There are at least two things that writers and triathletes have in common.
People think we’re nuts.
In the case of triathletes, it’s because most people just don’t get why we spend the time, put up with the discomfort, or buy all that gear to enter a race we have little or no hope of winning. I think most of those people have never crossed a finish line.
As writers, perhaps we’re stigmatized by all those wacky creatives who precede us, those brave and tortured souls who filled their pockets with stones and walked into deep water, or cut off part of an ear, or wrote naked in a glass room and periodically whipped themselves with knotted horse hair after plunging into an ice-water bath.
People who think writers are nuts, have never constructed THAT sentence…the one you wrote yourself and can read as many times as you want and it still makes the hairs on your arm stand up.
Note: People also think mountain climbers are crazy, but moutaineers have the “because it’s there” escape clause. I don’t know how they get away with that…it’s not even a strong sentence.
Moving forward…the other thing writers and triathletes have in common is that we feel the fear and do it anyway. It takes wild courage to put careful words on paper and read those words to a packed room. Anyone who’s done a reading knows how hard it is to batten down your bladder while you attempt to speak AND hold your breath at the same time. As a triathlete it’s hard to know that there’s family waiting at the finish line while you wonder if you have what it takes to arrive.
Last Christmas some friends of ours gave us a box of Kraft Dinner for Christmas…55 year old KD. When this KD was made, the Kraft people were still explaining what KD was. The box is labeled, in several places, “KRAFT macaroni and cheese DINNER for making macaroni and cheese”.
The fact that this box of KD exists at all means that, a long time ago, some man, woman or child made a conscious decision to preserve it. Perhaps it was plucked from the stores of a Cold War bunker, or from under the bed of an adolescent hoarder long since gone to college. The point is somebody saved a box of KD…for over 50 years. Seems a little weird to me. Do you think the neighbors knew?
Let’s own up - we’re all doing something a little nuts, whether we’re writing, running, or stashing soon-to-be-classic foods in a bunker under the garage.
Good thing too. Nuts is delicious. Crazy is a finish line. Weird is an act of courage. That said, it’s way more dangerous to keep your best words inside your head than it is to toss them into the air or onto a page.
Nuts is about one of the best things we can be.
Stay calm, be brave, write on.
Off to chew cashews,
Kari
Note: Microsoft Word recognizes KD as a word, but tries to ‘correct’ triathlete. Hmmmm.
Funny, I was just thinking the other day about people that get a high out of running and torturing themselves so much. Now it almost makes perfect sense.
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