A Relaxing Weekend Running the Ragnar Relay

Good Morning, and I’m sorry – I’ve gotten way behind on a bajillion things, and haven’t had time to write a good post for you, so you get the rushed story of my amazing weekend. However, other than today, this week should be a really good one for posts. I’ll probably have a reblog for you from Ligonier Ministries (I haven’t decided if that’s the one I’m really going to use) and a guest-post from Friend Jordan. I might also review Voyage of the Dawn Treader and there are several other things I’d like to write about… just haven’t had the time.

So for those of you who don’t know, I ran a super relay race this weekend called the Ragnar. It’s covers 200 miles and lasts about 36 hours or so. I only ran 11 of those 200 miles, while my teammates ran way more than that, so it made for a really fun weekend for me. Oddly enough – the most relaxing weekend I’ve had in a long time.

The Ragnar Relay took me back to the days of my youth for a bit. It was a lot like a softball tournament in that there were teams and comraderie, competition and goofy down-time. Because I only ran 11 (well, just over 11) miles, I was able to run all of my legs of the race pretty well. I averaged exactly 10-minute miles which was my goal, and I’m pleased that I met it because two of my legs had relatively big hills that were tough to conquer. I also ended up running at about 1:30 in the a.m., which was pretty exhasting, but way too much fun.

I’ve been asked a few times what my favorite part of the weekend was, and I change my answer every time. My current favorite is when Joseph and I were in neighboring porta-johns and he was loudly singing at the top of his lungs for all to hear (I think he was singing Poker Face). It was probably about 3:30 in the morning, and all of us were getting more than a little insane with sleep deprivation and single-mindedness on finishing the race. right after that, when we were walking back to our van, Joseph and I decided to jump over a low wall, which he did pretty suave-like, and I failed at… but I didn’t fall down so it’s okay. A few of our teammates were freaking out a little because they thought I might fall on my face and not be able to run my final leg. At that point, I reminded them that my final leg was 3.5 miles of completely downhill running, so they decided to quit worrying since it wouldn’t be a difficult leg for someone else to run.

And that was my weekend.

I get formally observed and evaluated at work today, and I need to catch up on a lot of critique partner reading, revising my own manuscript, and a bunch of other things.

I hope all of you had wonderfully relaxing weekends even if you didn’t get to run an awesome 200 mile race!

 

Dystopian Draw

Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me.

I love dystopias! There’s a warm place in my heart for them.

I know it sounds a little anti-establishment and trench-coat loner to love something so dark…

I know.

My heart has been troubled these past couple of days and I think I’ve figured out why. At first, I wasn’t going to write this post. I don’t want to write it because it’s another thing to add to the list of ways that I don’t fit. It’s another soap box that everyone is going to misinterpret and add to their file titled: Katie Is a Paranoid Weirdo. But there’s a sickened feeling in my stomach right now that I can’t ignore.

I shouldn’t ignore it.

For two nights in a row, I’ve been around friends watching YouTube videos. Forget the fact that I’d much rather talk to my friends than disengage from them and engage technology. That’s a problem, but let’s focus on the bigger issue for a bit. Of all the videos we watched, I can’t think of a single one that didn’t involve someone getting hurt or embarrassed.

This makes me sick.

I’m not just writing that. It isn’t a cliche bit of hyperbole.

It’s a deep feeling of shame and pain.

Let’s start with the merely embarrassing… I can be okay with watching people voluntarily doing ridiculous things. I can even be okay with some of the videos that were posted by a friend or relative of the embarassee. However, there are A LOT of videos on YouTube that feature a person unknowingly being filmed and broadcast for all to see. That bothers me. I don’t want peoples’ embarrassment accessible to everyone. I don’t want to be entertained by it.

Now, what about those videos that aren’t merely embarrassing? What about the one where a woman falls off a platform stage thingy and makes horrible noises because she can’t breathe? Not only did I see that video more times than I can count on my fingers, but my friends mercilessly mocked this news reporter. “I can’t breathe!” they’d say. They’d mimic the sound of her trying to catch her breath, and they’d laugh. At one point, the friend who introduced us to the video told us that the woman was badly injured (punctured a lung, he said)…

so what is there to do after that news but play the video again and laugh?*

And you know what really sucks? I fake-laughed along with them. I watched people falling down and getting hurt. I watched people’s cars getting jacked up. I watched and watched and watched. I thought about leaving the room, but stayed because I hate that I’m the girl who doesn’t have a Facebook profile, the one who doesn’t watch certain TV shows and movies, the one who goes to bed early (because it’s weird to be in bed before midnight). I’m the easy target. I stayed in the room because I cared more about what my friends thought than about what God thought.

