Hell, I’ll even take nightly downpours if that’s what Nature wants. As long as it rains, I’m happy. Anyway, getting back to today’s blog post topic…

Andy and I had a pretty animated discussion last night about solo riding and why I can’t stand participating in group rides with other cyclists. He’s an introvert like me, but he’s a lot less extreme and enjoys company when he’s on his bike. Not so for me.

The criticism lobbed on me was that I’m too much of an isolationist. I prefer to be described as a worshiper at the shrine of Solitude because that’s how I keep myself sane. I find energy and renewal by going inward, not looking outward, and today’s ride pretty much showed how much that’s true.

I was on my own the whole hour. I chose my route, and I stuck with it. No spur-of-the-moment deviations, no nothing – just a focus on what I need to do while enjoying the time in the sun. Halfway through my ride, I took a break, setting my bike against some shrubbery while sitting down on the sidewalk, watching trees, the skies, an occasional car, while losing myself in my thoughts.

And this is where my “style” of riding benefits me the most. For several minutes, I revel in those thoughts, which tend to fixate on self-evaluations regarding my progress as a cycling newbie. What a shocker that, while I still get a little nervous about a ride the night before, I find everything pretty manageable and exhilarating once I’m actually doing it. It’s a far, far cry from bouts of insomnia in the past, with me fretting over my bike handling skills, motorists, stop signs or traffic lights, etc. Then the following day, all of my worst nightmares come true (funny how the human mind works).

At the same time, I absorb what I see around me, enjoying some time out from a busy schedule and simply letting myself drift along with whatever pleasant sensations come with sitting in the shade, breathing in fresh air, and simply feeling grateful that I’m able to do this.

I don’t think anyone can fully understand or appreciate these inner monologues or just plain silence. I guess I’m used to them as a writer, and I find that I get a lot more from them than from engaging fellow cyclists in chit chat. Because, you know, in the end, the only hurdle I have as a cycling newbie is myself.

I should take a camera along next time and take pictures of some of my training routes. :)

I switched over to some old books I had sitting on my bookshelves for ages – books that I’d started reading and then abandoned for whatever reason – and couldn’t get into those, either. I tried to start over with an anthology of fairy tales by Hermann Hesse, but I couldn’t get into the same frame of mind that required me to fully absorb his writing. I read Demian and Narcissus and Goldmund a while back, and while I loved them, I guess I overdid the Hesse reading and faltered when I bought the anthology. Unfortunately I still couldn’t get into it.

So I spent the last hour scouring through my bookshelves, reconnecting with old books that I read and adding some of my favorite titles to my Goodreads list. I’d love to pick them up to enjoy all over again. The others are books I bought ages ago but haven’t gotten around to reading yet, and I’ve been slapping a hand against my forehead for the oversight. They’re mostly genre fiction – either classic horror or LGBT mystery or something along those lines – and I really should dust those neglected books off and carry on with them.

I know now that I need diversity in my reading. I know that a lot of folks out there can subsist wholly on just one genre; over at Goodreads, some people are only willing to read M/M romance, for instance. That’s perfectly fine, but after over a year of doing exactly that because small e-pubs have been the main source for my e-reading, I’ve reached that saturation point, and I feel stuck in a rut and feeling pretty apathetic toward what I have that’s still unread in my e-reader.

We’ll see how this goes. At the moment, I’m trying to force myself to finish reading a steampunk novel, and after that, I’m giving my e-reader a much-deserved break. You know, like I swore I was going to do days ago.

Now a bit of a flashback for those of you who’re not familiar with my cycling life…

I never learned how to ride a bike when I was a kid. One of my older brothers got a bike from my parents, but it got stolen in only a couple of weeks (or thereabouts), and my parents never replaced it. Cycling was never a part of my childhood and adolescence. Even if my brother kept his bike, I know I wouldn’t have bothered to learn. I was too immersed in discovering Tolkien and the classics and other books at that point, and I know I’d have turned my nose up at the thought of physical activity versus reading.

Fast forward to adulthood and marriage – I’ve been riding a tandem bike with my husband for years now. Over a decade, in fact, with me as the stoker (naturally). It wasn’t until last year – February to be precise – when I finally decided to swallow my pride and take a clinic on beginning cycling for adults.

My first attempts at riding on my own have been disastrous, to say the least. Within the first six months I’d been involved in four crashes and a bee sting that nearly took my left eye out. The most serious crash left me with a sprained right elbow.

Suffice it to say, I kept as far away from my new bike as possible even after I’d fully recovered from my arm injury, which kept me from riding for two months straight.

