Instant Jogger

Within the first crucial sentences of anything I read, I decide very loudly in my head if the prose is working for me. If the author can't lure and cage my interest with his or her early sentences, more often than not, I force myself to snub their words. The author doesn't have to begin with an enormous explosion or similar action-for-plot plugs to easily wrangle my mind, though those tactics help. The author does have to have an immediate pace of a brisk jog: fast enough to make me look forward to the next event, as opposed to counting pages until the chapter ends. I try to use the same standard when I write something. If what comes out in my opening paragraph has that pace locked down, I feel assured that the pace will be just as fast when read, hopefully. Is this standard too lofty? Does habituating myself to that instant jogging pace make me a picky reader, or an impatient one, or a one-trick writer? Sure. Yet even when introductions I read and write start out at a lazy skip, I tend to muscle through them and finish the assignment I started. Does working around these headaches make me diligent and open as well? Yep. But more precisely, these standards make me a picky and diligent athlete, a reading/writing jogger, who demands that the pace stays strong.

In this outlook of mine, the author becomes like a fellow jogger. He or she needs to keep motivating me to finish. If the work insists on fitfully building up to a jogging pace, I quit paying attention. When I'm expected to read something for class or work, those strides need to throb immediately, even if it's just in the back of my mind. I hope for the best, that the chosen author likes jogging too, and that their work might snowball into a required reading I ultimately enjoy.

Many times this does not happen, which is mostly why I like reading on my own time in large chunks. This way I know where my error lies. If I pick a fat, uncoordinated kid for my partner, some slob who's never jogged before, I have only myself to blame instead of my authorities. These bad partners help me scout for potentially better partners, or at least condition me to give the fat kid cul-de-sac a wide birth. It's when that partner works, really works, that I read 'til my contacts dry out.

I usually find those partners in fiction, the grove I jog through again and again. I love fiction of all flavors, and especially love great character fiction. One book that really changed how I view what characters can do for the jog is John Updike's The Centaur. Though that story starts out with high action involving a teacher and a flying arrow, Updike keeps the story building solely on two disparate characters. It's the most influential book I've ever read and I was happy to run alongside the author as he contorted his protagonists. That extra challenge, whether it is new vocabulary to look up from a story or a faster jog to adapt to, keeps making me read. I also firmly feel that if I had not read collections of Calvin and Hobbes when I was in elementary school, my interests in challenging myself and to train harder would not exist. Those comics had huge ideas and words for someone under ten years old, and have earnestly shaped my views on reading that requires work.

When I write I forge towards experimentation, like a jogger who tries different Powerade and Tigerbar combinations until they target their perfect energy snack. I've always loved writing and do so as often as possible, usually either in the morning or evening because afternoon writing feels off to me. I've written poems, short stories told from several perspectives, and always have larger ideas in mind for that novel that will never, ever happen. Through school and on my own time, I've written better and more sincerely if I take the time to physically manipulate a pencil. I need to scrawl my ideas down and then transfer the ideas to the screen later. This is a sloppy process that ends in arrows squiggling across my blue college-ruled lines. I can edit better on the computer, but for foundations of ideas and plot, I have to jog the old fashioned way.

The great thing about that old fashioned way is it makes my victories seem full. One writing assignment that gave such a confidence boost was a one-page paper about a failed Antarctic adventure that I wrote during second grade. The expedition ended tragically, and the story my class read had creepy black and white snapshots of frozen, blackened men. I remember that I finished that paper, told from the viewpoint of a guide, well under the allotted timeframe, maybe I took steroids for that marathon, and the finished paper was morbid and sinister. My teacher really liked it and even put it on the bulletin board outside our room. I jogged through that paper, and when that beginning instant sparked, my ideas charged out of my hand, and still do when that feeling locks. I think of one line of dialogue, or of one description of a scene, and have to find a notepad, a napkin. Nothing makes me more irate than having to repeat a sudden sentence in my head until I can find a paper and pen. Conversely, my instant jog fumbles when I have to write non-fiction or current event papers; I'd rather read about the news than make it. It's like some spectator throws a rock at my feet during a race, and my balance and attention plummet.

That jogging pace needs certain prime conditions to ignite, however, which is why I'm not a recreational reading/writing jogger. I can do it for fun, can take a few laps around the park for practice without anything definite in mind, but my best form and learning comes from racing. It seeps up when my emotions are strong or when my will is set to learn something beyond me. When the pace starts full-tilt on a book or assignment, I blaze through pages. For instance, so far in this class Stephen King's On Writing excerpt and Why Don't We Complain? have given me food for thought about my own reading patterns and personal objections. I liked these assigned readings. Similarly when I write, those racing emotions hold stronger than any others. If those first ideas grip the running path hard enough, I can keep going for miles and even bypass cups of water my instructors hinge out for me. Several poems I've written have come out like that, and my writing is always more honest when the emotion I feel at the time translates to the page. I can't easily recall that emotion and manage to make my work sound sincere.

As Stephen King says, "You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so" (King 147). Nothing proves this more for me than the instant jog: the intro bursts I crave to write and relish reading. The more I've read, the more I see how important that initiation is. That genesis defines the rest of the work, it maps the pace out, and it tells me how things will flow. In my mind it is a simple concept. To get me to love reading or writing something, that jog has to appear like a magician's assistant, out of thin air, and must stay the course. I crave that system and work hard to refine it myself. If that jogging pace is missing, being the picky and diligent athlete I am, I still can't help but strive for the goal. With a solid written start or a great jogging partner, that task becomes cake. So far, I've avoided most of the fat kids.

Let's hope it stays that way.