In this ongoing series, we ask SF/F authors to describe a specialty in their lives that has nothing (or very little) to do with writing. Join us as we discover what draws authors to their various hobbies, how they fit into their daily lives, and how and they inform the author’s literary identity!
It all started with The Princess Bride.
By the time I was fourteen, I’d seen the movie so many times I could recite it forwards and backwards and in rhyme. I’d grown up an athletic child, a competitive soccer player since age 4, with stints ranging from months to years in gymnastics, softball, volleyball. I was—and am still—a dreamer, and I had no trouble dreaming big. I vividly remember hitting tennis balls against our garage door in California while conducting mock interviews about my many championship matches.
Thanks to Mia Hamm, I wanted to go to the World Cup. And later, thanks to Westley and Inigo Montoya, I wanted to be a fencer.
That is how it started. I was fourteen, watching The Princess Bride for the 254321th time, captivated by Westley and Inigo dueling on the cliff-top. I had never held a sword in my life, but I phoned my mum and said, “I want to learn to fence!”
Being the mother of a precocious and overly imaginative only child meant fielding a series of short bright flares of enthusiasm, so my mum took the statement in stride. Last week it was espionage, this week it was fencing. She figured it would pass.
Unfortunately for my mum, she dismissed my swash-buckling dreams with the following fateful line: “Sure, Victoria, if you can find a fencing studio in Nashville, Tennessee, you can take a lesson.”
Rule 1: Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line.
Rule 2: Never issue a challenge to a precocious and overly imaginative only child.
Three hours later, I returned with the name and number of a fencing coach.
A week later, I had my first lesson, and I was hooked.
Unlike Westley and Inigo, I AM left-handed, a detail which really DOES come in handy when you’re fencing épée. I was never the best—a point that plagues me, a point that still whispers in my head whenever I have a shred of downtime—but I was addicted. Over the next five years, I would become state champion and go on to compete in a national tournament (I ranked 14th).
It’s a brutal sport, and for several years I bore the cuts and bruises to show for it. It’s a solitary sport, coming from soccer, where wins and losses are the work of teams. It’s a sport I wish I’d found as a self-possessed adult, rather than a teen who already felt apart from others. It’s a sport I’m just now coming back to.
Fencing is a game of living chess, a match where reflexes only work in combination with intent, and mind and body must work together at every moment.
When I got to University, I put down my sword (fencing is an expensive, travel-heavy game, and professors aren’t keen to overlook absences), and didn’t pick it up again until this past summer, on my 27th birthday.
And oh, it hurt. Young people like to think they’re invincible. They don’t like to face any situation where they’ve gotten weaker instead of stronger. I’ve remained an athlete, a distance swimmer with a side of running and rock-climbing thrown in, but I’m not a fencer anymore. Not yet. It hurt, to see how out of shape I was, how far down the rungs I’d fallen, but while my body needs tuning, my mind feels stronger than ever, ready to play the sword games my teenage brain wasn’t quite fit for.
Luckily for me, fencing doesn’t have an expiration date.
And when my Masters program ends this summer and I find myself back on Nashville soil, the first thing I plan to do is pick up my sword…
After re-watching The Princess Bride, of course.
V.E. Schwab is the author of YA novels The Near Witch, The Archived, and The Unbound. Schwab’s first adult novel, Vicious, debuted to critical praise and reader accolades. Her latest novel, A Darker Shade of Magic, takes us on a journey through parallel Londons—available now in the US from Tor Books and in the UK from Titan.
“Fencing is a game of living chess, a match where reflexes only work in combination with intent, and mind and body must work together at every moment.”
Excellent observation, one that shows you mastered the sport intellectually as well as physically.
I got into fencing (saber primarily) in college. I was attracted to it by the chance to emulate sword wielding heros out of my books: John Carter, Warlord of Mars, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Scaramouche and many more. I stuck with it because I had the good luck to have an exceptional teacher: the late, great Charles Selberg.
Being involved in theatre I learned stage combat, and every time I hold I saw in my hand I always think “Imagine if we were doing this for real.”
Love love love the Princess Bride, but also love the old school Robin Hood with Erryl Flynn as well
Obviously that was supposed to be “hold a sword in my hand”
me, too! My high school had fencing–not a posh school, but they had an historian on staff who’d been a competitive fencer and coach, and he was game to teach it again. Fencing outdoors in Texas humidity makes for way more sweating than they show in the movies! I took it again in college, which was fun. It’s a wonderful sport, but not competitively kind to those of us significantly shorter than average.
I’d also recommend looking into a HEMA club near you too. What we do isn’t too much like sport fencing, but it is a study in how to use a sword to kill your opponent. Various practiitoners study Rapier, Longsword, Sword and Buyckler, and a whole host of other weapons, all based on writeen treatises form anywhere from the early 13th century Germany, to Victorian England.
http://www.nytimes.com/video/sports/100000003040466/inside-the-world-of-longsword-fighting.html
Fencing is great fun. The second day after first time back after a lengthy break can be an exercise in soreness.