Mar 5

Non-run frustration is building.  I can feel myself growing tubbier and more sluggish and grumpier.  Just when I thought I could finally say, yeah, I think the heel is really healing, I think things are going to be fine this weekend when I take it out for a test drive, I put pressure on it from the side (by sitting down of all things) and an exquisite sensation of wrongness bloomed in my heel and radiated out through my foot.  Not pain, per se; it certainly hurt, but in less of a “holy god okay let’s not do that particular motion anymore” way and more of a “whoa that was surprising, I wonder if I do the same thing again if it’ll ping like that, hey it does, maybe I’ll not do that again” kind of way.  Maybe just a tweak, but I’d be lying viciously if I said it didn’t have me rattled.  I’m still planning to take a little jog this weekend – probably Saturday – to test myself out again, but I really fear that there’s something serious at stake.  If I’m honest-to-god laid up and unable to run for a span of a couple of months, I don’t know what I’m going to do.  Probably go a bit batty and start flinging poop, but given my recent commitment to writing the first novel over the summer, that may just be a foregone conclusion.

Speaking of that novel, on day one of The Commitment, I was feeling pretty strongly about option C: coming up with a new premise to base the novel around, and saving Accidentally Inspired and Superhero Thingy until I’ve sharpened my teeth a bit on an idea I felt less enamored with.  But yesterday had me leaning back in the direction of Accidentally Inspired, because if I’m trying to sally up to an idea that I haven’t even truly formed yet, then am I not doing myself a disservice?  I love the story of Accidentally Inspired, and I think it’ll make a fine book.  Who cares if it’s not my best work – it’ll still be good (despite being crap by virtue of being my first novel) and more importantly, it’ll keep me driven.  So that’s my leaning.

Nonetheless, ideas for option C are percolating.  MDW suggested a horror story (go figure) about a crazed killer (go figure) in a small town.  Could be interesting.  I asked for clarification: an honest-to-god one-man-band deranged murderer or some kind of monster in the mist?  Naturally she gravitated toward the deranged and monstrous human, rather than the monster.  I suppose there’s more gravitas and relatability in the human, but damned if I’m not feeling the pull of the monster.  Something about a secluded little town, with a horrific and evil Something out there in the dark… echoes of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village perhaps, which I saw once and don’t think I’d see again in preparation for my own story.  There’s something there.  I feel its pull.

A good morning, starting with writing, even if I couldn’t start it with a run.  I won’t call it a perfect substitute but it does fill the void left by a nice pre-dawn run that makes me feel productive and leaves me feeling like, whatever else happens in the day, I have accomplished something before most of the world was even awake.  I wrote today, and that means I by god accomplished something.