Writing hurts, literally

Several years ago I attended a writers workshop in Westcliffe, Colorado. The inimitable Dorothy Allison sat at the head of the table that week. She intimidated the daylights out of me. Talk about no-nonsense. But how I grew to love her in spite of her ferocity is a testament to her humor and charm. Among the many things she taught me that week was how to pronounce Albert Camus’ name, and no, it’s not Kay-muss.

Dorothy walked crooked. Like someone had jackknifed her back and left her permanently torqued. She didn’t hide the fact that she was in constant pain, but here’s where she got me, and what I now pass on to my students every year.

She’d once gotten a referral to a specialist in northern California who only accepted three kinds of patients: professional football players, professional dancers, and writers. Yes, writers. It’s obvious why football players; they endure blunt force trauma for a living. And dancers, despite all that grace, put their bodies through constant, grinding abuse.

“But writers?” Dorothy said, then hunched her arms into typing position. “Who else locks themselves in a fixed position for hours without coming up for air? We sit like this, white-knuckling the trauma we’re trying to write about—but we don’t take care of the same bodies holding it.”

Then she made us get up. We stretched, shook it out, drew a few deep and living breaths.

She reminded us that writers ask a lot of their bodies, and act surprised when those bodies revolt: back pain, neck pain, headaches, blurry vision. “If you’re going to ask this much of your body,” she said, “you have to condition it to endure.”

Her advice came from lived experience, and after my own run with debilitating back pain, it landed hard.

Last week, I planted my happy ass in a chair and promptly lost nine hours. This never happens in drafting, only in revision. It’s the one circumstance in life where I completely lose track of time. When I finally came up for air, I couldn’t see straight. My neck felt like a dry stalk. It took twelve hours for the headache to go away.

The next day, a little gun-shy, I promised myself I’d stand up at least once an hour.

I’m not defending why I do CrossFit at 60 years old. But if someone asks me what I’m training for, I could tell them sitting. Or falling. Or writing. Or, maybe most honestly, I do CrossFit so that when my body starts whispering, Get up and move, I can say, “Okay, Dorothy. I heard you.”