Yoga = Writing, #FightForward Namaste

This image is almost identical to the yoga room where I will be at soon.

Seriously, this morning I am going to a yoga class thanks to my wonderful friend and colleague and her boyfriend with a rock star gym membership.  I have to say that I went last Saturday and had a near-spiritual experience.  I believe I dedicated my intention to doing a great job teaching Sunday school, which I teach on Saturday.  Don’t ask.  Well,  after yoga, I had a great class and felt the amazing effects from the exercise, most of the week long, save for when the administration ruined my calm, but I have already resolved this issue thanks to my good Union brothers, including the president of our local.

This morning my yoga intention will be to work on my novel.  The class is an hour and a half long, so it is quite an intense time to concentrate.  The room is also very hot, though its not hot yoga, and the sweating is cleansing.  It feels like a Hogan, almost, a Native American sweat lodge, except there is no smoke. 

The quiet space will give me time to really think: I didn’t have the mental space to sit with the characters like I wanted to because I had so many meetings this week.  And now, we have to start packing to move our apartment by December (Help me Jesus!).

But enough of the world and now back to The Harvest.

I think I am going to write the next chapter of the book and develop the street urchin a little more.  This is a kid that the main character haggles with at the market.  That is the one idea I have been playing with.  In any system, not everyone is going to follow the rules, but when  you live under fascism, you just don’t know whom to trust.  Not everything is as it appears either.  That is the sense I want to capture with this next chapter. 

I also decided to finish the Ashley point of view and then write the Lupe Ramirez point of view.  Lupe is going to encounter the revolutionaries while Ashley is stuck obeying the system.  Somehow, the two will have to reconnect at the end of the novel. 

Now, in terms of the research, I am going to start watching cage fights with women and YouTube fights.  I think that is a valid form of research, since I can’t go to a dojo.  I guess I could but right now I’m struggling to get through the yoga.  Some fiction just needs to stay fiction.  Anyway, the point is that I want to include some hand-to-hand combat between the elite women in my novel.  I have never been in a fight my whole life, with another girl.  I only fought my neighbor Julie who fought very dirty, I might add.  He got his ass beat because he tried scratching my eye out. 

Anyway, here is to finding your calm and concentration.  Have a blessed weekend.