Flex, stretch, practice, build

Exercise is meant to move

one off dead center.

[Note location change for tomorrow’s public session. Tuesday August 26 will be at Trek Bicycle Store Racine on Hwy 11. Stop in and we can chat about exercise. September I will be back at Vintage & Modern Books]

Every exercise ever reminds creators it’s simply energizing. What? If you read that through several times, it might make some sense. It was an – exercise – in using the letters of a word to dictate the first letter of words in a sentence in the same order. Hang with me, it will all make sense in a bit.

As cyclists, we pay a lot of attention to keeping our machine working. Our bodies are the engine and need to be in good condition to continue to perform. All of the necessaries must be addressed: food, rest, work/play balance, and total body workouts. We must keep our arms and core strong to bring balance to our bodies.

We also need to balance the type and length of workouts, including rest periods or what we call active recovery periods. If the rest is too long, the muscles feel lethargic. Too much exercise will result in exhaustion. Active recovery will help muscles ‘remember’ they will need to work without unnecessarily tiring them. That is often after a very hard session. Total rest may be necessary when sickness factors in.

I find that my writing responds similarly. My habit of writing will fail if I give my self permission to put it off. My creative mind feels lethargic. Putting it off becomes the rule and then I forget about it. What’s left is the unrelenting sense of something very important that I’ve left undone.

Exercises need to be varied in focus, duration, and frequency. Neglect of one muscle group will have its own side effects. Starting back on the road one spring, a strong gust of wind nearly blew me into the ditch. I neglected the upper body over the winter and I didn’t have enough strength to keep the bike straight. Punctuation, creative ideas, chronological writing, detailed writing, concise writing (paring it down with repeated removal of extraneous words), and other exercises make us a more balanced writer.

If I write too long or spend too much time wrestling with a format or style my mind becomes exhausted. A distaste for the piece becomes a repellent to good creativity. I’ve had to create writings for work or school that would fall into this category. Exercises for writing groups or classes can also be exhausting. Do them anyway, then slide into an active recovery.

What is active recovery in writing? Those daily activities that demand you put words on a page (no matter computer, pen, or pencil). Just do it. This will move you to remember a situation or word or thought that needs to be caught. Short writings that may or may not lead to something more grand. Don’t put that pressure on them. Just keep the flow moving.

In writing, I find challenging myself to write in quantifiable terms helps. A creative friend has challenged us to 30 days or even 100 days of continuous progress. You pick the definition of progress. Maybe it is a paragraph a day. Perhaps you want to write a poem a day. Here’s one I think I will try soon, finding a new word and using it in a writing every day. Only you know what you need to keep you moving forward. The challenge will also push you to find a time of day (or not) or maybe push you outside of your normal end of day session (or start of day or lunch time stretch) into capturing a random thought as it occurs. If it is in the car, please wait until you are stopped.

Finding that rhythm of exercise for your writing style is a challenge. In cycling we work hard three weeks and take a week of active recovery. Even that rule becomes humdrum. Sometimes we need to shake up the rhythm to continue to progress. Let me know how you are working out your schedule. I’d love to compare notes.

—Christy Hoff, ArtRoot Writer-in-Residence