Category Archives: Reading

Runity: Backity!

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IMG_2182I’m back!

And if you’re reading this, so are you!

Isn’t this nice? Us, together, here in this space of running, vanity, honesty, and accountability? Let’s stay here as long as we can.

Since my last post, the world has spun into agonizing extremes of flame and beauty. Volcanoes spewed and snow crushed and guns exploded and babies drew their first breaths and people graduated and made art and got new jobs and earned promotions and pledged to spend eternity together, while other people watched their planned eternities in residences or jobs or marriages or promotions or aspirations or all of those things burn to the ground.

What a world, what a world.

Version 2Here in the 9-2-0, since February, I got kissed on the top of my head by R.L. Stine during the annual book festival I help organize (important note: this moment was emphatically non-creepy, and R.L. Stine is one of the most generous, funny, and kind writers I’ve ever encountered). That’s probably the high point. I mean, what else could there be?

Other highlights: I got to listen to, work with, and teach other exceptional writers, both nascent and acclaimed. The campus press I’m founding is coming together. I WROTE NEW FLASH FICTION!! (Details and publication forthcoming in August). A dear friend visited and shared with my colleagues how she changes lives through teaching and writing. My kids sang and performed and my mother shared her wisdom and my father shared his support and my husband experienced new life as an administrator—and all the while, good friends kept me surrounded by laughter, great stories, entertainments, and alcohol.

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The cats were therapeutic as well. They do good work, these cats.

And through it all, I didn’t run. And then I did run. And I had a strange back/neck/injury diagnosed now as “tennis elbow,” which is cute considering I don’t play.

“It could be caused by sleep,” one expert told me. Which fits, because sleeping is my best sport.

Oddly, the elbow/forearm feels better after I run! “Circulation helps,” three out of three experts agreed. Isn’t the human body is a marvel and a mystery?

All the while, for the purposes of RUNITY, this very blog, I took running /walking selfies every day, and chronicled the change of seasons from the bullsh*t snow to the tenacious spring to the humid insanity of now.

Cue the April-May-June montage!

Runity5.jpegWhat are you seeing here? I see a fair amount of walking. I see some cruddy runs. I also see some great runs—including my first 5.3 miler and first 6 miler of the season (last week, rah!) I also see a person who ate a lot of bugs. Someone who applied ample amounts of Aveda’s Foot Relief Creme to toes and arches and heels.  (Tip: this is a wonder lotion. I swear by it.) Someone who applied ample amounts of thigh lube, and still chafed anyway.

RUNITY STATUS REPORTS

Mileage, volume, pace

As of June 29, I’m averaging 3 runs per week.

I run every other day or every two days. Yes, I have gone over a week without running a least a few times.

Specifically, I’m doing two runs of 3 or 4 miles plus one “long slow distance run” per week. The longest of these LSDs so far was last week’s 6-miler. It was long and slow, indeed.

I am not keeping track of my pace, but I’d guess it’s around 10:30 to 11 minutes/mile. Maybe even 12-12:30 min/mile.

 Plans and goals

I like what I’m doing now. If I feel like it, I’ll try to increase my LSD by small increments over many weeks. That’s generally how summer running goes for me. Maybe, if I want to, I’ll reach a long run of 9 or 11 miles by summer’s end.

 Or not! Nine miles is the distance that, to me, feels like a true churn, and running only gets harder and more boring as I go longer. This is chiefly because I am  S.      O.          

S.                  L.                         O.                              W. 

We’ll see.

 What’s in my earbuds

“My Favorite Murder” podcast—this is on whenever I’m running and often when I’m not running. I’ll say more on this podcast in another post. I adore it. I just joined the Fan Cult. I’ve bought merch.  (Thanks to my student Jordan for this life-changing recommendation!)

“Fresh Air” podcast— most recently Terry Gross’s interview with David Sedaris, who makes some pretty dark, cold, and funny pronouncements. He’s always a wonderfully candid guest on that show.

“The RFK Tapes”—a podcast which I never normally would ever care about. Like, if you said to me, “Hey! The RFK Tapes podcast is really great!” I’d normally tell you to leave me alone, ya fruitcake. But here I am, listening and eagerly awaiting the next installment (two weeks from now?!)

