Turning 50

I turned 50 this week. My wife is planning a big birthday party, which I am trying like hell to squash. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate her efforts, but I just don’t see the point. My 50th birthday felt just like all the others. The day was the same as other days. I got up at 5 a.m., went to the gym, and tried like hell to write a scene that day. Same as any other day.

What turning 50 has changed, maybe, is that I’m thinking about aging well a little more this week. Heart disease (and other bad things) run in my family. (My 18-year-old freshman, Audrey, a distance runner at Denison University, called and said she had to take a physical for the Denison Athletic Department. “I had to check every box on the sheet,” she said. “Heart disease, diabetes, cancer…” “Sorry, kid,” I said.)

I’m trying to make better choices regarding my health, but that didn’t start this week; it began last summer when I went gluten-free. Haven’t lost weight, but I feel better. And I’m exercising. Years of hockey left me with an arthritic back. Running hurts my back, and my body breaks down. It’s an admission that's been a long time coming because I enjoy the solitude of running. I’ve found that weight lifting, though, makes everything feel better, tighter. So I try to get in the weight room every day. I see many benefits to doing this. My back feels a hell of a lot better, and when that happens my golf game is much improved.

But I’m not lifting weights to play golf. I’m doing it to write.

When I’m up early and exercising, my writing is better. I’m more focused. I get more done in less time, which means a lot to me because I don’t have a lot of spare time.

Haruki Murakami, in his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, writes about his relationship with “serious” running, which he defines as six miles every day. I know that very often distance runners (cross country and track) have the highest GPAs on college campuses, and I imagine endorphins have a lot to do with that.

My goal at age 50 is only to set myself up to be writing at 60, 70, and 80. I think about Hemingway’s decline in his 50s and how it all ended at 61. My own father passed at 63, far too young.

So, yes, there might be a party I’m not supposed to know about. And, yes, there will probably be lots of gag gifts, and I’ll laugh, and we will no doubt all have a good time. But the truth is I’m treating 50 like any other day. Because the goal of 50 is to make sure I’m still writing at 60.

Goals and Chunks

It’s been a crazy spring. We just finished classes and put the bow on another school year at Northfield Mount Hermon, where I teach and live. This spring, my middle daughter, Audrey, took my Crime Literature course, which was a wonderful experience (at least Dad says that; not sure what Daughter would tell you) and graduated. So we had friends and family in and out of the house for a week or so.

Audrey and Dad

Now summer is here, and I have several commitments. For the past 20 years, as an educator, I’ve been involved with the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program. In a couple of different roles this summer, I will spend about twenty nights away from home, holed up in hotel rooms.

All of this leads to many starts and stops in my writing schedule.

I try to use these chunks of time away from home wisely by setting writing goals. If I’m spending time away from my family, I want to have something to show for it. This week, I’m traveling to Tampa Bay, Florida, toting revision suggestions for a screenplay I’ve written. (We’ve gone full circle because –– irony of ironies –– the notes come from a former student who now works for a Hollywood agent who handles my work.) The script is 62-ish pages long (an hourlong TV pilot), and I’ve got eight nights. My hope is to finish the revisions and send the script back to him before I get on my return flight.

Once the script is put to bed, it’s on to my next chunk and another short-term goal: I’m 30 pages into a novel, and I want to reach page 150 by Sept. 1. I have three weeks at home before I travel again. I would like to write 75 pages in that span.

And so on.

I met a writer (a poet and essayist) this week who says they work eight hours Saturdays and Sundays, focusing on their day job during the week. I don’t possess that ability to compartmentalize. I couldn’t set writing aside for five-day stretches. And my weekends are joyfully spent chasing field hockey, swimming, cross country meets, and lacrosse games.

So my writing life exists in chunks and ebbs and flows, moving from one goal to the next.

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On my nightstand: I’m in the middle of two books I am loving, both nonfiction. And speaking of goal-setting and ebbing and flowing, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami, is a fascinating look at the great author’s life as a runner and writer. I’m late to the game on this one; it’s been out since 2008. And Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond, is compelling narrative nonfiction. It won the Pulitzer (and just about every other nonfiction award it was eligible for) and I’m seeing why. It is both fast and weighty.

Titles (I write) & Titles (I read)

Coming up with a title has never been easy for me. In fact, it might be the only time I get “writer’s block” in the course of writing a book. If one doesn’t readily appear, I look for patterns in the book, lines that speak to the work as a whole. I’ve even read poems and Bible passages looking for a word or phrase that triggers a response.

Right now, I’m in the awkward position of having spent several months outlining a novel –– that I’m now writing –– with no clue whatsoever as to what I’ll call it. Usually, by now, I have some concept, however abstract, as to what the book might be called. I’m not sure if I should be concerned.

Billy Collins’s great line about the importance of the title of a poem –– stepping from the title to the poem’s first line is as important (and tricky) as stepping from the dock into the canoe –– speaks volumes.

Does the title of a novel impact the reader’s experience the same way the title of a poem does?

I don't know.

Do I buy or read books based on titles alone? Never. Am I person who can’t remember the title of a book but can usually tell you the protagonist’s name? Yes, I’m that guy.

Titles are important. I know that. How important? That, I do not know and would love to hear from readers on this topic.

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Some titles I’m reading right now:

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

How To Read A Book is fascinating and worth a post in and of itself. It talks about the art and honor of struggling with a text. If you don’t own it, you ought to.