniet because the heat wasn’t on. I’d switched the heat on, which was good until about thirty minutes in when the furnace decided to blast me with very hot air in an effort to raise the temperature ten degrees in about fifteen minutes. I was so not happy, and I wanted to stop. It was hot, uncomfortable. I couldn’t find music that I wanted to listen to, I had done half the time, surely I could stop now. thirty-five minutes, thirty-eight minutes. Gods, the time was creeping. I decided to head for forty-five minutes and then I’d let myself stop. I upped the speed and just focused on moving my body, focused on keeping my core tight and letting it help hold me in place, as I moved. At forty-five minutes I thought, “It’s only fifteen minutes until I make an hour, I can do that.”

I so didn’t want to make my hour. I wanted to quit, several times. It was too early, it was too hot, my music wasn’t working for me, my ankle, my knee, my . . . I do much the same thing on writing. There are lots of days when I don’t want to make pages, when I’m feeling less than inspired, but I tell myself, “Just four pages,” and somedays I stop with that, but most days I urge myself on with just one more page, sometimes just three more lines. I coax, conjole, and just plain stubborn it out, because otherwise the books won’t get written. It’s about will power, about simply doing it when you don’t want to, when you’re tired, when you’re wanting to do so many other easier things, but you do the hard thing. You do what helps you feel healthy, helps pay the bills, helps you not have weird dreams because you haven’t been making enough pages, whatever – you do it.