Detours

1.

    I had sworn to myself that I was going to finish this draft of the novel — something close to the final one — by the end of this month. That gives me tomorrow and the next day to wrap it up. It’s not going to happen, I tell you what. Not because I haven’t put in the work — I pumped out 64 manuscript pages this month, which amounts to about 80 pages in printed form, which would bring the book in for a landing at about 390 pages, which is about what I was shooting for.

    Unfortunately, those 64 manuscript pages include a still-unconcluded detour in the plot that I assume will be cut out on revision, but which I don’t think I can move on from until it’s finished. The novel is ostensibly about a 32-year-old former investment banker trying to get over a bad breakup, and it’s told in a florid, keyed-up first person that I landed on in an attempt to simulated the kind of anxiety that I experience a lot of the time. The problem, in no uncertain terms, is the first person aspect of it. I’ve never really liked writing the first person very well, the evidence of this blog aside; I find it limiting and tiresome after a while. I’ve been working on the book for five — almost six — years, and I’m heartily sick of my main character’s voice. So when he sat down across a table from someone else and began to hear their story, I knew I was probably going to wander off track for a bit. I just didn’t expect the wandering to go on for 8000 words, and a week and a half of work. Now, instead of writing the final scenes of the book, which were finally starting to seem inexorable, I’m following another character, a minor character, for page upon page upon page. I can’t decide if I should worry about this. The fact of the matter is that I’m no longer in a place where writing at all is a surprise. I need to be finishing this thing. Ugh.

2.

    When you run a long distance it pays to map out your route so that you finish close to your front door, or at least close to an easy way to get back to your front door. I failed to do that yesterday, and it was . . . well, it was awful.

    I had it plotted out, I thought, so that I would hit mile 15 somewhere around the intersection of SE 26th and Clinton, about six blocks from my apartment, which would leave me a brief walk up a gentle slope to cool down before I collapsed in a heap of sweaty clothes and sore muscles. Instead, I got sidetracked somewhere in northeast Portland, and found myself huffing to a conclusion at the base of a bridge more than a mile from home. This is an awkward distance. I can’t bring myself to call a cab to take me such a short distance, and catching a bus would probably only prolong the journey. So I had to walk it, limping, grimacing, and swearing the whole way.

    I’m trying to remember if the long distances were this awful when I last was doing serious running. Yesterday I spent the last two miles exhorting myself out loud, “C’mon, goddamn it, you can do this, fuck, do it, come on, you’re going to make it,” over and over again, as I shuffled a couple of 11+ minute miles. I don’t remember hitting that point until I was going much further than 15 miles before. But then again, I don’t know if I would be doing this if I actually remembered what it was like to do it before. I remember being thin and having a lot of energy and feeling good about myself and dating a lot. I think it’s possible that I simply forgot how fucking hard it is to run a marathon. And it is. Hard.

    Then again, maybe yesterday was just one of those days. By mile five my left ankle was bothering me. By mile seven this muscle that’s been bothering me for weeks — the tensor fasciae latae — was really starting to burn. This muscle is near the hip, and it’s obscure enough that I’d never heard of it before it started hurting me, but I sure as hell know what it’s called now.  By mile 11 my pace had seriously slackened. As I was coming over the river, still 2.5 miles go, I’d reached the point where it felt like I was running in slow motion. Even if my pace was off, how is it that those last 2.5 miles took more time than some years of my life seem to have? I was checking my watch and the GPS on my phone every few steps. And sometimes you just have those days. Last week I felt pretty good for the whole long run.

    I don’t really have much else to say about that, except that I feel better today than I did last Monday, despite the run itself having been far worse. Who knows, man.