Lately we took my bike to a fitter, who made several adjustments, and I’ve been riding my bike as often as I possibly can, but here’s the catch: I’ve only been riding super short distances but with no flat segments. My house is situated in the hills, and all I do is roll out, choose a hilly circuit, and ride it as many times as I can in a half-hour period. And that’s it. It might not sound like much, but I’ve been seeing the results whenever I get on the tandem with Andy, and we do long distance rides. I’ve been putting out way more power than before on the hills.

And while at first Andy was leery about my preferred training routine, i.e., several short, punchy rides a week on my own, he’s been surprised and (dare I say) gratified to feel me put out a lot of power as the stoker.

My favorite circuit, which I fondly call The Bermuda Triangle Circuit because of its triangular configuration, forces me to ascend over a hundred feet per mile, and as of late, I’ve managed to improve my speed going uphill so that what used to take me three circuits to complete in thirty minutes now yields four circuits in the same amount of time.

So I’ll continue to do what I’m doing, working on my strength and speed, till I’m able to complete five circuits in thirty minutes. Then I’ll add more time in ten minute increments till I’m able to ride those same circuits in an hour with maximum distance and ascent. :)

But I really love the short rides. I’m never tired when I’m done, it doesn’t eat up too much time, and I’m still able to accomplish a lot both during the ride and on the tandem. Four or five days of these rides a week plus a long one on the tandem have been great. Since it hasn’t been raining here in Northern California (which I hate, frankly, as I enjoy the rain and love winter), I’ve got plenty of chances to keep at it.

Actually, today was one of my cats’ birthday. My boy Willie, who turned ten today, is the reason for my feeling generous toward Feb. 14. He’s got a long history, that boy, involving illnesses – or at least a condition that requires him to be on medication for the rest of his life until we discovered the magic of herbal supplements for liver health – which I won’t recount into detail. Suffice it to say, he’s our “miracle kitty”, and we love him to pieces. :)

As for romance-romance, I’m all inclined to watch this movie for the dozenth time:

Not a perfect movie by any stretch, but it’s very clever and funny, and whenever I watch it, the bunnies start going crazy. I mean, come on – can you picture a quirky romance along identical lines that’s specifically about gay teens? I’m also talking about a story that’s a historical fantasy (definitely not a pure historical if you want to be realistic about the relationships during the time period).

I’d love to read something like that. I might try my hand at writing it, but there’s always that danger of simply mimicking the George Sand / Frederic Chopin story and all the other complications, given the number of times I’ve watched the movie (I own the DVD).

At any rate, that’d be my contribution to Valentine’s Day. Watch Impromptu, enjoy the romance without the sap, and be amused by the narcissistic self-absorption of a group of artists.

Benevolent forces seemed to have waited till Valentine’s Day – yeah, one of my least favorite days of the year (bathroom cleaning days being the supreme king in the Sucky Day universe) – to show mercy. Somehow something clicked, I was able to work an unplanned event into the story, and now things are once again back on track. So good times are ahead, finally.

I don’t know how other writers manage it, frankly. Digging deep inside oneself for the flimsiest scrap of inspiration (motivation?) to keep him fueled for one more writing day…

And to keep doing that throughout the dreaded slump…

What gets me the most, though, is the fact that I write for an obscure niche (again, contemporary coming-out novels are the bread-and-butter of the LGBT YA market – even better if they’re published by big, mainstream presses), and it’s incredibly difficult keeping the faith through this slump, knowing that the finished product will remain unacknowledged by the vast majority of readers and reviewers because of that belief in what defines the status quo in this market.

This isn’t a self-pitying post. Far from it. I’m well aware of my standing in the LGBT YA market, and I’ve long reconciled myself to the fact that no amount of effort on my or my publisher’s part would change other people’s perceptions of what should be considered “legitimate” genres for gay teen readers.

But the knowledge that all this time and hard work spent on a book that’ll remain way under the market’s radar remains a bitter pill to swallow. Much more bitter, I wouldn’t be surprised, than what a writer of contemporary coming-out novels deals with throughout the writing process. So whenever the midpoint slump comes around to bite me in the ass, the effects are a lot more magnified and more difficult to cope with.

Have I thought about quitting? Actually, yeah – I have. More times than anyone will ever know. At the same time, I end up reminding myself that quitting would be cowardice on my part, and I should keep doing what I’m doing till I’m all out of ideas or simply fall out of love with my kind of stories. Maybe it’s foolish; maybe it’s noble. Who knows? All I’m aware of at present is how awful it can be, being slapped around with bitter truths, when I’m at my lowest point during the writing process.

Digging deep inside for that extra bit of motivation is excruciating.