Athletes, dancers, and musicians all know the importance of warming up before going all out in their particular activity. Raising body temperature and blood flow to muscles, tendons, and joints helps make them resilient, thereby reducing the risk of injury. Range of motion increases. In the case of hard physical exercise, the heart rate rises gradually from resting into the target range. Adrenaline and other hormones prepare both body and mind to work.
What about writing? Do writer warm up? Do writers need to warm up?
Yes and no. And maybe. Writing is and is not like running track or performing Swan Lake (either the musical score or the choreography!).
Some writers dive right into a day’s work. They champ at the bit, ready to boot up the computer or insert a piece of paper into their typewriters. Words don’t just flow, they gush like a creative geyser too long pent up.
Then there are the rest of us. We fiddle, we daddle. We surf the net. We answer emails. We wash the dog (don’t laugh, that chore—post close-encounter with a skunk—delayed the writing of this essay). We do anything and everything except put our fannies in the chair and our fingers to pen or keyboard.
Octavia Butler used to say that when she had difficulty writing, she did something she really hated. A class in accounting. Scrubbing toilets. Getting teeth cleaned. (I don’t remember what examples she gave, but you get the point.) Okay, you say to yourself, you have a choice. You can do X or you can write the next chapter. My sister, a visual artist, employs the same tactic. I know she’s in a slump when her house is inhumanly clean.
I suggest less-overwhelming alternative tactics to ease us over the inertia barrier. These things convey the likelihood that no matter how blank our minds are at the present moment, they will not remain so. Here are some things that have worked for me:
“Morning pages” from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. One or more pages of longhand scribble, content irrelevant. The point is to keep the hand moving, the words—however inane—coming.
The “all I have to do” game. All I have to do is read the last page/paragraph/chapter. Okay, now all I have to do is add one sentence. Good. All I have to do is one paragraph. One page . . . (Although usually by then I’m over the “hump”).
Work on something non-fiction. A blog, an article, an essay. A letter to a distant relative. This is tricky because it can also be a diversion. So limit it in length or time spent.
Enter in my writing journal what I hope to accomplish today and commit to recording how the day’s session went.
Read a critique I’ve written of someone else’s work.
Write a paragraph on a “secondary” work—something just for fun (fanfic works great for some people). Agree that once I’ve hit my serious-writing goal for the day, I get another fling at shameless wish-fulfillment self-indulgence.