How to warm up for a writing session (and make it count)
Published: Fri, 10/24/14
Baseball players do it. Dancers do it. Singers do it. Not all writers do it, but they should. I’m talking about warming up, folks. Taking a few minutes to get into the groove before you dive into whatever piece of writing you’re working on. Enter a creative mindset. Inhabit the world of your project. Remind yourself of what it feels like to create. If your writing ever feels clumsy, especially in those first few moments of a writing session, consider flexing your writerly muscles a bit before diving in head first. Here’s how you do it: Grab a blank sheet of paper or open a new Word document and let ‘er rip. Don’t think too much, don’t ponder, just riff on your characters, plots, settings, themes, etc.—wherever the wind blows you. It almost doesn't matter what you write, as long as you're writing about one or more of these narrative elements as they relate to your project. Do this for 10 or 15 minutes, then segue into the project itself. And don’t stop there. Rather than thinking of the warmup as a throwaway, let's make it count, but not in the way we usually think of our writing as “counting.” Let me explain. Most of the time when we write, we're writing towards a purpose, a goal, and not just any goal, a very particular goal: the final page. We're writing for the end, for that glorious moment when the draft, first or final, is finished. This means that every word counts because it brings us closer to the end of the line, paragraph, page, and finally piece. But there are other ways to make writing count. Thinking on the page, for example, working through the issues that make your writing possible . . . ahem, ahem. This thinking-writing is crucial, but it will most likely never find its way into the finished product. It's background work, a warmup for the big game. Athletes and performers warm up to prevent injury in the act of doing what they love. The way I see it, a writer’s warmup isn’t much different. Bang your head against a wall with clumsy writing for long enough, you’re bound to get hurt. So protect yourself, warm up, make those sentences work for you instead of against you. Hoping this helps, Justine
Justine Tal Goldberg Owner, WriteByNight P.S. For all you Austinites out there, there's only one seat left in November's In Short Fiction Workshop, now including a tour of the O. Henry Museum! November 8, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., only $49. P.P.S. If you know someone who might benefit from today's message, please feel free to forward this email along to them. Go on, help a writer
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