The (Very) Basics of Roller Derby

As I've been mentioning for the last year or so, I'm an official with New Hampshire Roller Derby. Despite it being the fastest growing sport in the country (and possibly the world), it's still an amateur sport that most people don't know has made a resurgence (or if they do, they presume it's much like the derby of the '70s). Cue iconic picture:

Modern roller derby started as an alternative sport (think elbows and punk rock, a la Whip It) but has evolved to genuine, amateur status (amateur meaning professional without getting paid). The game has dedicated officials, a lengthy set of rules, and is a sport no matter how many sexist newspaper writers fixate on the fact that it's predominantly played by women. (And Jesus do they fixate on that. Look, they have boobs, it can't be a sport! Fuck off, skeezer.)

So here's the short of it. Each team is comprised of 14 skaters. The game (or more lovingly, the bout) is played in two halves of thirty minutes. Each half is segmented into "jams". Each team fields four blockers and one jammer per jam. The jammer wears a star on her helmet to signify that she is the point scorer. (In effect, she is the ball or the puck, but she's human and she's only wearing pads on her knees, elbows, and wrists.) The blockers comprise "the pack". At the jam starting whistle, the jammers must work their way through the pack to be eligible to score. Once they've finished this initial pass, each successive time they pass blockers, they score points (but no more than one point per blocker per lap). They can even score a point by lapping the opposing jammer if she is slow or stuck in the pack.

Where it can get difficult for spectators is that the pack is this nebulous assortment of players from both teams. They're simultaneously playing offense and defense. Sometimes this means stopping and forming odd-shaped walls. Sometimes it means sprinting like crazy. There are lots of hits (blocks) with shoulders, hips, and asses, but no clotheslines or elbows like you see on TV or in the movies (those will earn you a penalty or even get you expelled). There are still fishnets and the occasional tutu, but not as much as you saw five years ago. Now it's mostly jerseys and compression shorts. Yeah you get pink hair, piercings, and tattoos, but just because they're a little rough and tumble doesn't make them less athletic.

People like to fixate on the names (mine is Charles Dickins, in case you were curious). It's a constant conversation within the community. A lot of people are starting to give up derby names in an effort to gain respect and to be taken seriously. Others don't want to give up their names and there are myriad reasons for it. Some use it as a shield, something to allow them to have the confidence they're not allowed to have in their real lives (because they have boobs and we don't want boobs to be confident); others use it to hide from work because no one wants their kindergarten teacher showing up with a black eye after taking a stray elbow to the face); and still others keep theirs because it was part of the fun and whimsy that drew them to the sport to begin with. Again, if you think that real sports don't use pseudonyms, I direct you to Pistol Pete Maravich, Magic Johnson, his Airness, and King James and politely ask you to shut the fuck up.

Last thing in this brief lesson. There is a second helmet cover on the track. One of the blockers may be designated as a pivot. The pivot is a blocker with special privileges. The jammer may, if she chooses, remove her star helmet cover and pass it to the pivot. This causes the pivot to become the jammer. She may do this because of injury, equipment malfunction, or getting stuck in the pack. For first timers, it can add a level of "what the fuck is going on" to an already chaotic pack, but once you've seen a few bouts, the strategy starts to become more clear.

So, with that growth and maturity of the sport, the iconic picture of the '70s has now become more like this:

In Between Times

I always take a little break between manuscripts. I consider it a "voice reset." I used to be so jazzed I would immediately roll into a new project, but I found the voice of the next project sounded exactly the same as the one I had just finished. It inevitably led to a lot of rewriting and sometimes I'd have to drop all the work done as unusable. So now, I take time off and refresh. Sometimes that means playing around on HitRecord. This time around, I dabbled in my Knight Rider fan fiction. Mostly, though, I've been writing a lot of documentation. I'm the head of non-skating officials for New Hampshire Roller Derby and it's the start of the season. I've been writing a ton of "How to Officiate" documentation, which is a totally similar but totally different skill set than fiction writing. I do a lot of documentation for work, too, so it's not jarring. It does draw from the same pot of energy, though. I have trouble writing documentation and fiction at the same time.

Also, I think part of me is stalling until February. I wrote the first draft of FAMILY JEWELS in February then spent the rest of the year making it awesome. I think part of me wants to try and recreate that magic. I'm torn on what to do next. I had planned on writing THE CENOSAPIEN AGENDA. The original story idea had been as a sequel to FJ, but it quickly evolved into a different character (Serenity McIntyre), a different setting, and a different genre. Interesting enough, it changed so much that the sequel idea to FJ became a valid sequel again. So I can write TCA or I can write DISAPPEARING, INC., which is the sequel to FJ. Something to ponder as February begins next week. I'm still writing "How to Head NSO" documentation, so I guess this is a curse of riches situation or something.

(And admittedly, part of me is hoping that an agent says, "BAM! This is it. You need to get to work on a sequel because publishers will want more of this!" which would make the decisio-nmaking process much easier.)

Where Did All My Free Time Go?

