3 Lessons Learned about Fitness from a Recent Novel

By AB Plum

On my January 5^th morning walk, I dodged an oncoming car. I banged into a cement barrier, broke 4 toes, sprained my ankle, and bruised a tendon. During the slow recovery—no weight-bearing exercise—I read a lot. The book I was looking forward to the most proved the most disappointing.

Why?

Maybe I was grumpy from being confined to a wheelchair for a month and wanted some vicarious exercise. I could’ve chosen from an array of main female characters who swim, row, box, jog, hike, climb rock walls, practice Tai’chi, and a myriad of other physical activities.

Instead, I selected a bestseller in which one of the main characters exercised by eating too many potato chips and pizza.  She played basketball as a teenager, but Life 101 intervened and    . . . okay, I got it. I was, after all,  reading her story because of Life 101.

But here’s one lesson I learned:  Authors should avoid putting a woman with the fitness level of 0 in a series of scenes where she’s drugged, kept in a car trunk unconscious, breaks her collarbone, fights mano a mano with the bad guy, and wins. Compared to this character, I’d suffered no physical impairment—yet I could barely walk after weeks of taking care of my injuries.  Did the Author really want me to suspend logic?

Yes, adrenaline propels us to lift cars and other Herculean feats in emergencies, but c’mon.

Second lesson learned:  Authors lose the hard-earned loyalty of their fans with this kind of character portrayal.  I’ve read everything this author has published, but I’ll think twice about buying her next book.

There’s at least one other lesson here:  The big-time critics gave this book rave reviews. Across the board. I should’ve read the reader reviews.  No matter what, we writers cannot fool our audience.

By the way, I think the same lessons apply to male characters who somehow morph into Superman. I just didn’t read any of those while waiting to begin my morning walks again.

What about you? Are you more forgiving of an author’s over-the-top characterization for the sake of entertainment? Do you have favorite heroines who exercise regularly?

AB Plum writes psychological suspense about jealousy, revenge, and murder. Her newest novella, The MisFit, is coming soon.

Surviving Fitness Stuff

SURVIVING FITNESS STUFF by Debra H. Goldstein

This month, Bethany challenged all of the members of the Stiletto Gang to think about and possibly write a post revealing our thoughts on “Author Fitness.” She specifically asked: “What do you do to keep yourself in shape for writing?  Anything physical (running, meditation, secret wrist stretches) or mental (journaling, daily free writes, writing by hand) that you do weekly or daily to keep you on your writing game.”

Because Linda has been ill with a nasty bug this past week, I’m posting for her.  I think it is a safe bet to say none of the above would be Linda’s response this week. Consequently, before I write my response, join me in wishing Linda a speedy recovery by leaving a comment.

My answer also is nothing.  It’s not that I haven’t tried.  I tried water aerobics with a trainer a few years ago.  When she said, “Raise your right arm,” I complied. Although I felt a sharp pain, I attributed it to being out of shape not to having just torn my rotator cuff. I pressed on with exercising for several weeks before an examination revealed a tear necessitating surgery.  Perhaps the morphine helped my creative thinking at that point in time.

Earlier this year, I signed up for a F.I.T. class.  Let me give you the entire perspective of this class.  It

was taken at a new gym that my husband and I recently had joined.  Previously, we were members at two different gyms, so we thought it would be nice to consolidate and actually go to the same place when we exercised.  Two of our friends accompanied us to the try-out afternoon.  As she and I were ambling on two of the many treadmills, my friend leaned over and whispered, “I don’t see our kind of people here.” She was right.  Everyone in our line of sight was buff, handsome, beautiful, and able to wear spandex without it clinging to their bodies.  Still, my husband and I joined and I even coughed up extra for the F.I.T. class.  When I arrived at my first session, I looked around at the other women and realized “I had found my people.” Even with their comfort and support, I washed out after a few months when I got dizzy jumping from pushups on the floor to jumping jacks and then dropping for ten more. 

Next, I tried a personal trainer.  He was kind, he was smart, and he quickly realized I wasn’t going to be one of those people who strives for a marathon or high intensity exercise level. I was assuring him my goal was merely to be healthy by losing some weight when I did a sit-up and something in my back popped.  Between epidurals, physical therapy, and plain old doctor visits, I didn’t have time (or permission) to exercise. 

Now, I’m back in the pool, but with my signing schedule for Should Have Played Poker being so crazy, who knows what calamity exercise might induce?  I’m not sure, but I’m not going to take any chances.

Personal Fitness

by Bethany Maines

I’m going to let you in on a secret – writing is not for wussies.  It’s for old people.

