Figure Scathing
This has been both a good month and a bad month for the progress of my book. I’ve researched lots of arguably important minutiae and added to a never-ending list of lines…yes, lines. Yes, I am writing a novel. No, I am not writing a play. (Not one that I’m focusing on right now…) And yes, you read correctly. I don’t know what it says about my craft that I define sentences and half-paragraphs as lines.
When I do get around to watching the Olympics — I forgot all about Athens, and I only watched the figure skating and opening ceremonies in Torrino — there is always a flash of inspiration that dissipates with the torch. Sometimes I wish I had a skating parent or gym parent — not that I feel deprived of a metal medal to hang in my apartment, but because I wish I’d been pushed to work my buttocks off since I was six. I wished I’d had someone motivated enough to shuttle me to sporting events and coaching sessions, practice and clinics. But my success in my chosen field has always depended on me. Therein lies the problem.
I have always taken my left brain for granted. I am the only member of my family with any artistic or literary sensibility. I don’t even feel comfortable letting them read my work, and when I have, I have always regretted it. I’ve always been undisciplined, even a bit indulgent at times. No one has forced me to perfect my structure, revise my raw drafts, or finish what I start.
Sometimes I do wish writing were more of a science, or, in one sense, a matter of athletic technique. And while it’s a wish I’d regret were it gratified, I’ve caught myself wishing there were an Olympics for writing. We’ve seen this Olympic year that artistry enough isn’t enough to take home the gold or a lesser metal in the ice rink. Sometimes the body won’t cooperate, sometimes luck won’t cooperate, and sometimes you benefit from someone else’s fall. Perhaps it’s illusory, but a sport is an exact science — or at least more of one than any art ever could be. Of course, listening to an announcer’s voiceover makes it all too facile to pinpoint where Sasha went wrong, why Kimmie didn’t ultimately mount the Olympic pedestal, why someone’s program wasn’t “clean”.
Of all the Olympians who grabbed the spotlight in my lifetime, the one I relate to most is Tonya Harding. Maybe it was never realistic to expect her to out-Lutz Nancy or glide on air like Oxana. But hey, she was an athlete, not a ballerina. She was the first woman to make a triple axle. And if it weren’t for her crappy childhood, crappy taste in husbands, crappy taste in friends, crappy timing, crappy press relations, crappy ice skate shoestrings, (crappy crime plotting if the accusations are true) and crappy series of excuses to fail, who knows what she might have achieved?
True, in the back of my mind, I wish I could present my work to the world in an international forum where my televised voice is drowned out by running press commentary. But usually I’m not so masochistic, even in my dreams.
The moment in the spotlight is over, and it’s time for us all to retreat back to our workaday worlds: back to the rinks, back to the warmup rooms, back to the drawing board.
