Writing + more writing = not very much running (sigh, sigh)

Oh man, it's Thursday night and I'm just getting around to blogging for the week (bad, bad, blogger, Cinthia!). It's been a bit hectic around here.

That's a lie. It's been very calm. I've been writing like mad, writing for hours and hours, barely sleeping, eating too much one day and hardly anything the next.

Oh, glorious!

I haven't been running much, maybe 2-3 miles a day (pathetic!), just enough to keep my joints from totally locking up.

I am going to lose a lot of my training benefits, but I had to seriously slack on something. Writing takes up so much emotional energy, this is something that very few people tell you:That it's exhausting and consuming. That sooner or later it will knock you flat on your ass.

I'm almost to that point, but not yet.

But, good news: The Beebs ran two miles today. Hooray for the old girl! Because her hip was injured in last week's dog attack, she has the most peculiar gait. But she wanted to run so run we did, very slowly and not very far. Afterwards, we were both a bit ashamed of ourselves for having taken it so easy.

The Beebs, feeling the shame of a short, slow run

More good news: In less than two weeks I'll be here:

Doesn't this look like a fairy tale cottage?

Yep, I'll be staying in a cozy cottage in the woods on Whidbey Island, Washington state, as part of the Hedgebrook Residency program for women writers.

I was previously awarded a residency there about five years ago and it changed my life. It was when I really started to think of myself not as someone who writes but as a writer.

The cool thing is that you get a cute little cottage all to yourself, and all you have to do is write. They cook your meals for you; you even get a lunch packed for you every day (!). No Internet or TVs in the room, no distractions. It's wonderful and a bit terrifying to be handed a space and time for writing (like,what if I don't write? What if I finally run out of things to say and I sit in the cabin for 10 days staring at my awful and useless hands?).

I'm taking my running clothes, of course. The temps are in the 40s right now, with rain. That's practically our summer weather, hee, hee. I can't wait to run on bare pavement and trails.

Anyway, I'm honored to have been chosen and hope I do the program, and myself, proud.

And I hope that all of your out there are chasing your dreams, a little bit at a time.

Running: Embarrassingly short distances

Reading: Not much

Writing: Too damned much, and loving every agonizing minute