Trail of Second Chances, Chapter 1

The current work in progress, Trail of Second Chances, is a novel about Becca Hawthorne, an elite teenage runner attending a training camp high in the mountains of Montana, where the wild things live. This is Chapter 1 - as with other work I post, this is unedited and subject to change... Plan to have it ready by summer next year... if you see typos, feel free to let me know and I'll fix it. Thanks!

Trail of Second Chances, Chapter 1

Becca felt sweat roll down her temples as the plastic mask threatened to suffocate her.

“Don’t quit,” her father Rob said in a quiet voice. He stood beside her as she pounded away on the treadmill.

She gave him a withering look and continued to run. On the other side of him sat sixty-three runners attending the Bitterroot Running Clinic. They were arranged in a semi-circle to watch her get measured for oxygen uptake – how much air she could process while she ran. Runners shortened it to VO₂ max and it was one of the holy grails of runner performance.

The plastic mask was attached to tubing, sending the used air to an analyzer that would beep once when she reached the point where she couldn’t use any more air. When she hit exhaustion, she thought. The thought triggered another bout of claustrophobia and the mask pressed tighter to her cheeks.

“Keep digging, Becca, you can do this.”

On the other side of the treadmill, monitoring the equipment was Jim Eagle, cross country coach at Bridger College in Missoula, her father’s best friend, and, unofficially, her uncle.

“You’re doing great, Becca. Just hang in a little longer,” said Eagle, his dark eyes scanning the instruments. A former Olympian in the 5,000 meters, the coach was a small, intense man and a full-blooded Nez Perce Indian. He was an alternate when the man ahead of him, a young hotshot from UCLA, blew out both an Achilles’ tendon and his running career at the same time in a pick-up basketball game.

The incline on the treadmill went up another percentage point and Becca struggled to keep up. Gulping air, she tucked her chin down as her thighs started to burn. The acid was building. This was the third time she had been tested – her father volunteered her every year when she came to camp – and she knew that it was almost over as she felt her chest heave in the effort to keep up with the relentless pace of the treadmill.

This is the way the stupid mouse feels, she thought, a picture of a small white rodent chasing through a maze while people is white lab coats took notes. The sweat was coming off in rivulets, and her shirt was plastered to her back. She felt the wobble in her shoulders and tried to hide it.

“Keep going,” said Rob Hawthorne just as the machine signaled the end of the test. The deck of the treadmill began to drop as the belt slowed. Becca slowed with it.

“Can I take off the mask?” she asked, panting, voice muffled by the plastic. She looked at Eagle, eyes pleading.

“Sure, go ahead,” he replied.

She reached behind her head and struggled to get the elastic bands at the back loosened while she kept running, dropping pace to match the slowing belt. It clung to her sweaty face before detaching with a sucking pull. Becca, her lungs already in recovery, dragged in a great, gasping breath.

The treadmill slowed to a stop and Becca stepped off, legs unsteady on the motionless floor. Her dad handed her a water bottle and she took several gulps, the icy water sending a welcome chill down her throat. As she was reaching for a towel to wipe off with, Eagle threw the data from her test up onto a large screen monitor.

Her eyes, along with those of the other runners, tracked to the screen where three lines were traced, blue for oxygen, red for carbon monoxide and yellow for heart rate. Where the red and blue crossed is where it hurt.

“You’ve improved,” murmured Rob analyzing the graph. “But you still have some room to grow.” He glanced at her. “Good job.”

She threw her towel in the corner and went to sit with the other campers.

Eagle left the monitoring equipment and stood by the monitor.

“Okay, here is how this works.” Quickly he explained the lines and what the axes represented -  oxygen consumption on one axis, time on the other.

“As you can see, Becca was running easily and had no trouble get enough air in early – see the gap?” he asked pointing to the chart at the five minute mark, “but when we got to the end of the test, that gap narrowed until the lines crossed.”

Eagle looked over the group. “Uptake isn’t the only factor we look at in running and some of you are probably very accomplished runners even without high uptakes. Running economy – how efficient you are – makes a huge difference.

