An Uncommon Writing Exercise You Probably Haven’t Heard Much About
For this writing exercise, you are going to need a glass of water, a pan, a pen, a large cooler, some string, 3 coats (of varying size), a kiwi, an average-sized chihuahua, two broken light bulbs, a baseball bat, a swimming pool, 3 linebackers, and a grenade.
Okay, so I’m obviously kidding (unless you actually have all those things available to you…then leave a comment and we can talk. 😂)
This writing exercise is actually a play on words. The writing exercise I’m talking about is two-fold. It has to do with actual exercise and something else parallel to that.
Now before you roll your eyes thinking, “Oh goodness, he’s actually gonna try to tell me that exercise is going to help my writing,” and leave this post, hold tight.
There is actually going to be some interesting insider information here.
So let’s dive in.
What does exercise have to do with writing?
Ever heard of Haruki Murakami?
He’s a brilliant author who wrote 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and soon will be releasing First Person Singular: Stories.
His novels are very adult in nature so I can’t recommend them as family-friendly, but Haruki’s writing routine is fascinating. And his mentality towards the exercise of writing itself can be very helpful to us.
To give you an idea, let’s hear one of his quotes, “writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic creativity,”
This quote really gives us a view into the way a famous successful author thinks about the physical hardship that comes with choosing to write a novel.
Murakami’s daily writing routine includes running and swimming.
How does one go from working a regular job to being a successful author?
Murakami ran a small Jazz club in Tokyo. He would work until the early hours of the morning before heading home to his real passion of writing.
After some time, he decided to close the club and dedicate his life to writing. He and his wife moved out into the rural areas of Tokyo.
At this point, he completely gave himself over to writing full-time, but also with this change of pace he picked up some unfortunate habits and side effects. “once I was sitting at the desk writing all day I started putting on the pounds. I was also smoking too much-sixty cigarettes a day. My fingers were yellow, and my body reeked of smoke. This couldn’t be good for me, I decided. If I want to have a long life as a novelist, I needed to find a way to stay in shape.”
We can see that at least for this successful author, he had to really dedicate his time to writing in order to find success, but his body seemed to be taking a toll.
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What can we do to help our body and not just our mind be better at writing?
Murakami decided to create a new daily writing routine.
He wakes up at 4 am and gets straight to writing. He continues to write for four to six hours on a regular day. Even if it’s not a workday he still believes in routine and waking early, “once I began my life as a novelist, my wife and I decided that we’d go to bed soon after it got dark and wake up with the sun,” for him this meant getting up typically before 5 and going to sleep around 10 pm.
In studying successful people that seemed to be good at “making their own success,” this was a continual pattern in their thinking and lifestyle. Many of them believed in getting up with the sun and working early.
There’s a saying, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes one healthy, wealthy, and wise.” For many wise people this practice turns out to be true.
What is the writing life really like?
You might imagine that the writing life is filled with long stretches of free time with some vigorous moments of sparking writing genius.
For successful writers, this isn’t often the case.
Murakami speaks of the writing grind in this way, “I have to pound away at a rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of my creativity”
If we want to grow in our ability to write and have a chance at becoming a successful author we need to be thinking, working, and writing in this way. Start creating your writing grind today. Don’t wait.
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What type of writing exercise does a successful author really do?
For Murakami, it starts around 5 am with four to six hours of writing. He usually finishes writing around 10 or 11 am.
He then moves on to the writing exercise that he feels helps him be a better novelist and helps give him a longer life as a novelist, “In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long-six months to a year-requires a good amount of mental and physical strength.”
And here I think we really see the point, “to hold such a repetition for so long-six months to a year-requires a good amount of mental and physical strength.”
Does writing require physical strength? Yes, in a way it does. It requires both physical and mental discipline and awareness to be able to start something as huge as a novel, a blog, or a writing career, and actually finish it.
And there is a good amount of evidence that physical exercise is extremely helpful for helping with creativity, a sharp mind, and mind fog.
“…researchers are discovering that exercise can have more immediate benefits. Your lunchtime workout can make you a better thinker at 1 p.m. And that can mean a more productive writing session. Of course, writers have known for years that outdoor exercise is the key to inspiration and overcoming writer’s block.” – Source.
Final Thoughts
As a writer that wrote over 1,000,000 words since 2018 and 8,000 last week I can agree with Murakami’s move away from bad habits to a more disciplined writing life that is coupled with exercise and healthy choices. And that the repetition of daily exercise mingled with daily writing can become very important. (You might be wondering where I got those numbers. Grammarly has this cool feature that records the amount of your work👇.)
They even record your biggest mistakes 😂👇
(Ahhhh. My arch nemesis…the comma…we meet again…😈. Battle me everyday unending and with Grammarly I will SMITE thee!
Oh…you’re still here reading this post? Oh, right. I’m writing. Okay, yes! I am writing! Er-um. *clears throat* *cracks knuckles*)
As a writer, I found Murakami’s lifestyle and exercise routine for a writer inspiring.
It’s easy as a writer to fall into a habit of writing a lot and enjoying the important things in life but without thinking much about it, health and exercise get pushed to the side. I have seen that to be true 100% and have recently been working on remedying it. But it is hard and takes time.
I have also found exercise to be extremely helpful with thinking and writing.
When I found out Murakami believed exercise was a pivotal part of success as a novelist I immediately agreed.
And the other exercise that helps with writing is writing itself. Writing is a type of exercise. It’s very much like using your brain as a muscle. The more you use it the more strength and endurance you build up to use it more, and it becomes easier to do what once was hard.
8,000 words a week used to be difficult for me, but now I’d rather be at 10,000 and 14,000, and hopefully more. But it takes work and exercise to get there.
The more you do the better it will get. And I highly recommend some sort of exercise to go along with your writing.
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You can even try this little exercise right now,
Take a minute and write something. Then go run around the room for a minute and then come back and write for two minutes.
After this 4 minute exercise, you should already notice a difference in mental clarity between the minute you wrote before physical exercise and the two minutes after physical exercise where your heart was pounding fresh blood into your brain.
The amount of impact physical exercise will have on your everyday writing can be just as impactful as any amount of writing exercises you find to help with your writing skills.
The next time you are looking for a writing exercise to help break your writer’s block, try doing some exercise too. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised how much exercise clears up your writing mind.
An Uncommon Writing Exercise You Probably Haven’t Heard Much About
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I hope this helps!
Happy writing!
Resources:
How to Start a Blog in 11 Simple Easy Steps in 2020
How to Write a Book: 32 Tips | Your MASSIVE Guide How to Write a Book
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An Uncommon Writing Exercise You Probably Haven’t Heard Much About
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An Uncommon Writing Exercise You Probably Haven’t Heard Much About
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