Exercise Your Writing

Let's put it on the table, people. I hate exercise. Running, push ups, leg-lifts, free-weights, you name it, I avoid it. I do like some physical activity. I like yoga. Used to do it fairly regularly after the birth of my last child. I like walking so I don't mind walking to the subway or walking the dog (if the weather isn't horrible). But, overall, my slug to Tazmanian Devil ratio is about 100:1. But here's the thing: I think I'm finally starting to understand that whole philosophy about forcing yourself to exercise -consistently- even when you feel like crap, even when you abhor the idea of getting up at 6 am to do your stretches or run on the treadmill, once you start it it's not so bad.

I noticed this because I haven't been writing very much on the WIP lately. I do a lot of writing on the subway and, for various reasons, I've been driving to and from work the last couple of weeks. Well I finally got on that subway again a couple of times this week and my old habits kicked in. Instead of grabbing the newspaper or a book to read like many people, what I've usually done for the last few years is take that time to write. Well, I'd gotten out of that habit and the first day I truly didn't feel like pulling out the journal. I thought, I'll just re-read what I wrote a couple of weeks ago. Just to remind myself of where I was in the story. Soon enough that led to some ideas, a few words of correction here and there, an additional paragraph and by the time I got to work I had two new pages added to the story. It wasn't easy, the words took a while to come but, like exercise, if you force yourself to just do it, start slowly, it does get easier. Same with my attendance at The Boy's Tae Kwon Do practices. When I go I make sure I have nothing to read except my own work. As soon as I sit down I'm like Pavlov's dog and out comes the journal. Again, my mind may not want to write but I'm forcing myself to just look at the words at first, scratch a few new ones out in the hopes that more will come. Like people who say I can only do one push up and then the next day they say maybe if I got one done, I can now do two.

It's been a really long week and I'm not sure if I'll get much more writing done over the weekend. But I know that avoiding exercise leads to a flabby, unhealthy person so avoiding writing leads to a flabby, unfinished manuscript. Write one paragraph this weekend? Yeah, I can do that. And if I can do one, then maybe I can do two...