Not a Cyber Monday Email
It’s a dicey time of year to send a newsletter. There’s a very good chance this will get lost amongst the eleventy-million holiday-related sales messages. It could get swept up in a mass delete/unsubscribe purge, a response to returning to an overloaded inbox after a holiday weekend. And yet, here I am, sending this email anyways.
Hi. Hello. How are you? It’s been a while.
As many of you know, I’ve been working on a book over the last 14+ months. And finally, I know how to describe what the book is about. I used to say it's about the under-representation of women in sports science research. It is, but it's really about how the failure to consider and study women’s bodies has impacted their role and success in sports to date, how that’s changing, and how it still needs to change.
But the reason I’m writing is I submitted a revised manuscript a week and a half ago.
98,299 words.
345 pages.
It will go through another couple rounds of revisions (I think) but it actually feels like a real thing, a thing that will become a book one day. (Still waiting on word on pub date.)
The weird thing was that I wasn’t freaking out or stressed in the weeks leading up to my deadline. Usually, I’m scrambling for more time or worried that I didn’t get everything just right. Working until the last minute. Cramming. But oddly, I was calm. I didn’t (and don’t) think that this draft is perfect—it still needs work—but I was ready to let it go. I feel confident I’ve taken the draft as far as I can and have done the best I can. And honestly, that’s all I can ask of myself.
Naively, when I started working on this book, I thought it would be a science book, about hormones and bones and muscles and ligaments and the ways in which women’s bodies differ from men’s bodies. But it became much more than just the science. It’s the historical and sociocultural context and norms in which that science is situated and that was the part that really fascinated me.
In the end, I conducted 143 interviews and reviewed over 600 scientific journal articles. At some point, I had to stop researching and put blinders on because there were new papers coming out every week or so. While I want the book to be as up-to-date as possible, I also needed to be realistic with my time and energy. Plus, it may be a good year/year and a half before the book hits shelves anyways so it will enviably be out of date. Isn’t that weird?
Do you want to hear more about the writing process? I don’t know if that’s something people are interested in but hit reply and let me know if you have any specific questions.
Writing, Reading, Listening
I haven’t worked on many freelance pieces this year but there are two stories I wanted to share with you in case you missed them.
The first is this story on running’s cultural reckoning I wrote for Outside. I started reporting on this piece back in the fall of 2020 after women from Wesleyan’s and the University of Arizona’s cross country and track and field teams went public with allegations of abusive and negligent coaching practices at their respective schools. I wanted to know what happens when practices that are a pervasive part of sport but you know int your gut aren’t OK? What happens when the institutions that are supposed to protect student athletes fall short?
While the conversation in sport started to change after the Larry Nassar case and Mary Cain’s op-ed and allegations of abusive coaching by her former coach Alberto Salazar, we still have a long way to go. In October, former University of Oregon women track athletes came forward about the toxic culture surrounding their athletic program. Within the National Women’s Soccer League, male head coaches of five of the 10 teams have either been fired or forced to resign in 2021 alone, due to reasons including alleged sexual misconduct, verbal abuse, racist statements, and creating a toxic work culture. I mean, what is it going to take?
The second story is a happier story, I promise! It’s a feature profile on Carissa Moore for Red Bull’s The Red Bulletin. Carissa is probably one of my favorite athletes and she has changed the face of women’s surfing, elevating it to literal new heights. Not to mention that she’s probably one of the nicest humans. 2021 was a fairytale year for her, probably the most successful year anyone’s ever had in the sport. She won the Triple Crown, the first Olympic gold medal for surfing, and her fifth World Title. It was so fun to work on this story.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past three months listening to podcasts, mostly writing podcasts. These, in particular, have fed my creative and writing soul: First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing (about writing process and life); Mom’s Don’t have Time to Read (Short interviews with writers about their books and writing process); Song Exploder (OK, not exclusively about writing but about the story behind how musicians created their songs); The Shit No One Tells You About Writing (about craft and the business side of writing); and Fated Mates (Romance/rom-com novels have been the thing that have gotten me through the last 2 years and I kind of adore this podcast. It’s not all fawning romance! There is a lot of discussion about craft, story, and character development).
Signing off before this email gets even longer.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for being patient with me. I can’t wait to share this book with you.
Christine
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www.christinemyu.com
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