And by the way, what does God think? Of course watching YouTube videos isn’t inherently evil… but is it evil to laugh at another person’s misfortune and calamity? Is it evil to sit down to hours of joy made possible by the most vulnerable moments in strangers’ lives?

I have to say yes. I whole-heartedly believe that what I’ve done for the past two nights is evil. And I’m ashamed.

You know why I love dystopias?

I love them because they aren’t a 4:00 clip of video that dehumanizes. Dystopias show us the context. They show us a life before the 4:00 clip and after. We’re a nation that mocks a woman who can’t breathe. How many steps is it before we laugh at death? Dystopias reveal the truth and danger of dehumanization. They humanize it.

I don’t read dystopias because I think the world is for sure going to hell and a hand basket. I read them because we all need to be reminded that what we’re laughing at isn’t funny. We need to be awakened to the gentle whisper of “that’s a person who is hurting.” I read them because I much prefer to take it too seriously when crap happens than to not take it seriously at all. That’s why I choose apocalyptic dystopias over YouTube any day.

*I did some research on the reporter in the grape video and found out that her name is Melissa Sander, and she wasn’t actually injured. Most likely, she just had the air knocked out of her.

 

Really Doing It Now

Image via Wikipedia

A weird thing happened this week.

You see, I put forth effort… and things started happening.

Let’s take a few steps back. A few weeks ago, Natalie Whipple organized some Critique Partner Classifieds on her blog. This is REALLY cool. Basically,  when you research writing and/or seeking publication everyone suggests that you join a critique group or find a few critique partners. It can be wonderful to have friends and family reading your writing (and I have a few of the best Friend Readers in the world), but they are limited in how they can advise.

Picture this:

Katie: Hey – best friend reader in the world – can you read this draft of my query letter? I’ve got two pages done and I think I’m going to send it out to 50 agents next week.

Friend: Hmmm… I think you need a comma here and this paragraph is a little wordy… but… looks good.

What Friend doesn’t realize is that I made at least 2 (and more like 3) REALLY BIG mess-ups in this example. Nor should Friend Reader be expected to know. Critique Partner, on the other hand, is also scouring the webs to figure out this whole getting published thing, so she knows that two pages of query will NOT get me picked out of the slush. She knows that mass-querying a form letter is death and will make agents hate me. Additionally, Crit. Partner knows what it feels like to receive a rejection after a partial request from the agent… the one I’m sure will want to rep me. She knows how hard it is to rewrite chapter 17 for the third time, only to find that it still isn’t right. Critique Partner is running the race with me, while Reader Friend is cheering from the bleachers.

So Critique Partner Classifieds… I sent a description of myself, my manuscript, and the kind of feedback I need to Natalie Whipple, who posted it on her blog.

I sorta hoped that was enough.

I thought I’d done all of the work there was to be done, and someone would read my ad and contact me.

Didn’t happen.

Nothing happened.

For more than two weeks.

But a few days ago, I remembered the classifieds and was feeling a little more motivated than usual, so I headed over to Between Fact and Fiction (that’s the title of Natalie’s blog) and read through the middle grade ads. I picked out about five of the ads and sent emails to each of the writers in those ads letting them know I was interested in partnering up.

It was fun.

Therefore, I moved on to the Young Adult ads and picked out a bunch of those for follow-up.

Now for the magic! This! morning! I! had several! responses! in my in-box!

And I’m giddy and gleeful about a few of them.

It feels like I’m really doing this now.

The one I’m most excited about is Amber. She’s 21 (I think – she has a blog, but I don’t feel much like clicking over right at this moment). She liked THE BOOK OF ELI and she writes Steampunk.

Steampunk!

Is that not the coolest sub genre you’ve ever heard of. It makes me want to convert. Why write MG Paranormal Fantasy when you can write STEAMPUNK!

Bam!

Forget the fact that I hadn’t any clue what steampunk is until after reading Amber’s ad and googling and wiki-ing it. I even went to Barnes and Noble today to make a few purchases and research steampunk a bit, and guess what?

