Push It Real Good

I must admit… I’ve been struggling to find a decent writing prompt lately. I’ve been busy working on my novel, and freelancing, but as far as blogging goes, the creative well has dried. No surprises here, this shit happens. But it’s not writer’s block, it’s something I like to call burnout.

Burnout happens, but I have to push through, and the best way to do that is to get physical. If I’ve been sitting, I get up and move. Then I sit back down and get my fingers tapping on the keyboard, writing something, and drowning burnout in words. Just rambling on, like I’m doing now, and pretty soon I gain momentum. I forget why I can’t write and get caught up in the act of typing.

Writing is physical; it has more in common with exercise than you think. Consider all the muscle memory involved in typing. If I get into my writing I don’t even realize what is happening with my hands. Just like when I’m running, I forget what my feet are doing. I don’t have to tell them what to do, they just know.

Nobody wants to go for a run, but if I get my legs moving, pretty soon my mind agrees. The repetition of jogging coincides: one word at a time, one step at a time. Push myself for each mile, and the next, and the next. And it gets easier as I go. Hit the peak of performance, feel that high, gradually fall, and then burnout. Then I keep pushing through the writing-burnout, because I can always go back and edit. And I keep pushing through the running-burnout because it’s the only way to get stronger.

Pushing through is the only way to improve.