Lilith Saintcrow

A fresh chapter of Selene is up this morning!

I was on the treadmill this morning, and I started thinking about the physical act of writing.

Let me back up a second. I started an exercise regimen on Labor Day. Mostly because I am sick of my mother’s voice in my head telling me I’m ugly and running my body, and partly because I have let myself go a bit. I want to be healthy and fit. I want to be able to keep up with my kids and live to a ripe old age to see what they do next. (They are interesting little buggers.) And I’ve got that treadmill in the sunroom, why not use it?

So I’ve been exercising. About a half-hour on the treadmill and a longer walk at night at the track, just to get me moving, gauge my current level, and give me a base to start from.

And the funniest thing happened. My wordcount started going up.

Now, I feel like an idiot, because I knew this about myself–I think best when I’m moving, and I plot way better when I’m up and moving around. The track near my house has seen many, many late-night sessions with me walking in circles, a knotty problem revolving inside my head and finally working itself out. Plus, when I exercise I feel better and the work doesn’t seem like such an uphill slog.

It all got me started thinking about the very physical act writing is.

There’s the brute work of typing a novel, of course. That’s sixty (YA/novella) to a hundred thousand (or more) in the finished work alone, and that doesn’t count drafts, excised bits, false starts, or anything else. It’s a lot of words, and a lot of work for the fine muscles and structures of the wrist and hand, not to mention the forearm.

Then there’s some things that don’t get counted–research, and mind over matter.

I often tell people they need to swing a weapon around or actually fire a gun if they truly want to fix their combat scenes. There’s nothing like kinesthetic learning to give your craft that ring of truth. The physical cost of research can be tremendous–I’ll just leave that to your imagination. Which leads us to the second thing: mind over matter.

There was a story I read somewhere about a guy in prison, who spent all the time playing golf in his head, refining his swing. When he got out, he found his game had gotten so much better it wasn’t even funny. Visualization is used by athletes and in therapy, not to mention martial arts and education; it’s a powerful, powerful tool.

So why don’t writers talk more about it? We spend hours visualizing things and putting them together for our characters.

I know a lot of writers who have, for example, chronic fatigue or autoimmune disorders. One writer I know has Crohn’s disease, another has lupus. For these writers, sinking into a story can be a pain-management mechanism–another one of the time-honored benefits of visualization. Sometimes the story can pull you away from real physical pain, or you can make the story hold the pain instead of your body. I firmly believe this is a GOOD thing. Hey, whatever gets you through the night, the pain, or the hellish experience is good. (There’s a fine line to walk between drugging yourself with fiction and taking care of yourself, though–which is outside the scope of this little essay here. Hey, you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t expect me to digress at some point.)

Visualization is an awesome skill to have as a writer, but there’s also a cost. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten stressed out over the story, or felt a character’s physical reaction to violence or pain in my own body*. The cortisol and adrenaline starts to flow, because I’m not just writing the story, I’m experiencing it.

This is good for immediacy in the work, but hard on my old corpus. Exercise helps purge some of that stress hormone backwash; strenuous exercise gives me a way to disconnect from the story for a few minutes and purge it. It also helps me handle the brute work of sitting down and writing better, evens out my temper, and detoxes me on a physical and mental level.

We think of writing as a sedentary (and solitary) pursuit, and to a large degree that’s true. But even such a sedentary pursuit takes a toll on the body, just like a solitary pursuit such as writing has its social aspects. The toll can come from typing (Back, demon of carpal tunnel syndrome! Back!) or from stressing out over rejection, or the stress of a character’s woes, or from the cost of sitting for eight hours without even a bathroom break because you’re so into the story. (I’ve done that. It’s not comfortable. Then there’s the forgetting-to-eat thing. Ugh.)

I like to encourage writers to take care of their bodies. Even something so simple as deep breathing for five or ten minutes a day can help destress you and make it easier for your body to tolerate the demands placed on it by writing. Exercise is a good thing (ritual disclaimer: talk to your doctor, don’t overdo it, better to start small and get into a habit than weekend-warrior it and break something, etc., &c.). Just because you “just sit and write” doesn’t mean there’s not a cost to your physical and mental systems. Helping to minimize that cost means you can write longer.

It also means you have a better chance of writing higher-quality stuff. A longer professional life and healthier body means more chances to overcome the constant round of rejection that is a writer’s life, and more chances to produce something that will eventually sell. Think of taking care of your body as a necessary investment in your writing life.

It’s not the only reason to exercise, but sometimes it’s the only reason I can drag myself through another round. When all else fails, I can whip myself with plot and characterization.

Hey, man. Whatever works.

Over and out.

* Interesting side note: I should mention that reading Somatic Fictions before bed has given me a new grasp on the whole subject. If literary criticism and analysis is up your alley, check it out.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 11:48 am and is filed under Writing (About). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.