Author: Holly

The Summer Book

When a new Harry Potter book was coming out each summer, I’d pick it up from the library and sit out back reading all day, with trips inside for snacks and drinks. I really missed that when the series ended! But I found my substitute for this year: Frances Hardinge’s The Lost Conspiracy. The culture clashes and dirty politics feel real, the plot keeps twisting, and there are 566 pages. (I’ve read about 200.) I’m so glad this year’s Battle of the Kids’ Books put it on my radar.

So that’s what I was reading out back in the sunshine today– it felt like the first day of summer. When I wasn’t reading, I fixed up our bikes so Sanguinity and I can go to the farmers market tomorrow if we want. I made potato salad and threw some otter pops in the freezer. The doors and windows were open, and there was always a lawnmower in earshot. Now I’m good and tired, and I didn’t even go running.

Forest Park 50k

I often wish that writing had events like running has races. Writing has deadlines. Ugh. Running has RACE DAY, when you wake up suddenly, eat your breakfast out of a sense of duty, line up all chilly and goose-bumped– and then you go out and do it. I haven’t found a way to feel that performance aspect in writing.

Yesterday Sanguinity and LeBoyfriend saw me off at the Forest Park 50k. I ended up walking 80 percent of the course because of knee pain, and finished only 15 minutes before the time limit. My time was something like 8 hours and 45 minutes. If it had been a training run on my own, I’m sure I would have packed it in long before 31 miles. But it was a training run (for July’s PCT 50-miler) and race day.

The time on my feet was valuable in itself, because I’ll be trundling along for 13 hours in July. I’ll just need to do it faster!

It was a lovely soft overcast day in the woods. I heard a pair of owls calling back and forth, and saw several of the little gray mice they probably love to eat. The thimbleberries are still green, but a few salmonberries were ripe. The trail was plenty muddy, but that’s spring in Portland.

The training notes I made seem so, so obvious to me now.

  • Have fresh socks and maybe a spare pair of shoes waiting at aid stations. Sometimes any pair of shoes that’s different from what’s hurting is a nice change! And once I was out of the mud-pit, clean socks would have saved my feet some abrasion.
  • Tuck a ziploc bag into a pocket to carry food away from the aid station. I was limited by the capacity of my grubby little hands, and happily would have scarfed another pop-tart or two.
  • Know the names of the trails before starting out and carry a little map. I met one unfortunate soul who had gotten turned around and did the terminal loop twice– two trips down the insane muddy slope that felt more like orienteering than a trail run. Another straggler told me she’d wandered around crying for an hour wondering if she was still on the race course. Her friends in the race had found themselves unexpectedly in a residential neighborhood somewhere. The colored-tape markings could have been better near trail intersections– but I think Forest Park also has a tape-vandalism problem. In any case, it’s silly to rely completely on markings.

A couple of times, my experience gave me the pleasant feeling of being able to cope. I went down the wrong path for a few switchbacks, but I figured it out, got back on course, and let it go. I was hours slower than I’d hoped, but except for some chagrin at keeping Sang and LeB out all day, it didn’t really get to me. That steadiness is definitely not a personality trait– it’s something that training and racing has given me, and I love it. It’s like not freaking out over free-writing or a short writing assignment: some days are better than others, no big deal.

Of course, I’m not so unflappable that I don’t love having my amazing crew to take care of me. It wasn’t until I had eaten some finish-line food and we were ready to go that Sang and LeB revealed that the car had broken down (again) and transportation home would take a bit of doing. You know you’re a real ultrarunner when your crew starts strategically keeping secrets from you!

Book-Based Holidays

Towel Day is still a bleeding-edge holiday here in Portland. No one asked about my towel (granted, it was a discreet purple hand towel), and the only other towel I saw in the wild was at the nerdy Science Pub talk on parasites.

I did ponder the meaning of Towel Day and how much I like Douglas Adams, as I walked around with towel in hand, but in part of me was simply excited to observe a book-related holiday. There’s Towel Day, and Bloomsday– any others?

How to Write a Lot

I have what Anne Lamott might call a teeny little addiction to how-to-write books. Yes, I am aware that many of them strongly resemble each other. But the one I’m reading now is different, and it’s fun! It’s How to Write a Lot, by Paul J. Silvia, Ph.D. The reason I don’t roll my eyes at the degree in the byline is that it’s published by the APA and written for academic writers in the social sciences.

I skipped a few sections, like the chapter on style and the overview of the different parts of an empirical article, but the main thrust of the book, i.e. how to write a lot, applies perfectly to me. What’s more, unlike hand-waving books that make similar points, this one backs up its claims with inline citations. So appealingly nerdy! The author even tracks his writing time in SPSS. My day job is with social-work researchers, but this book is the first thing that’s actually made me want to learn SPSS.

In case you don’t share my quirks and don’t read this book, the message is simple: make a writing schedule, then carry it out. That will pretty much solve your problems. There are tips on setting goals and priorities and staying motivated, but they won’t help you if you don’t make a schedule and stick to it.

How to Write a Lot is more bossy buddy than anything else, but sometimes that’s just what I need. I appreciate the cheerfully opinionated: “Instead of writing review articles, people who don’t outline should drive to the local animal shelter and adopt a dog, one that will love them despite their self-defeating and irrational habits.” (Awright, a puppy! Just kidding. I outline…sort of. Sometimes.)

“What kind of tree is that?”

It may well be that when I did get started writing I chose to inhabit the ignominious swamp of children’s literature because I knew I was just not good enough to write real books about human relations and sex–not good enough because I don’t know my ash from my elm.
–Daniel Pinkwater in Chicago Days, Hoboken Nights

That’s from one of my favorite parts of the book– Pinkwater recounts Isaac Babel’s story “The Awakening,” in which a boy who wants to be a writer despairs because he doesn’t have a “feel for nature” or know any names and facts about the natural world. In the bad biopic of Gustav Mahler that Pinkwater was watching, that bit was stolen wholesale and plunked in, so that suddenly little Gustav is being lectured by the Wise Old Man: “How can you be a composer when you don’t know the names of trees?”

Pinkwater thinks it’s ridiculous in both cases. I’m happy to join him in the ignominious swamp, but I do want to know, and I was excited for Tree Identification class at Irving Park this morning. The prospect of fast-food breakfast on the way sealed the deal.

We got to the park at nine a.m. and followed some likely-looking tree nerds (rain gear, knapsacks) to the picnic shelter, where we got handbooks and doughnuts and reflective VOLUNTEER vests so no one would run us over or call the cops as we gathered in front of their houses to inspect the “street trees” in the planting strip. I saw two looks askance at my McDonald’s cup, but it wasn’t all Concerned Progressives. One guy was barefoot and informed us that lindens are one of the rare trees with edible leaves, which have a pleasant, mild flavor. Indeed they did.

Other tidbits:

  • Honey locusts don’t grow that well here; they’re always a little thin and spindly. Therefore, they’re planted in front of the Portland Building so that people can look up through the leaves and see Portlandia!
  • The wood of dogwood trees was used to make skewers called “dags,” and the tree was called “dagwood,” which morphed into “dogwood.”
  • The dawn redwood is Oregon’s official state fossil. It grew here for millions of years, but was thought to be long extinct. In the 1940s, Chinese scientists found them growing in Hubei province in central China. A team from Harvard brought some back to the U.S. in 1948, and today I saw one in somebody’s yard, looking sassy.

So watch my stories for tree names– maybe I’ll become a bona fide regional writer yet. ;)