“Becca has both. Her scores here, a 68.7 VO₂ max is superior, especially for a high school athlete. Elite, well-trained females can get to about 75, guys can get to about 85 though scores over 90 have been recorded.”

He thumbed the clicker in his hand and the screen revealed another chart. Becca recognized it and saw the point where the panic attack almost caused her to fall on the treadmill her freshman year.

“This is Becca two years ago. As you can see, she’s improved a great deal. That’s the good news. You can improve uptake. The bad news is that you can only improve it this much,” he said holding his hands apart about a foot. “That’s why we’re focusing on form this year. The base miles and speed work are great and you need those but most of you get it in your programs already.”

He nodded to Rob Hawthorne. “The goal this year is to help you make those miles and the speed more effective by helping you become more efficient. Coach Hawthorne, for those that don’t know him, is one of the top coaches in Montana, and an expert at developing form.”

Heads turned to Becca’s dad but she kept her eyes on Jim Eagle. Her dad was an expert. She knew that, had listened to his instructions to drop her arms, tuck her elbows, increase her back kick until she was ready to puke.

Eagle smiled. “And I promise this is the last really nerdy thing we’re going to do here. Those of you who have been to the Bitterroot Running Clinic know the routine. We’ll have an easy run in the morning, followed by breakfast and a lecture. Afternoons are play time – we have the river right there so we can go tubing or swimming – or you can take a nap. We’ll do an evening run, a short one before dinner. That one is optional. Nights we relax and play some games.”

The athletes, a mix of young men and women, were getting restless. Eagle recognized the signs. His runners, some of them, were only a year or two older than Becca.

“Okay, enough,” he said. “Time to load up. Let’s head for the mountains.”

Runners scrambled to their feet, eager to be moving.

Her dad intercepted her as she walked toward the vans that would ferry them to the cabins.

“You did a good job in there,” he said. He reached for one of her bags. “Want some help?”

“I got it,” she said, half-turning away from him.

He withdrew the offending hand and started to walk with her. “This is a good opportunity for you.”

Becca turned her head to watch the first of the kids loading their sleeping bags and clothes into the back of the van, squashing the bags to make room.

“Becca.”

She stopped because he did and turned to face him.

“What, Dad? What’s a great opportunity?”

Annoyance lit his eyes briefly before disappeared with the smallest of head shakes. His tone had a slightly reproving edge as he said, “You’re an upperclassman now. You have a chance to show the younger kids,” he indicated them with his head, the gangly freshmen with the pinched scared look, “what it takes to be a runner. A lot of these kids, the girls at least, look up to you.”

She looked them over and then returned her gaze to her dad but staring at his shoulder, not his eyes.

“They shouldn’t.”

A sigh. “But they will and you can’t change that. It comes with the territory. There’s not a girl over there that doesn’t wish she could run like you. Probably,” he said but not boasting, “none of them ever will. They’ll never win State, they’ll never go to the Foot Locker Championships except as a spectator.” He waited while his words sunk in.

“So what am I supposed to do, Coach Hawthorne?” She regretted it as soon as she said it. At practice, he was Coach but the rest of the time he was just Dad.

“For starters, you might try acting like you want to be here,” he said. Annoyance crept into his voice.

Becca felt her lips tighten and her body get rigid. It’s you I don’t want here, she thought but she said, “I like the Clinic just fine. And I like the kids mostly.”

She could feel her dad staring at her, and she sneaked a glance at his face. The anger was gone, replaced by resignation.

“Okay,” he said, in a subdued voice, “I understand.” He spoke his words carefully. “You have any opportunity and it might be the only one you get. You don’t get a second chance at this.”

Becca shot an angry glance at him.

“Teach them that, if you can,” he said, his eyes intense, “to seize the opportunity.”

Becca leaned her head against the warm glass and felt the vibration of the engine, quick and steady, lulling her. Her father was right. The young runners, the girls, had all treated her like she was different and wouldn’t even look at her as they asked questions, half afraid that she would do…what?

