Red Room Where the Writers Are

  I wonder if I could write a book about losing weight through this NaNoWriMo thing.  It seems I lost three pounds during the 24 days I was writing -- almost a pound a week or, as it turned out, a pound every 20,000 words. 

   It wasn’t that writing made me eat healthier, or even eat less.  I usually write with a cup of coffee laced with half and half by  my side. Then I’ll add cookies and toast and apple slices so it’s almost like an assembly line of eating.  The food just keeps on coming and my mouth just keeps on chewing.

   But I think it’s another writing habit I have that might be the clue to a skinnier me.

   For some reason related to low oxygen or fresh air, I think best when I’m on the run. So in the morning, I’ll put on my shoes and hit the road and write in my head as I jog.  I’ll run down the block to the ocean and an idea will appear. I’ll turn the corner down a row of beach cottages and the sentences will flow.  Usually, I’ll stop and pull out the little notebook I carry in my pocket and write down the thoughts as they come.  I did this so much during my NaNoWriMo days that I thought my neighbors might start calling me the crazy writing runner lady.  Like the way people called the man who walks slowly through our downtown wearing a pink dress and a parasol, the pink umbrella man.  

   Since the contest had a deadline, I’d find myself doing my morning write/run and then going out for an afternoon session too.  I’d run to a nearby town, to an overlook I liked, to a place where monarch butterflies came to rest.  Then I would come back home to write.  

   I clocked in my novel at 60-some-thousand words and stepped on my bathroom scale that morning.  I weighed three pounds less without even trying.

   “Write your Way to Weight Loss.”  Now that’s a catchy title.