Tag Archive for: fitness and writing

A Literary Exercise–Stiletto Style

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by Paula Gail Benson

Each
year in May, Charleston, South Carolina holds its Spoleto Festival–two weeks
of music, theater, dance, and arts, taking place in venues throughout the city.
This year would be special. The Festival planned to present a production of Porgy and Bess, the quintessential
Charleston opera. As part of the celebration for the new production of Porgy, a two-hour walking tour of
Charleston would feature locations that had influenced DuBose Heyward as he
wrote the novel that he and George and Ira Gershwin turned into musical theater.

Walking.
In muggy, humid, 90 plus degree May in Charleston. Hummmm. Sounds like an
intense literary exercise to me.

I
knew this would require training.

My
office was having a fitness program that allowed us to buy Fitbits at reduced
rates. I got one and started counting my steps. That recommended 10,000 a day
was a difficult number to achieve. I was proud on the days I neared 5,000.

It
helped me to stay motivated with a walking program if I had some diversity in
my strolls. I began pondering what might give me some added incentives.

Around
March, I was admiring the Stiletto Gang’s new graphics when it occurred to me
that I had never owned a pair of stilettos. Oh, I’d watched many women perched
on pencil thin stilts. They reminded me of that song from the musical Wicked, “Defying Gravity.”

The
idea of wearing stilettos in public was completely out of the question for me. I
have sufficient embarrassment in life without having the appearance of an inept
circus performer. Besides, I’ve usually got my head involved with so many other
things that having to maintain my balance in anything other than flats would be
multi-task overload. But, it occurred to me that, in the privacy of my own
home, where no one could witness my wobbling, stilettos might be a good form of
exercise.

Exercise?
Stilettos?

Think
about it. To wear stilettos requires poise, confidence, controlling equilibrium,
and focusing upon a change in body centering. Aren’t those the kinds of things
that Yoga and Pilates masters are always emphasizing?

Okay,
so, what does a pair of exercise stilettos look like?

I
suppose some would let that selection speak to their inner wild child and go
with a model they might never in fact wear in public. From careful study of
this matter, let me assure you there are plenty of options for that kind of
expression. Animal skin prints. Psychedelic colors. Lots of possibilities.

But,
I didn’t need to add craziness to my life. I have that in ample degrees. I
needed to add calm stability. At least as steady as one can be teetering on
five inch heels.

Then,
the answer came to me. I’d channel the serenity of the Duchess of Cambridge.

After
she first appeared in her impossibly elegant, goes with everything, nude heels,
they became a fashion sensation. So that is what I acquired. A pair of five-inch
(okay, there is a one-inch platform at the ball of my foot so I’m only really
balancing on four inches) glamorously beige stilettos. They arrived in a
hideously large box. Flats wearers never see shoe boxes of that size. And, when
I opened it to look upon them, well, I thought I understood how climbers must feel
when they stand at the base of Everest—it’s a long way up.

Then,
in my head, I heard Idina Menzel singing from Wicked, “Unlimited. . . . [and nothing’s gonna] bring me down!”
Although, I must admit, it might have been more appropriate for the theme from Frozen (“Let It Go”) to be playing.

With
a great deal less assurance than I felt, I released those monster slippers from
their tissue wrappings and placed them on the floor. Gracefully, I pointed my
toes and eased them into the confines of each pump. Then, taking a deep breath,
I rose to a height I had never experienced before.



At
least, not from the ground.

Now,
the challenge was to take that first step. This was one small step for a woman,
one giant leap for empowerment, and one mind-blowing moment in understanding. Suddenly, I
knew why women put themselves through this torture. To prove they can. To
do all that Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.

So I
began my routine of walking, in my stilettos, down the hall of my home. Not
that I’m ready for a public debut, but I am building my skills.

And,
when I arrived for the Spoleto walking tour. I was ready and finished the
two-hour vigorous course, making it a banner day in my Fitbit history with a
total of 11,412 steps!

The next day, when I
entered Charleston’s magnificent Gaillard Center where Porgy and Bess was presented, I followed a young woman wearing stilettos
up the grand stairway. Smiling, I thought, “Sure, you wear them for dress up,
but do you exercise in them?”

[For more information about my Spoleto experiences, please check out tomorrow’s blog on Writers Who Kill!]

How Bad Do You Want It?

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By Cathy Perkins
We’ve been
chatting about fitness at The Stiletto Gang this month, which inevitably has
led to discussions about discipline. Or the lack of it. On my other group blog,
several people have debated whether they’ve lost their creative spark and burnt
out, or if they’ve simply lost their
discipline. Oh vey, my friend Toby
says. Discipline…

When I admired
what another friend had accomplished—her discipline in sticking to her schedule—she
bluntly upended that notion.

