I've been kickboxing. I've gone through intense periods of kickboxing before using this guy's videos. It is freaking DIFFICULT. When I start, I alternately struggle to keep up tempo and keep up form. I'm so weak, I can't do both. If I keep tempo for the cardio benefit, form suffers. If I focus on correct form I can't keep tempo. So, I decide which I will focus on before each workout. The interesting thing about the body is how interconnected it is. When you throw a kick or a punch correctly, it is actually being thrust out from the core, which is your abdominal muscles, glutes, and thighs. After two c-sections, my core is for sh...my core is weak. But after four weeks of the workout, I'm starting to feel strength there. I first notice it in standing taller, straighter. Then when I'm practicing form, I can feel the punch engage first at the core. And that is an awesome feeling--you can literally feel the power pulled up from your abdominals into your arm and fist. Though I don't ever use a bag, I know it would have power if my closed hand made contact with something. So literally, I'm throwing punches from the core as opposed to the shoulder. Power.
It occurs to me that writing is the same way. Sometimes, you have to struggle to keep flow and tempo in the writing, and let the form take care of itself. And sometimes, you have to focus on form, structure, and means of expression. What is the core in writing, though? What is that point of inner engagement that gives power to your words? I think that your core is experience. On the eve of that contemporary product the film student, of which Lucas and Spielberg were the first generation, the great film director Elia Kazan famously gave this advice to young people who wanted to direct movies: Don't start making films. Take a trip across country and experience the country and yourself. Then start making films. Before there were LA and NY film schools there was, as Kazan points out, life.
It is really important to have adventures and mini-adventures--when I read that about Kazan, I was about 24 years old, so I saved up some money, and went on a trip to Europe by myself (much to my parents and boyfriend's horror). I packed a small bookbag style back pack with a change of clothes and some earthy crunchy soap (the kind you can use to wash dishes, your hair, and your body, and your laundry), a journal and two fountain pens, bought a pair of walking sandals, and hopped on an El Al flight to London. (Note: walk in walking sandals BEFORE a trip like that--blisters suck when you're trying to develop your artistic sensibilities.) I traveled England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, through the book-a-bed-ahead system in the hostels. It was really a remarkable journey. Contrary to everyone's worst fears about a young girl travelling alone, I met nothing but kindness and generosity in the people in the hostels. Though, I imagine I had a certain degree of luck and spiritual protection on that trip, and other people may have quite the opposite experience, it seemed to me that most of the people I met respected a young woman travelling alone and kept a courteous distance and offered help and company rather than predatory advances.
My point is not to recount the many little mini-adventures I had on that journey but to note the impact of developing your core through adventures in life. Now as a wife and mother, hopping a plane to London is not something within my reach. But taking my girls on a long walk through a nature preserve is--and developing friendships with people outside of my inner circles is also. I tend to look at life as if it had design, without worrying about whether or not it "actually" does--and as such, the people, places, and adventures, mini-or otherwise (even an unexpectedly toddler-spilled box of Cheerios can be a mini-adventure), continue to present as an opportunity to develop my core.
And I can feel that the little adventures, especially the ones that are outside my comfort zone, are developing my core, so that the punches I throw on the page are achieving greater power.
What opportunities are their in your life to get out of your comfort zone? Are there things in your life that seem like inconveniences but could actually be adventures specifically designed for developing your core?
Remember, writers are always working even when it seems that they are not. Especially when it seems like they are not.
