Kickstart My Heart in the Weight Room

So an interesting thing has happened to me over the past few weeks. I don't mind admitting that I've struggled a lot with fatigue, weariness, and even a touch of depression over the past three years in regards to my writing, and even my daily life, especially the past year. Part of it comes from personal matters which has led me to re-evaluate the priorities in my life. Me figuring out what's important to me, and trying to understand how writing fits into all that.

However, other things - minor things, really, in the grand scheme of life - have impacted my health and fitness, which has had a cumulative effect.  Four years ago, I tore my rotator  cuff lifting weights. I played sports in high school, and played small-college basketball, and played years of recreational/competitive basketball afterward, and lifted weights and ran regularly. At one time, I was even considering a stab at the annual Tough Mudder obstacle course. I tore my rotator cuff, however, and over the following two years, lapsed into the most inactive period of my life. 

Me back in younger, more agile years.

Ditto...

I didn't notice it right away, but over the course of these past four years, as my  fitness level dropped to all-time lows, so did my energy levels. As a full-time teacher with a family - and a special needs son - I need to get up around 4 in the morning to write. Over this past year, for the first time in 15 years, I started failing in that area. I was getting heavier, feeling more and more tired, and I couldn't seem to make myself care.

I finally came to a point in which I realized my fitness was not only adversely affecting my mood, it was impairing my ability to write. About a month ago, I changed up my diet. Nothing major, just replaced my lunches with salads, added grapefruits to my breakfast and replacing my nightly snack (I'm a confirmed chips addict) with an apple. 

Then, about three weeks ago, my daughter and I starting hitting the weight room every day after school (perks of teaching; I have fitness equipment at my daily disposal). She plays soccer and basketball, and I offered her a spring choice: Track and Field, Lacrosse, or working out with me. She chose the latter. 

So we've been working it old school: Monday, Wednesday, Friday upper body; Tuesday/Thursday are "leg days." Again, nothing major, just the lifting routine I'd been doing since my college basketball days.  Madi will be playing JV basketball next year, so it's time for her to get ready for the next level, and I desperately needed to get back into shape.

Almost immediately I felt better, and not just better: the best I've felt in about two years. I've gotten up on the nose the past three weeks at 4, resuming my old writing habits. Honestly, I haven't felt this good in years.

However, something else broke me out of my funk.  Last month, I blogged about "killing" my novel The Mighty Dead. I pretended I was okay with it - but really, I wasn't. Not at all. I was seriously depressed. I tried to work on my coming of age novel, but I couldn't get past this whole novel I'd shelved.

Three things re-ignited my fire for The Mighty Dead, which I've been working on these past three weeks. 1. My publisher at Crystal Lake suggested I'd lost my objectivity, and advised me to simply apply the edits I had, then send it out to someone and see what they think. 2. I decided I needed someone fun to write about. The novel deals with guilt and regret, and how those things haunt us and weigh us down. But, on some level...it had gotten too heavy, too somber. I needed a seriously kick-ass character. So, I added one. A character I've wanted to write a solo novel about for awhile, so I decided this would be a great chance to introduce her. She's been serious fun to write, so far.

What was the third thing which injected new life into my writing? Well, I decided that instead of "killing" The Mighty Dead....I had to kill its narrator, Gavin Patchett, instead.

And that's for next time....