The people who work there didn’t all know what it is… because only those of us who’re in the know know… and I am in the know.

 

The Obscuring Nature of Competency

Music

One of the things I’ve been looking forward to since buying my first iPod is sharing music with friends. My only obstacle is lack of musical expertise exacerbated by 3 years with little more than car radio experience. But other than that, I’m revved and ready.

A few days ago, I told Friend Shasta that she had to listen to a song that I’ve been crushing on lately: a Christina Perri song called “If I Die Young”

… a song that doesn’t exist.

Kimberly Perry, on the other hand, sings lead vocals for The Band Perry, which has a song called “If I Die Young”.

Clearly, I am incompetent.

I so wanted to show Shasta something new and awesome so that she’d be impressed with my musical knowledge and love me more.

I’ve always been like this. When I was in high school, Ludacris came out with a really inappropriate song that I hated. So naturally, I learned all of the lyrics :”I wanna li-li-li-lick you from your head to your toes…” yeah – it’s pretty bad. I learned them before any of my friends knew about the song so that they would recognize how completely impressive I was.

Softball

On a semi-regular basis, people ask me if I miss softball. Usually, it’s my mom asking, and she wants me to affirm that the decade it consumed our lives wasn’t wasted. She’d like for me to coach again at the high school I work at because there’s oh-so-much I can teach the youngsters.

My response to her is always the same: I wall up and close off, and explain that softball was an idol for me. I can’t go back to it. I can’t coach. I can’t play slow-pitch – the last time I did, I got pissed at a guy who was running the bases recklessly. He assumed that I was incompetent on the field because I’m a girl… so I got the ball, chased him down, tackled him, and got him out.

That’s why I tell my mom that I can never play again. Sure, I love hitting a bucket of balls every now and then, and I’d love to play a game with my closest friends

… but to anyone who thinks I ought to do anything more than that, IT’S AN IDOL.

My dad was never caught up in it the way my mom and I were. I’m sure he loved how good I was at it and the promise of college scholarships, but he didn’t bathe in it. He practiced with me for a couple of hours every day, but went home to other things, while my mom and I sat down to plan out every pitch of whatever tournament was up next.

That’s why I gave him a more genuine answer when he asked me the same question my mom’s been asking for years.

“Do you miss it?”

When I think about it, I don’t know that I loved softball all that much. What I loved was the respect and admiration I received because of it. Coaches for really good teams invited me to attend Nationals even when my team didn’t qualify. Reporters asked which University I’d signed with before I’d even been on an official visit. Parents advised their players to become friends with me. Little girls pointed out that my name was the same as theirs and I was a pitcher… and they wanted to pitch.

“It was really fun to be adored and admired. That’s what I miss,” I told my dad. “I miss having an area of competency.”

Without It

When you think about it, pretty much every person has an area of competency. Sure, we emphasize different competencies when we’re around different people. When I’m at work, faculty members want to talk about running because they see it as my area of competency. My writer friends want to talk about books and manuscripts. My geeky friends want to talk about graphic novels and Star Trek. People I’ve just met ask me about teaching. But whichever area of competency we start with defines the relati0nship. It defines me.

The thing is, I actually feel like I don’t have an area of competency at all. Of course I was better at softball than I’ll ever be as a runner or a geek, but it’s more than that. It isn’t that I’m not good at things – it’s more like I’m just not the go-to expert on anything… and I’m starting to think that’s a good thing.

Competency obscures the truth. It obscures our perceptions of people.

When I played softball and talked about it all the time, people didn’t see Katie… they saw KJ – softball queen extraordinaire. Which was okay with me. As long as people looked at softball, they saw something I was good at. They were impressed.

It’s a much more authentic thing to NOT have an area of competency – to stop impressing

to be Katie even when Katie is a failure.

 

“Who Knows What Kind of Trouble…”

More life stuff from Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook by Mazer/Potter:

Whenever I sit down to begin a new story, I get this hopped-up, jittery feeling – equal parts excitement and raw nerves. Anything can happen! Who knows what kind of trouble my characters are going to get themselves into? Who knows what sort of peculiar people or flesh-eating insects they might encounter? Ooo, I can’t wait to begin… (pg. 77)

I’m embarking on a few new stories nowadays, and I’m pretty jittery about all the trouble I might find.    Here’s to writing, querying agents, running the Ragnar, and embracing Revolution!