A Dangerous Impulse, Floor Failure, The Digressions of Genius

During weekend walks, I usually pick up a book or two from one of the prolific Little Libraries that abound in our neighborhood. Last week I picked up what I would classify as a “cozy”--the comfort food of mystery novels, wherein everything is agreeable, homey and benign and the main location usually centers around a coffee shop or a bookstore in a tight-knit neighborhood. True to form, the heroine in this novel lives in a tiny house behind the well-frequented bookstore she owns, the shelves of which she adorns with whimsical Flea Market finds. I haven’t gotten very far into it yet—so far, it seems fine—but it has had the unfortunate side affect of tickling my novel-writing impulses, which would be a very bad yen for me to yield to again. I started out writing a novel of this type years ago, meaning for it to be a casual, cozy-style “bathtub book”, and it ended up taking a much deeper turn, entirely against my will. The outcome was an unmarketable but in my opinion still compelling story, which sits untouched after an agonizingly long bout of rejection and one acceptance from a publisher that didn’t work out ultimately. My whole foray into novel-writing was a real eye-opener. I learned that I would rather write ten novels than one pitch letter, that writers on internet forums are exceedingly mean and judgmental, and that the entire industry is rabidly profit-orientated. Don’t get me wrong; I’m quite pro-capitalism, but I’m a writer, not an MBA, and trying to figure out the business end of all it out was just too much. I had enough energy to write the novel, and I tapped out on everything that came after it. Yet I find myself dreaming of a new story, one involving a well-worn pub, rainy streets, a plucky heroine and PG-rated romance. I must stop myself immediately.

After deciding to resume my much-coveted No-Leave Sundays, I am starting to re-discover the world of home workout videos. They were my lifeblood during the long stretch when my gym was closed, but I got away from them somewhat once it re-opened. I started in again a few weeks ago, with mixed results. A surprising number of the videos are quite good, but I find myself frustrated by their obsession with side planks and complicated floor exercises that involve putting a lot of pressure on one’s wrist. I never thought that I had particularly frail or weak wrists, but some of these moves involve sustained pressure on wrist joints, overly-complicated compound movements, and general pretzel-twisting that I find it very hard to get upright from. It makes me feel old and inflexible. Being able to get up from the floor is basic sign of physical health, but after trying most of these floor moves, I feel like a one-hundred-year-old woman with cement in my bones. Plus now I am a little worried about the sturdiness of my wrists. They don’t seem to bear my body weight very well and I hope it doesn’t mean that they are prone to breakage.

After having developed an uncharacteristic interest in history, I recently decided to watch “Les Miserables” because despite being a theater major, I’ve never seen it, and I’ve been studying up on the French Revolution lately. After watching it, I got the lofty idea that I would maybe read the book, but after perusing the Wikipedia entry for it, I closed the the door on that endeavor after reading the following quote:

“More than a quarter of the novel—by one count 955 of 2,783 pages—is devoted to essays that argue a moral point or display Hugo's encyclopedic knowledge but do not advance the plot, nor even a subplot, a method Hugo used in such other works as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Toilers of the Sea. One biographer noted that "the digressions of genius are easily pardoned". The topics Hugo addresses include cloistered religious orders, the construction of the Paris sewers, argot, and the street urchins of Paris.”

Are the digressions of genius truly pardonable? It’s a question for the ages. All I know is that I will not be attempting to slog through “Les Miserables.” Not when I have a nice, easily digestible cozy on my bed stand.

No video today. I’m trying to figure out some technical stuff with Substack and will resume videos when I have.

—Kristen McHenry