That first Foot Locker, when she was a freshman and still scared, she had finished in a disappointing – to her and, she supposed, to her dad – 21^st place. She remembered the look in the eyes of the girls – the nationally recognized racers, the ones that got written up in the running magazines. They all had the same look. She wondered if they shared the same feeling.

All I want to do is run…

The Self-confidence to Market a Book

A comment yesterday on a writer's blog by an author who felt she didn't have the self-confidence to market a book fascinated me because she's already written a book, an act that requires a ton of backbone. This seems to be a big hang-up for many writers, and one reason that many look at a traditional publisher for their work rather than self-publishing. The expectation is that the publisher will handle all the icky stuff while the writer focuses on the next novel or book. From what I have read this is an unrealistic view - most publishers appear to want the author to market their own work, absorb all the expenses and pay for the 'opportunity.'

The author mentioned that she fluctuates -  "One day I think the book is amazing, the next, it's all horse manure."

My family will recognize this. On a good day, I have a huge ego and everything is great, or at least, fixable. The other days I hide under the bed, convinced that it's all crap, every word. Writing anything for public consumption is a tremendous act of faith. First, that you have a story or an idea worth sharing. And, if you do, can you translate that idea into written words that will make the reader feel they story. Creativity and craft, the two touchstones of writing, held together by persistence until a book is birthed.

Finally, after you've poured yourself into that story, it's done, and ready to send out to the public - whether through a publisher or on your own. That's your work, your feeling, your joy. And you just exposed it to the masses.

Writing a book and offering it to a reader is a bit like stripping naked on Main Street and shouting "Look at me!" The very act takes guts which is why so many books sit, finished, in the author's upper left hand drawer, where no one will ever see it, no one will see what an amazing thing that you have created.

On the low ego days, the days when 'it's all horse manure," you remember that you're naked, and you have to trust yourself and your instincts and, most of all, your readers.

You don't need more self-confidence to market a book- you've probably got plenty. It only goes from amazing to manure in your head. What you need is more trust in your craft and your readers.

A Contest for FREE Copy of A Walk with Rose

I am interested in getting opinions on some ideas that my terrific cover designer, Kit Foster of the UK, has come up with for A Walk with Rose. As a thank you, I will be giving away a free copy of the story to one person, selected at random, from anybody that comments or votes on the covers.

If you would like a chance to win a copy of A Walk with Rose, just let me know which cover think is the bestPick the one that you prefer and let me know in the comments or, if you would like to email me, use the contact info on that tab.

The contest will end on October 7th, 2013.

Many, many thanks!

Paul Duffau

Ps. A Reminder that 25 percent of the profits will go to the Lewis Clark Animal Shelter.

PPS. If you would like to read the first Act of the story, you can here. Please remember that it is an unedited version. New and improved is on the way.

Making Decisions

People hate, hate, hate making decisions and will do almost anything to avoid having to do so. They find it so challenging that they will willing and enthusiastically allow others to make a decision for them. If you doubt it, wait until your spouse comes home from a hard day at work and ask him or her what they want for dinner. I bet the answer is....whatever, you decide. Anybody that is involved in sales recognizes this - the client who procrastinates on picking the house and wants to see one more listing, the car buyer who wants to try that red job at the corner of the lot that's almost exactly the same as the blue one he's sitting in, the child that can't make up her mind on which piece of Halloween candy she wants.

For the sales person, guiding this individual to a decision is part and parcel of the job. A good sales person will help you achieve your goal whether it's buying the right car (for me, the FJ Cruiser - a rig my wife still considers the second ugliest vehicle ever made) or what style to cut your hair. It's also a process that can be fraught with abuse if the sales person puts their interest ahead of the customer's.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work in most situations - there's no sales person to help you run every aspect of your life. And, in part, the way we live our lives is a problem. Many of us have careers that require us to make decisions, lots of them, every day. This process of making decisions wears us down.

They even have a name for it. Decision fatigue. It's real, documented in multiple studies and pernicious. Factor in the 24/7 nature of our world and the problem becomes enormous. The more decisions that you are required to make, the more fatigued you become and the actual quality of your decisions drops.

There are a couple of strategies to deal with decision fatigue that can be helpful.