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. Mea culpa. I tore a tendon in my shoulder and the recuperation (ongoing) has really thrown my routines for a loop. I've been working from home a lot or not working and going to physical therapy a lot. It may have been a good habit to write on the train every day, but once I stopped taking the train, writing became a lot harder. I also waited longer before starting a second draft. It was helpful, but dear lord I finished the first draft at the end of February and here it is back end of April and I'm not done with the second draft yet. What the hell? So lazy! :)

With the shoulder, I'm not allowed to roller skate. The risk of a fall may move me from physical therapy to surgery, and that's not something I want to risk because I watched a YouTube video of what they do in the surgery and hell no I don't want them perforating my collarbone so they can tie my tendon in place. Screw that! The silver lining in that situation is that I had to come to terms that this most recent attempt to start a men's roller derby team in southern New Hampshire has flopped. For that reason, I volunteered to officiate for the very successful women's roller derby league. Come out to a match! I'll be the guy in a pink shirt they announce as Charles Dickins.

Board games are really big in the Northeast, I've mentioned before, and I have a group that meets every week to play. But that was my big group activity. Usually I worked, I wrote, and I spent time with my wife. Now that I've added roller derby to the mix, my time has evaporated. It's amazing how popular the sport is and how much people need help. If you're at all interested in seeing what the modern derby is like, head to the Googles. It's a safe bet something is going on near you.

Now that I'm going back into work more frequently, I'm writing again, and the second draft is coming along. The first few chapters were a slog, but I've whipped them into shape and the next chapters have gone much faster. I'll give them another pass before sending them out to beta readers. Gonna get this thing to its fighting weight.

Because I'm commuting, that means I'm on the subway, which is where I traditionally read. I broke from my comfortable genres (fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, or biography) and went with literary fiction, something I never read because BORING! I know I'm often told I write literary fantasy (another way of saying, your work is slow moving and focuses too much on character, where are all the explosions?), but I don't write literary literary because I don't want to focus on language and emotions and god aren't I see emo, tear. Or so was my perception of literary. But then I read Jamie Ford's HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET and holy shit, people, you have to read this book. It has cemented itself as a contender for my favorite non-fantasy/sf book of all time. I kept gushing on Twitter because it was just SO good. Even when it slowed down, I didn't stop reading, I just yelled GODDAMMIT FORD, WHEN DO THEY KISS? at my nook and kept on reading. If you're looking for something new to read, you HAVE to read this one. Have to. That's an order.

And once you're done with that one, keep an eye out for Jason Hough's debut sf THE DARWIN ELEVATOR. It comes out in July (I already pre-ordered), and I was lucky enough to get an eARC, which I'm reading right now. I'll offer my thoughts at greater length once I'm done.

For now, go read HOTEL and/or play roller derby. You'll thank me later.

Filling Up the Tank

When I first started writing in a professional manner, I would have to take breaks every few months. I would take two weeks off and just read, letting my brain cool off and my creative juices to replenish. The more I wrote, the less frequently I had to do this and for shorter amounts of time until I haven't had to do it at all this past year. I had a pretty solid routine, take the train into Boston and write the entire way. Take the subway to work and read the entire way. I wrote and read every day and that seemed to balance creative intake and creative output.

But I'm unhealthy and I need to lose a lot of weight (a lot, so let's just leave it at that). I started participating in Boston's bike share program, riding a bike to work rather than riding the subway. While this did not have an immediate impact on my creativity, it seems to have had an effect over time. I've been feeling really burnt out the couple weeks. Now that the weather is cooling, I've started to take the subway again and started reading a new book (THE CITY'S SON by Tom Pollock) and I feel a spark I haven't felt for awhile. I've taken the past few days off and will resume writing tomorrow. I'm hoping a little break is what was necessary. I know there's been a lot of stress. Three full requests is no small thing and work has been incredibly difficult this year. Or rather, my editors have been incredibly difficult this year. My job is the same as it's always been, but content has been delivering later and later and I've had to turn it around faster and faster. I actually developed insomnia for a couple weeks. Let me tell you, that sucked.

I actually have (another) really exciting opportunity regarding one of the fulls I already delivered. Over-the-moon exciting, so of course I can't tell you about it. Cross your fingers for me, if you would be so kind.

So what does that leave? Well, I'm still fat. I need to lose weight and "working out" is something I detest. I always have. I always will. I do much better competing than I do simply standing on an elliptical and trudging for 45 minutes. I need a goal, a challenge, something I want to accomplish. I played kickball, but that was only once a week and our post-game dinners usually packed on more calories than we burned during the game. Serendipitously, they're starting a men's roller derby league in New Hampshire. I haven't skated in 25 years, but I think this might be just the kind of thing I would like to participate in. The biggest hurdle? My feet. I have insanely wide feet (8 EE if you're familiar with skate boots). No one has something that wide that I can borrow, which means I'll have to buy custom skates. It's a big deal if I choose to participate and I or it craps out. A skate made of quality components will hit me just under $600. How horrible would it be to spend that and then not be able to participate?

I can't keep doing what I'm doing. It may be cute to say "Oh bother" in a Whinnie the Pooh voice, but looking like him is not that cute.