Sometimes when people learn that I write fiction full time, they say, “Wow, that takes discipline,” or, “I admire your discipline.” But really, in showing up at my desk every day, I’m no more disciplined than the person who reports to any standard job. I choose to be present to my work. Otherwise, I wouldn’t eat. I didn’t always have that attitude. When fiction writing was a hobby, it took…
Lots of water Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables Salmon and avocado Dark chocolate Limited caffeine, alcohol, salt, white sugar and well, most anything white Limited sun exposure Working up a full body sweat every day (either running or yoga or often both) Standing on my head every day Sex At least 7 hours of sleep All organic lotions and cleansers made by Eminence (I used to not worry about…
I wake to the sound of birds or frogs (I never was great with my nature sounds) and clouds drifting by (I know my clouds) and I’m exhausted having slept maybe four hours but I don’t have time to think about this since I need to be dressed and ready for the silent morning walk in ten minutes. The walk is lead by the assistant I will refer to as…
It’s 2 a.m. (still that first night at Bootcamp) and we’ve been holding side angle bind (this is basically a lunge and a twist with one arm rotated around your waist and the other under your lunged thigh, both clasped together at the small your back) for so long that I desperately want to let go but there is this subtle pressure to do whatever Baron says, “push past the…
Pamela from the “resort” (perhaps I should dispel any notions of fancy luxury resort right here. The “resort” was rugged to say the least. Dusty, bare-bones housing and gritty, shared showers with water that didn’t always run hot and threadbare towels and wild creatures, including rats and HUGE armies of ants, roaming through the rooms. Not that I knew any of that at that moment and maybe you’ve lost the…
If I haven’t already told all of you, Yoga Bootcamp was f-ing HARD!!! I still can’t believe I didn’t escape after the first day (more about that later). But the question a lot of people keep asking me is, Why did you go? Now, that’s a perfectly logical question and I should have a perfectly logical answer to it. But I don’t. Deciding to go to Yoga Bootcamp was one…
I just arrived home from a week at Power Yoga Level One Teacher Training Boot Camp in Hawaii, which was not exactly what I expected (guess I didn’t take the words BOOT CAMP literally enough). But boot camp it was… 15 hour days that began with a 7 a.m. walk in silence and ended with midnight yoga with barely enough time to pee and often 7 hours between meals that…
The First: I worked in a lingerie store when I was seventeen. I’d had two-week office temp gigs and even worked in an aerosol factory over March Break one year (which gave me a lifelong aversion to the feel of cardboard and the smell of latex gloves) but those jobs were through family connections and only short term. The lingerie store was a “real” job and a thrill at first…
Instead of writing about keeping secrets this week, I’m going to share my secret writing ritual. A secret so secretive that I have only shared it with one other writer who has been a NYT’s bestseller and while she didn’t use the secret while writing that book, she tells me she swears by it now. So here it is… After sending my kids off to school, I always sip coffee…
Sometimes I’m startled that I am as old as I am. Because despite the maturity that comes with age, I can’t help but occasionally revert back to juvenile middle-school behavior that I’d thought I’d outgrown. In my attempt to be mature and worldly, I enrolled several years ago in my first yoga class. I needed to learn how to chill out a little bit, and figured being in touch with…