First, for many routine things, right-size the amount of energy you commit to the process. Not everything was meant to be agonized about. Who you are going to spend the next 50 years with does not require the same level of intensity as whether to have dessert - or shouldn't.

Checklist can be handy and so can schedules. When I am doing an inspection, I maintain a mental checklist of all the things that I will be looking at and, in many cases, certain indicators lead to automatic responses. These trip wires relieve me of the constant decision-making process on something as simple as a drip from a faucet and allows me to focus on that odd crack in the foundation. Breakfast is a checklist item - eggs with tortillas or oatmeal with fruit, orange juice, coffee. I save the fancy breakfast decisions for Sunday morning when I'm relaxed and can dither over waffles.

Likewise, I set up a schedule to manage my decisions - which is why I've been writing at 2AM lately. It's on the schedule. I made a simple decision that I need to get more writing done. The problem is that I have a schedule that is totally swamped this month with cross country coaching two afternoons a week, helping with some of the meets, two training seminars on the far side of the state, a trip to Seattle for the Home Inspector Advisory Board and a trip to Spokane for the State Building Code Council meeting.

Somewhere in there, I have to work and make a couple of bucks to keep the lights on - plus, I like eating. So does the dog.

The solution was to build some dedicated time onto the schedule. Since I'm often up at 2AM anyway, I threw it on the schedule for writing. So far, I haven't needed an alarm and, by the time 4AM rolls around, I'm sleepy again. I grab another three hours of sleep and head for work.

Is it a long-term solution? I don't know. I doubt it but it is good enough for right now. Which is another technique to making decisions. Decisions fatigue often follows a desire to always make the perfect decision. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Save the perfect decision for the occasion that you really need it.

And remember the advice that your Mom gave you? To sleep on it and decide in the morning? Mom was right. You make better decisions when you're rested.

And now it's time for this sleepy guy to go to bed. I have lots of decisions to make tomorrow.

Dreamtime

The Australian aboriginals have a creation story that revolves around the idea of Dreamtime, a period when mythical heroes walked the formless land and imbued it with sacred properties. My version of Dreamtime isn't nearly so profound - it happens, with regularity, from about 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. This is when I get the best sleep and have my most vivid dreams - dreams that often help me resolve a storyline problem or gives me a whole new emotional framework - I don't want to say idea because it isn't thought out. The dream is emotional and felt, and the deeper the feeling, the more compelled I get to put it on the list of 'to be written.'

The aboriginals built a complex set of rules and beliefs around the dreaming. When a child is born, he becomes a custodian of the land of his birth. His elders teach him the stories and songs of that place. Part of his education teaches that each thing is connected to the land and to the other things - making no difference if the thing is living or not, galah or granite, human or a clump of needle sharp spinifix.

I get this feeling in a second place - when I run and it's going right. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi termed it flow but (I think) he meant it as an inward turn where concentration and task met in harmony. This is similar but different in that awareness flows out and embraces everything and feels, quite irrationally, like it touches the whole world. I don't mind the irrationality - I can live with it as the cost of the feeling.

It may be that my version of Dreatime is different from the aboriginals' - but I'll wager less different than you'd expect given the chasm of cultural differences.

Discoverability

I originally posted the response below on The Kill Zone blog on an article by James Scott Bell about discoverability in an age of disappearing book stores.

***

 Maybe a question to ask ourselves before "how do we get discovered?" is "who do we want to discover us?"

The likelihood of being the next superstar author is rather slim and less a matter of good craft than capturing a social wave like pet rocks or hula hoops. Sometimes it doesn't even take good craft (or editing!) if my daughter's books are representative of the YA market.

I know very little about Amish fiction but I can take a guess that it is a closely defined romance niche in which writers are careful to maintain a certain level of decorum. I can also guess that the niche that reads these books are looking for a slower paced escape. The writers cater to this and some enjoy quite a bit of success.

The advice to write a great story, then do it again is great. So is the suggestion to have at least some public exposure. But to cut through the noise of the marketplace, we need to define who it is that we want to read our books. And it isn't everybody.

