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Rappelling and writing...
Apr. 10th, 2008 12:50 pmThere's this moment when you're rappelling (if you're not going Aussie Style) where your feet are on the edge of the cliff and you're using the rope to lower yourself down. You hit a point where your legs are straight out with your torso at a 90 degree angle...and you have to start moving your feet.
A lot of people push off from the wall then and give the rope enough slack that they drop several feet and are suddenly facing the rock wall. The really cautious people start moving down one step at a time.
When I took rappelling, that was the freakiest moment--that 90-degree-angle moment. I couldn't see any wall in front of me, and looking down only showed me the ground. It's the moment of 'jumping off' when you really don't have anything to guide you but your faith in your knot-tying abilities. (We didn't use harnesses, we used rope--it was ROTC, no namby-pamby swiss-seats for the sergeants, no way!). Faith in the rope, faith in the carabiner, faith in your belayman. It's a moment of commitment, because once you've gone beyond 90 degrees, it's really hard to go back up without help.
Going back to a novel feels weirdly like that. I'm staring at SOTF, and feel like I'm really going to have to commit myself to it. Jumping off the cliff's edge, so to speak, and ignoring everything else.
Before I started working on short stories, that was all I did--novel stuff. Now it's a bit scary. The size of the 110K task ahead is actually intimidating. Weird.
A lot of people push off from the wall then and give the rope enough slack that they drop several feet and are suddenly facing the rock wall. The really cautious people start moving down one step at a time.
When I took rappelling, that was the freakiest moment--that 90-degree-angle moment. I couldn't see any wall in front of me, and looking down only showed me the ground. It's the moment of 'jumping off' when you really don't have anything to guide you but your faith in your knot-tying abilities. (We didn't use harnesses, we used rope--it was ROTC, no namby-pamby swiss-seats for the sergeants, no way!). Faith in the rope, faith in the carabiner, faith in your belayman. It's a moment of commitment, because once you've gone beyond 90 degrees, it's really hard to go back up without help.
Going back to a novel feels weirdly like that. I'm staring at SOTF, and feel like I'm really going to have to commit myself to it. Jumping off the cliff's edge, so to speak, and ignoring everything else.
Before I started working on short stories, that was all I did--novel stuff. Now it's a bit scary. The size of the 110K task ahead is actually intimidating. Weird.