Audiobook— Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, as read by the author. This is my first experience with Bourdain, who I only decided to listen to because of all of the positive, nearly ecstatic reviews of his life, work, and writing after his death. So far, I love this book, I love his writing, and his reading voice is a gritty, self-deprecating, incisive pleasure as I plod along.

Other motivators

Cute running shorts!

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A basket full of cute running shorts!

Also: my route is so green and lush and lovely. I can only run outdoors, not on tracks or treadmills, and this is why.

Also: it’s fawn season! And turkey season! I’ll say more on the new wildlife around here later.

Teaser: What kind of baby bird did I rescue/terrify/menace before my Wednesday run? (see below)

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I’ll tell you later!

Meanwhile, I feel for you, baby bird. You’re out of the nest with few skills, unable to see above the grass, with only the chirps of your parents (and one fumbling human) to guide you.

The one thing you do have, though, is a helluva voice. And boy, do you use it, despite how tiny and vulnerable you seem.

What a world, what a world.

Hope this fledgling makes it.

Hope you are making it, too.

Yours in Runity,

Rebecca

Runity: A Journal of Running + Vanity + Accountability + Honesty

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IMG_0395What motivates us? I ask this of my undergrad novelists-to-be, as I find ways to motivate them towards a 50,000-word draft goal. Not all our motivations are virtuous or attractive, I say. We might be motivated by doing a job well, or by the shame of failing a class. Or both.

As a writer, I admit my motivations are usually both pretty and petty, at once open-hearted and full of fangs. A story or chapter can spring from these two forces equally, as in:

a) Neat! A new idea!(Oooh, shiny overheard conversation! Or, let’s solve this structure puzzle!) and

b) Screw you, buddy (I could totally write that book better than [imaginary nemesis], and I could totally win that contest).

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Authors, support your local bookstore, and they will support you. And you will support them. And they will…

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The circle of support begins here.

The signing table: my place in the circle of support.

Last night, I gave a reading from my new flash fiction collection, Morbid Curiosities. I love giving readings, and this one was a lot of fun (for me, at least). It was delightful to listen to my audience help (as I’d assigned! I had handouts!) to give these stories voice. The reading was at Green Bay, Wisconsin’s The Reader’s Loft, a gorgeous, spacious, independent bookstore with dark wood shelves and plush velvet chairs and two large kittens merrrowing through the aisles. (In the middle of reading, I heard a crash, and immediately thought, “Yep. Kitten-work.”)

This is not a post about the superiority of independent bookstores over chain bookstores. To be clear, as a writer, I was thrilled when my first story collection, Let’s Do, was selected for Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program. That selection allowed me to read and sign books in nearly any city in the U.S. and resulted in a great web review from the program, as well as my family’s thrill in, say, Springfield, Missouri, to snap a picture of my book on the shelf.

One of the polaroids snapped by the event coordinator at a local Barnes & Noble.

A polaroid snapped by the local BN events coordinator for my reading of Let’s Do.

But when it came to giving readings in my area, it was both the chain bookstores as well as the independent Reader’s Loft that welcomed me with the warmest, most open arms. The event coordinator at Barnes and Noble, Grand Chute, filled the front window with my book, draped a table in gold cloth, and made a pyramid of books on top of it. She gave me polaroids of the display. The Green Bay coordinator wrote a glowing review for the B&N internal newsletter and staged a great event as well.

As a writer, I was grateful for their creativity in promoting my work. As a reader, all of these stores earned a loyal customer. Actually, customers, since my husband and daughters and mother love to read—and buy— books.

On the way out of The Reader’s Loft last night, I asked the out-of-print specialist—a man I love to talk books with every time we stop in— if we sold a lot of copies of my book. Yes, he told me. But also: the event sold a good number of other books. I know this for a fact: my mother came home with the gigantic (expensive!) new Doris Kearns Goodwin tome. My colleagues bought Spring Break reads.

I’m kind of slow, so it’s taken me this long to realize that sometimes, it’s not just about what others can do to sell your book. In fact, it feels equally good to participate in bringing others to great bookstores, engrossing reads, and conversations about reading.

Last night, a friend who’d never stepped foot inside Reader’s Loft marveled, “Wow. This is a beautiful bookstore! I’m definitely coming back with my children.”

Yes, she bought a copy of my book. But better yet, I helped make a wholly different kind of sale.

 

(You can find my books locally on shelves in The Reader’s Loft, and online in these venues.)