Ballerina-like, don't you think? (I jest, of course)
Initially, I wanted to try out adventure racing to get a more visceral experience of questing. No, I'm serious. We writer-introverts are so stuck in our minds all the time and don't spend enough time in the real world. So when we write settings or describe quests, they often come off as silly.
(Especially compared to older books, written by authors who actually knew what it meant to cross countries on foot.)
I wanted, in short, to actually feel like Frodo on Day 13 of the jaunt up Caradhras.
I ended up learning something else: the joy and consolation of being fully in the present moment. There's nothing else you can do in the middle of a crazy descent on a mountain bike, when your brain is so tired that your hand presses the break when you tell your leg to pump the pedals!
There's nowhere else to be but the present when you're in hour 2 of a three-hour kayak leg with no water left, as an osprey descends right next to you and plunges under the water, only to come up, shake itself out in mid-air, the fish still wedged in its talons.
Believe it or not, it's consoling being fully present in the reality of water sloshing on your kayak seat, of tree roots underfoot, of the incredible feeling of sitting down for the first time in ten hours and fifty minutes. That consolation, Tolkien believed, was something that the good stories gave to us.
I was reminded of that when I was looking through some essays I wrote last year. Here's one where I talk exactly about that: the fact that fantasy is consoling precisely because of its earthiness, not its imaginative flights of fancy.
Check it out.
Here are some great stories about adventuring and running that I found for your pleasure and edification.
1. It's amazing to me how people respond to a running habit. For some, it's almost religious. In this case, it's almost monastic.
2. Here's a fantastic long read on the importance of not falling prey to perfectionism, especially in the difficult things of life. And especially in running ultramarathons. If you're not a runner, don't worry, this is a great essay.
3. Can someone explain to me why most of the articles I found on running were written by people who run marathons in their seventies? I'm very impressed.
4. If running isn't for you, I'm sure adventuring is! And if you don't know where to start, don't worry. Calvin and Hobbes will give you the rules.
Reader's Nook
I'm reading C. J. Brightley's The Wraith and the Rose. It's based on the Scarlet Pimpernel (more the movie than the books, which is fine by me), but it has the perilous realm and magic and the Fair Folk instead of the French Revolution. I'm really enjoying it so far.
Writer's Corner
For the writers among you, here's a wonderful piece, inspired by John Conltrane, on the innovator's mindset and how hardship fuels art.
You might also be interested to hear that I recently started rereading Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer. Seriously, I think this is the best technical guide to fiction writing out there. It really holds up well over time.
Also, Joanna Penn has recently published a new book that I think is very timely, called The Relaxed Author. So far, I'm liking it a lot.
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