“It’s not that I’m disciplined, it’s that
I’m committed to having the result.”
You don’t
need discipline when you’re committed to the outcome, because the result tells
you what choices you need to make. If you want X, then you do A, B and C.
Period. End of sentence.
I mulled that
concept over for a few days, wondering if it was a yet another platitude or a
different—better—way to look at the question. The song, How Bad Do You Want It? kept cycling through my head. If you’re
committed to a goal—be it losing that ten pounds or finishing your first,
second or tenth novel, or eating the broccoli you finally remembered to
buy—then taking the actions to make it happen follow logically and naturally.
The next set
of questions churning in my head weren’t as nice. Basically, I had to rethink everything
I thought I was committed to. It made me question the goals I’m willing to do
the work for.
None of these
things make for sound sleep at 3AM by the way.
Who wants to admit—even
to themselves—that maybe they’re not as committed as they thought they were?
Then again,
maybe it’s a chance to reassess what you really want and break it down into the
little pieces and determine what you really care about and what you can die without
having accomplished and not be the least bit bothered by it.
If you want
to write your novel (or lose that blasted ten pounds), are you committed enough
to that result, that goal, that you’re doing the work day in and day out? The
harsh truth is, if you’re not, maybe you’re not as committed to that result as
you thought you were.
And that’s
what I’m wrestling with right now.
To have what
you want, you have to be committed.
If you’ve got
goals or dreams in your head that really truly aren’t your goals—maybe it’s something you think you ought to want, or you’ve been told you should want, but you don’t really care about it, or if you didn’t
make it happen you wouldn’t lose sleep, then give yourself permission to drop those
“goals”. Don’t waste time and energy or even think about them.
Instead, refocus
on what you do want to pursue.
That’s what
alignment—commitment—is about. It’s about knowing what you want deep down.
Knowing and being willing to let go of the other stuff.
My friend continued: You’re going to lose your
focus sometimes. You’re going to fall off the wagon and be unproductive. It
happens to all of us. Checking in with yourself on a daily basis is a great way
to stay aligned with what you want and where you’re going, and also to
pick yourself back up faster when you do lose focus.
So stop
forcing yourself into dreams and goals that have other people’s names on them.
If you know you
truly want something and wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you didn’t
get it, maybe it’s time to focus and define that goal and then commit to it. No
discipline needed.
Challenge for
the week, the month, however long it takes: Dig deep and really question your
goals and dreams. If you’ve been after something for a while and you’re still
coming up short, maybe deep-down you don’t want to do it and it’s time to let
that goal go. Or, maybe you’ll find you want it more than anything and now it’s
time to step up your commitment to the result.
What’s
one result you’re so committed to you don’t need “discipline” to take
action? 

_________________________________________________________________________________

Cathy Perkins is questioning her commitment to releasing a new novella next month, Malbec Mayhem, a spinoff related to So About the Money. She has lists–lots of lists–and may survive the day to day activities needed to make it happen. 

Fit to Write

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by J.M. Phillippe

In 1988, a group of advertising execs created possibly the greatest, most influential fitness campaign slogan ever: 





An entire generation, MY generation, has been living by these words of wisdom ever since. Or, at least aspiring to. Want to get good grades in school? Just do it. Want to learn to play guitar? Just do it. Want to see if you can eat an entire bag of cookies in one go? Just do it. Whatever it is you want to do, just go on out and do it.


Do an internet search on writing, and you’ll find much the same advice:




Writer’s write. The end. Want to be a writer? Write. Want to become good writer? Write more. Want to become the greatest writer that ever lived? Write, write more, and then write some more after that.

The doing makes you the thing. Runners run. Swimmers swim. Competitive food champions eat lots of food in really short amounts of time. Writers write.


If only it actually were that easy. 


What the ad execs were getting at (in an attempt to sell shoes and other various fitness apparel) is that there really should be no excuses between you and the thing you are setting out to do. “Just do it” cuts through any possible block you could put up. “I don’t have time” becomes “make time.” “I don’t have the right equipment” becomes “get the right equipment.” “I don’t know what to say” becomes “say anything, keep saying anything until it becomes something, and then say more about that.”


There is — or there should be — nothing that keeps writers from writing. Like running, swimming, and sure, probably competitive eating, daily practice is the key. Just do the thing. Just write. 


People obviously underestimate just how creative writers can be in coming up with excuses why they can’t, in fact, just write. 

I have had some of the best naps of my life starting about 20 minutes after I sat down to write, because something about the process suddenly makes me super tired. The amount of resistance I have to the actual doing of writing is tremendous, so much so that it often takes a Herculean effort to even sit in front of my computer for ten minutes. It’s as if I am a beginner runner trying to convince myself I can make it through this one lap, or this next minute, without stopping (or actually dying from an acute inability to breathe). In fact, I have gotten in better running shape with more ease than I have gotten through certain sections of a book — and I am not in any way, shape, or form, someone who has ever actually enjoyed running; running, like writing, is something I have only ever enjoyed have had done. 


I have never been a particularly disciplined writer, relying on the sheer terror that a looming deadline evokes in me to get me through that giant cloud of resistance so that I can actually write. I don’t have great writing discipline, or, really, any writing discipline, and it frankly shocks me every time I actually finish any piece of writing. It’s almost as though I finally force myself into a fugue state, after which I have something I can maybe sort of push and prod into something else that I feel mostly okay having other people read. At some point, despite all my best efforts not to, I finally do in fact, just do it. I write. 


This is less than ideal. I would love a daily writing practice. I would love to get to the point where I can sit down in front of my computer and get to work without a certain tightening of my chest, a sudden thirst or hunger, or a desperate need to just rest my eyes, just for a few minutes, and then I’ll totally knock out some pages. It’s not like I don’t know what I have to do. Nike has been telling me what to do for the past almost 30 years. Just do it. Just. Do. It. 


And I’m totally going to. 


Starting tomorrow.


***



J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City.  She worked as a freelance journalist before earning a masters’ in social work.  She works as a family therapist in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free-time decorating her tiny apartment to her cat Oscar Wilde’s liking, drinking cider at her favorite British-style pub, and training to be the next Karate Kid, one wax-on at a time.