Back to the beginning

This past week felt like the beginning of more than another year.  I did my first run without pain in more time than I can remember and I started editing what I wrote in NaNoWriMo.

While my body has healed from my injury and I’m finished kicking myself for waiting so long to address it as the injury it was for a year, that doesn’t mean I just pick up where I left off.  I thought I could but I was wrong.  I have to start all over again.  I’ve lost so much ground with my cardio that I couldn’t keep my heart rate down in the aerobic zone if I ran more than a few minutes at a time at my comfortable pace.  After a frustrating mile of running with some irritating walking interspersed (accompanied by curses mumbled under my breath which I’m sure still offended the girl walking next to me) I climbed off the treadmill and opted instead for a spin bike.  It was my first time on one and I loved it.  Well, once I got it adjusted appropriately for my short legs anyway.  It was easy to lose myself in my audio book and make easy adjustments to keep my heart rate in zone 2.  I came away from it feeling as refreshed as if I’d run the whole forty minutes.  I guess I’ll be doing a bunch of walk/run and spinning for a few weeks until I can get my heart and lungs back in shape.  It’s a road I’ve traveled before and I’ve heard it comes back fairly quickly.  Let’s hope so!  I’m looking back and regretting skipping the gym entirely just because I was dejected about not being able to run.  If only I had kept up with my cardio… *sigh*

Editing my writing is a road I have not traveled too much – unless you count that first attempt at NaNoWriMo where I wrote a chapter and then obsessively edited it over and over again losing sight of the whole point.  This is different editing altogether.  NaNo is all about writing first and asking questions later which I embraced wholeheartedly.  The drawback of this is that you get to the end and your characters and even their motivations have changed since you’ve gotten to know them better.  Plus, the story itself evolves.  I’m at a place where I can’t finish the ending unless I fix the beginning to keep things consistent.  I started doing that this week and while it is cool I find it takes a lot more time to see progress than just banging out a first draft with abandon.  I’ve got my first two chapters pretty well polished and ready for my writer’s group.  They refuse to be patient enough for me to finish what I started during NaNoWriMo to read something and I really can’t blame them.  After all, they were with me every step of the way and should be rewarded accordingly.

So far 2012 is promising to be a great year!