I know, it looks like I'm working intently on something really important... I mean, I'm doing the biting-the-lip thing and everything. But actually this was taken at about 3:30 in the morning on Monday morning, after an unspeakably dull and slow night where I had a total of two--count them, two--calls. At times like this, in an effort to stay awake and not have a horribly ugly crash caused by driver fatigue, we tend to park up next to each other in pairs and shoot the shit and just generally keep each other semi-coherent enough to hear the radio.

So, it looks like I'm working hard, but I'm actually playing solitaire on my laptop.

I decided to push myself the other day. I pushed to--and past--what I thought my limits of endurance were. I hadn't really intended for it to be quite such a torture test, but, well...

Sunday night was the last shift on nightwatch, and the last shift of the weekend... three days in a row of 12 hour shifts, with not a whole lot of sleep during the day. So, Sunday day I woke up around 11am, thanks to a certain canine who doesn't understand what, "Zeus, sweetie, go away, Mommy wants to sleep some more." (It should also be noted that said canine also didn't understand, "Goddamn it, you filthy mutt, if you don't let me get some fucking sleep I'm going to pull your tail hairs out and stuff them down your [choose orifice]!") Since I was awake, I decided to go to the gym and do some cardio for about an hour. Killed a couple of hours after that doing fun things like house cleaningand laundry, then went to work at about 5pm. Worked all night, got off of work at about 5am, and was at the gym to meet my workout partner (who also works on my shift) at 5:30am. We did a fairly heavy weight training workout--back and biceps--until about 7am, at which time we drove to the National Guard base where the POST academy is held, and then at about 8am ran 3.2 miles with the academy class.

That was not an easy run. In fact, that was probably one of the more painful runs I have ever done in my life. Remember, I had been awake approximately 21 hours at this point, and had already worked out in the gym twice in that period, plus worked a full 12-hour shift of fighting the forces of evil. Somewhere around the 1.2 mile mark, my back started to cramp up, specifically my middle to lower back. I figured it was a combination of the fatigue and the weight training we'd just done, and it spasmed for the next 2 miles. And there was no fucking way I was going to stop and walk either. I wasn't running fast, and it sure wasn't pretty, but dammit, I made it the whole distance and didn't even puke at the end of it. But, wow, it sure did hurt.

But I was also really glad I'd done it and pushed, and not stopped or walked. My partner and I talked about it afterwards while we were doing our cool-down stretch, and we both agreed that it was pretty good to know that we still have plenty of juice left at the end of a shift. There's no guarantee that a fight will happen at the beginning of a shift when you're nice and relaxed and rested.

People ask why some writers participate in Novel Dares (where you attempt to write an entire novel in one month.) I think it's the same kind of thing as I just expounded upon above. Pushing to your limits and beyond. It's not pretty, and sometimes you really want to puke, but in the end it can really be a confidence builder, and hardly anyone can come away from a dare without having learned something about their writing or themselves. I did a dare once, and managed to chunk out about 60,000 words in one month. Unfortunately, it happened to be the month when my husband asked me for a divorce, and also when my dad went back in the hospital with cancer, so the resulting novel was a pile of pure dreck, and when the files got lost and/or corrupted, I didn't grieve too terribly long or hard.

Speaking of novels, October 20th (which happens to be my birthday) will be the third anniversary of my manuscript's stay with a certain publisher. So, I wrote a letter a week or so ago, stating that they've had plenty of time to look at it, and to make a decision already or give it back. Yes, three years is a ridiculously long time for a manuscript to be under consideration, but that is partly my fault, since for the past year and a half I've kinda pulled myself away from the writing scene to concentrate on other aspects of my life, and thus have not followed up on the manuscript's status the way I should have.

Okay, I was about to get all preachey and philosophical about how anything worth having is going to require effort and work, whether it be your writing, career, love life, fitness, or whatever... and how sometimes you don't have the energy to put the effort into doing everything, and just have to focus on a couple of things at a time, and how it's no great shame to "rotate" priorities... but I caught myself just in time.

And, in more novel-type news, I actually did some work on roughing out an outline for the book that is supposed to follow up to the one presently gathering dust on a publisher's desk. I kinda got stuck a long time ago on one certain aspect of one certain scene, and today I thought of a way around it.. so, yeah... believe it or not, I'm writing again. For those few of you who have read that first as-yet-unpublished novel, you might actually get to find out what happens to Zia after she rescues herself and Kelen from those evil nasty guys...