(Well, I'd be okay if everybody read my book when I am done with it but I hit lottery when I got married and had kids - expecting another lottery win isn't rational.)

My first book is aimed at 13-24 year old females that are runners. That's a niche. JK Rowling has nothing to fear because I could saturate that market and still not hit a tenth of her numbers. I can turn a very nice profit though and I have room to grow from there.

So the question becomes, what is your niche? Thriller? What kind of thriller? Who is the target audience? Why are they your target audience? Sci-fi? Hard science? or Fantasy? Human-good or human-bad? Each has its readers

Once you know who they are, opportunities present themselves on how to market your book. Since you are addressing a niche that already exists prior to your arrival, you can use the connections that are already built between the members. That's word of mouth.

I know that marketing is frowned upon by the better writers who feel that they are creating art but I have no delusions. The act of writing a book and placing for sale is an act of commerce. Marketing is simply a tool that allows the seller to inform the buyer of the product to be sold – in this case, my novel. I don’t want to sell them a lemon. I need to sell a good story that will exceed their expectations.

The art is in the craft and creation of the story. The sale is in the means and methods of the marketing. Targeted marketing is often much more effective than a scattershot approach.

How did I define my niche for the novel I just completed? I didn’t intend to write a novel of 13-24 year old females. I started writing the story that grabbed me and, after I got going, discovered who would enjoy that same story. I suppose you can identify the niche first and then write to it – many successful writers have done exactly that. Either way, now that I know the niche, I know how to market the book.

One cautionary note about niches, though - abuse that niche, monetize it without paying respect to the people in that niche and the word of mouth will go the other way. In other words, if you write just for the money, you’re likely doomed.

For all the business side of writing books, you still have to tell a good yarn or the reader won’t come back for more.

Remember the Name

Remember the name? You just were introduced to someone and, that fast, you forgot. My advice - ask for their name again. Names are powerful. This was hammered home to me when my wife and I took a long weekend together at the Bed and Breakfast at St. Gertrude's Inn. The Inn has a total of four rooms and each morning we met a few new guests as we had breakfast in the Monastery.

As we meandered our way back to our room, an elderly man wished us a nice day. He was travelling with his son and daughter-in-law to a family reunion and was dressed, as older men often do, in nicer slacks and button-up white shirts and blacks shoes.

"You too, Neal," I replied and walked ahead to my room.

As I put the key in the door to open it for Donna, Neal came out of his room and called down the hall to us.

"How did you do that?"

"What?" I was standing there with door open and really had no idea what Neal was talking about.

"You remembered my name," he said. "Why?"

Since I am in business - a small business that will never grow to a big business - I deal with people. If you work, so do you. If you don't work, you still deal with people. And one thing that I try to do is to remember the name.

There are also sorts of systems out there to teach you memory tricks to remember anybody. I don't use any of them but you might want to see if they would serve you.

Dale Carnegie - author of the timeless  How to Win Friends and Influence People - once said that the most powerful word in the English language is a person's name.

It is also the nicest word in the English language, something I knew but needed to be reminded of by Neal. When he asked me why, I floundered for an answer.

"Because it seemed like the right thing to do."

If you want to make someone feel good in an age where the bank and the doctor and the government are busy reducing people to numbers, remember the name. I promise that more people you ever realized will smile at you in appreciation.

Talking to the Running Gods

Running Gods are supposed to be admired from afar as they race toward the finish line. On presumptuous days, you analyze their training logs and think 'hmm, if I just added that workout or those miles...' But you don't dare talk to them. Even if you wanted to try, they're so very far up on that pedestal, they'll never hear you. They talk with other running gods and with reporters, of course. One assumes that they have friends and family but that side gets lost in the glow of their performance on the track or in the marathon or the dust of the trail.

I'm reminded of a daughter who went to school with Reggie Bush at Helix High School in California. We moved up to the Pacific Northwest about the time that Reggie went to USC. When they came to play WSU in Pullman, we went to the game.

She made a sign and, after the game, went down to say...

"Uh, hi....." (small wave, slightly embarrassed and a fast retreat)

Not "Hey, long way from Helix" or "Dude, remember me? Spanish Class?" That would have been much too presumptuous and, by then, Reggie Bush was a Running Back God.