   

Or at least it makes you feel old. Carpal tunnel. Eye twitches and strains. Aching neck, sore back. The human body was not designed to spend hours sitting at a computer, and the hours compound into stiff muscles that have forgotten how to move.  Walking into the kitchen after a prolonged bout of editing, I look like I've escaped from the neighborhood old-person jail... er... assisted living facility.  I imagine that back when writers were churning out novels by quill and candlelight that it wasn’t any better.  But at least back then we were likely to die by forty anyway and probably needed to worry more about childbirth and dental hygiene than whether or not our wrists were a tad achy.

I could trot out some line about suffering for my art, but the truth is, I do many things to combat the muscular stress of sitting and writing.  First of all, I got married and had a kid.  Although, maybe that wasn’t quite my intended outcome when I started down the aisle, it has to be said that nothing curtails long hours at a computer like a toddler. However, the things I intentionally do to keep myself from becoming Quasimodo include walking / jogging, stretching and keeping up on my martial arts training.  And then I whine and complain until my husband gives me a neck rub.  And then when all else fails I break down and pay for a massage.

Below are the most common stretches I do for my wrists.  These drawings were actually produced by one of my former employers – Visual Health Information.  They produce drawings for physical therapists and others to give to patients.  I have found all of these to be very helpful for my extended typing lifestyle.

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Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of Destiny and An Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Writing Fitness

In January, I wrote a blog about “Resolution as Metaphor” where I spoke about my two New Year’s resolutions (to carry less in my purse and drink more water) and wondered what those resolutions said about me. I decided, “Lightness and water are two ideas associated with movement and flow. They enable the journey and keep the adventurer fueled to seek new possibilities.”

Currently, I’ve been reading Jordan Rosenfeld’s A Writer’s Guide to Persistence (Writer’s Digest Books 2015). Most of the chapters conclude with two sections, a “Work It” segment that provides ideas to consider about your writing practice and routines, and a “Move It” segment that offers suggestions for adding movement to a writer’s sedentary lifestyle. In her first “Move It” segment (p.10), Rosenfeld points out, “Any time you’ve been sitting for an hour or more, your body makes preparations to go into ‘shutdown’ mode—essentially it’s preparing for death. Yikes!”

Yikes, indeed!

An online article from Women’s Health discussed how the “sitting disease” can lead to heart disease and obesity and perhaps shorten your life. The article indicated that long periods of sitting may (1) cause fluid buildup in your legs leading to sleep apnea; (2) encourage fat cells in your body to create twice as much fat; (3) cause blood sugar to spike after meals; (4) decrease brain activity, giving you more senior moments; and (5) make blood flow more sluggish, increasing the possibility of developing blood clots in the lungs. (See The Risks of a Sedentary Lifestyle: Stand Up for Your Health by Tracy Erb Middleton, published August 6, 2012.) The article suggested: “The key to fighting sitting disease lies in augmenting your routine with something called NEAT, or nonexercise activity thermogenesis. Translation: low-impact movements that keep your metabolism humming and your circulation flowing.”

Writing fitness was addressed recently in a guest message on Lois Winston’s Anastasia Pollock blog by Kay C. Burns, a registered nurse who writes suspense mystery. Kay also mentioned that writing for long periods without breaks can lead to backache, eye strain, wrist strain, general weakness, headache, fatigue, isolation, and depression. She recommended that writers get sufficient sleep, stay hydrated, eat healthy, stay active, control weight, and manage stress. She quoted author C. Hope Clark, who in her book The Shy Author Reborn and an online post for Colleen M. Story’s blog Writing and Wellness emphasized that keeping healthy was essential to good writing. Hope’s routine included getting plenty of sleep, drinking lots of liquids, gentle exercise, and socializing.

Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Jefferson, and Winston Churchill all were supposed to have written while standing. In his letters, Kurt Vonnegut mentioned that he walked, swam, and did push ups and sit ups.

In a 2006 online article titled “Exercises for Writers and Other Desk Slaves,” Elsa O’Neal suggests some gentle movements based on yoga poses to help vary the position of tired eyes, necks, wrists, fingers, stomachs, legs, and feet. These exercises can be done while seated at a desk, so there’s no excuse not to stop briefly, stretch, and vary position before plunging forward with a writing project. If time is a factor, take a look at Colleen M. Story’s message on Writing and Wellness for “How to Boost Your Health in Less Than a Minute a Day.” She recommends not only exercise and fluids, but also chocolate and laughter. Surely, those are reasons to give yourself a writing break to improve your productivity!

What do you do to safeguard your health and enhance your writing?

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A legislative attorney and former law librarian, Paula Gail Benson’s short stories have appeared in Kings River Life, the Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Mystery Times Ten 2013 (Buddhapuss Ink), A Tall Ship, a Star, and Plunder (Dark Oak Press and Media 2014), A Shaker of Margaritas: That Mysterious Woman (Mozark Press 2014), and Fish or Cut Bait: a Guppy Anthology (Wildside Press 2015). She regularly blogs with others about writing mysteries at the Stiletto Gang and Writers Who Kill. Her personal blog is Little Sources of Joy and her website is http://paulagailbenson.com.