I've given her a boatload of grief over the years because of that "uh, Hi..." but now the shoe is on the other foot. Having written a book about runners, I'm now looking for people to review the book.

Now it's my turn to talk to Running Gods, asking a favor.

How do you address a running god? By starting with an idea that they're just people - really, really fast people. Lauren Fleshman is incredibly funny on Twitter. Bernard Lagat tweets that he's sorry to disappoint his fans at his last race. Joan Benoit Samuelson blogs about Fourth of July and her garden. Each is a little glimpse into the basic humanity of these runners.

The really top-notch runners that I have met are among the nicest people I know. The only reason not to talk to a Running God is your own fear.

They're on that pedestal because we put them there. I'm not so sure it is a comfortable perch.

The First Rule of Story Telling

The first rule of story telling is to have a story worth telling. I'm currently working my way through Dwight Swain's terrific Techniques of the Selling Writer and enjoying it enormously. Unlike most books on technique, Swain starts with the idea that you must tell a story - something that seems to get lost in some other books that I've read recently which seem to focus on the mechanics as though the engine makes the voyage.

Anyway, I was perusing book blurbs on Amazon. It was a moment of weakness - on a good day, I have an ego the size of Texas. Average days, probably the size of mid-western state like Ohio. Today, I'm cowering under the bed.

What I was looking for where books similar to mine and discovering, no surprise, that there are darned few. Blowing up Manhattan or blowing up strange planets or bodice rippers are recognized genres with their own rules and expectations.

Running books fall into the how-to category or the terminally bad with a few exceptions such as the incomparable John L. Parker's Once a Runner and Again to Carthage - both fine, fine books with great insight into both running and people. Most writers that use running as a part of their novel seem to have avoided the first rule of story telling. Or, maybe I just don't get it.

And that has me wondering...

What the heck is a story worth telling?

Sharing

If you look at the menu bar above, you'll see a link for 'Sharing'. In my posts on my posts about the short story, A Walk with Rose, I mentioned that I would be donating 25 percent of the proceeds to the local Humane Society - this tells you how I plan to do that.

If you haven't read Act I of A Walk with Rose and would like to, just click here and it will take you to the page.

I expect to have the story finished in the first week of August and published by the end of August.

Swimming in the Snake River at Asotin

Asotin is separated from the state of Idaho by the Snake River and, with summer weather baking the valley, it has been a popular destination for boaters, jet skiers and rafters. I don't own any of the above so I opted to swim. There are little inlets up and down the riverbank, some set with safety markers to keep the boats out. Paddling about in the safety of the cove isn't my style though. Someday my style  is likely to get me killed.

I made my first attempt to swim down the river, starting two miles upstream from Asotin. I will admit that I am more than a touch rusty on my long distance swimming since it has been nearly a decade since I used to swim in the La Jolla Cove in San Diego, which has a protected marine preserve.

Long distance swimming at the Cove was always play time - a good workout while admiring the fish, kelp, sharks - whatever came along.

The river is a totally different environment from ocean swimming - far more challenging and, I think, much more dangerous.

The water temperature was a comfortable 72 degrees when I slipped into the Snake River at a little sandy beach but was much murkier than I expected - recent rainfall had added a lot of silt.

The plan was simple - take off from the beach, check in with my wife at the first mile if I made it that far and out of the water at Chief Timothy Park in Asotin if I continued. That plan, as they say, was good until contact with the enemy - the Snake River.

First, I chose to enter the water above the lake. What we call a river is actually a dammed lake separating Idaho and Washington, Lewiston and Clarkston/Asotin. As you move further from town, you get closer to the river in a more primitive state.

It's faster and sneakier - rock outcroppings hint at the turbulence below the surface but slamming into a boulder - pushed by the weight of the whole river - is a shocking reminder that you only have partial control.

At the time of impact -I bounced off more than one submerged rock before getting braced against one to puzzle out my next plan - I was already getting tired. Muscles that were neglected for too long were running up the white flag.

Sensible people pay attention to such things. I headed for the channel and the choppy current, mindful of the boaters ripping past, prows in the air as they headed up river at speed.

I almost preferred the boulders. Getting sucked into the flow of the river as it heads for Portland. Escaping it required a lot more work with already tired arms and lungs that were severely over-taxed.

In salt water, especially with a wetsuit (I was wearing it for buoyancy - my mother was right when she said I have lead in my ass), you can rest, slow your stroke count, take a breather.

Try it in the river and you'll drown.

So no breathers - I drew an imaginary diagonal to a beach and started to swim to the upstream side of it, expecting that the river would push me toward it. Darn near pushed me past it but I did manage to get my feet down and, gulping some much needed air, had to decide whether I was going to re-enter the water or finish up on land.

I chickened out and the folks in the fancy houses overlooking the river had the opportunity to laugh at the skinny guy trail-running in a wetsuit through the wildlife refuge south of town.

My feet? No problem. I had picked up a pair of boat shoes to swim in just in case I needed to exit the river on rocky surfaces. They handled the surfaces - broken rock, sand, brush - without a problem.

Challenging myself (and Mother Nature) means planning. I knew that I was getting in over my head - literally - and built my contingency plans for that. Taking risks doesn't mean being stupid - though that is sometimes a point of discussion in my household - it means pre-planning what you can, adapting as best you can and accepting your control is imperfect because life and nature just don't care.

You do get to chose risks. Sitting on the couch eating potato chips carries its own risks - I'll take a trail or river, bear or rapids, any day.

Run gently, friends.

First Drafts

92,423 words and the first draft of 'Finishing Kick' is done. Finito!  I celebrated with a glass of wine last night and a couple of hours of mindless television. This morning, still slightly brain-dead from the marathon writing session, I am starting to do the first re-write to fix problems I know are in the first draft. I only have a couple of hours since the real job will be calling soon and I can't work this evening on the first draft because I will be working then too. Long day....

I expect the edit process to flow pretty smoothly at least until I get results back from my beta readers. Once I get feedback from others, we'll see how thin-skinned I can be and defensive over my work.

Which is foolish, of course. Writing gives you the opportunity to aim for perfection while you blunder through life. You can revise and rewriting and refine until the pitch is exactly what you need, each word of the story does its own work and the reader gets to live a different life.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, I still have some metaphorical chickens that come home to roost. I don't get to airbrush my mistakes, tweak the fabric of life until it's just so. Life is much messier and many of the events that knock me sideways are beyond my control.

So, I focus on what I can control and then I call a 'do-over.' Not a revise and rewrite since I don't have that level of control but a dust my pants off and try again attitude and aim for a better results the next time.

Life doesn't give you an edit function. It's a first draft written every day.

You do get to write the ending though - unless you step in front of a bus. Then all bets are off and you might not get a chance for a 'do-over.'

Milestones are Better than Benchmarks

Milestones are Better Than Benchmarks

We live in a society that obsesses on dates and benchmarks, checkpoints on the path through life instead of enjoying the milestones as they go past.

Life isn't contract law - it doesn't operate the same way. At work, we have benchmarks when a project needs to be complete or, in my case, when an inspection will be performed and the report delivered. There are usually penalties associated with these missed dates chiefly relating to money. Even when a performance bonus is included in the contract, it is subject to date certain provisions that will take money away if the targets are missed. That's the way contract law works, all stick and no carrot.

It's a lousy way to live.

Thirty years ago, a lady said 'I do" and has been stuck with me ever since. As we shared the years together, we've celebrated birth of children and anniversaries. We've suffered the loss of jobs and survived being flat broke. Each event, large and small, was a milestone in our journey and added to our memory of our lives.

Thirty years is a milestone, not a checkpoint. Tomorrow will be another anniversary, thirty years and one day but nobody I know of  celebrates that. There are no commercials to buy flowers or chocolate or diamonds. Even Hallmark, reported to have cards for every occasion, seems to have missed that one.

But we will note the milestone, the same way we've noted the milestones in the past and the many in our future.

With a kiss and an "I love you."