by Chris McMahon
Hi, everyone. Here I go again with another writing-running analogy, but I find the two have a lot in common. Long distances alone pounding the pavement, a distant goal, the need for self-imposed targets and self-motivation. The need to push yourself to improve.
I’ve recently run in the Bridge-to-Brisbane, a 10km (6.2mi) event that is conducted every spring in Brisbane. They close off the Gateway bridge across the Brisbane river, and the first 1.1km is a sprint straight up the bridge to the peak – then a downhill sprint for another kilometre. This year there were around 30,000 participants and I managed to come in around 1,473th at 46.27 min – pretty happy with that!
Foolishly, even though I pushed myself to the limit, I went straight back to my usual 8km runs this week – and you guessed it – by yesterday had a major cramp in my calf muscle that had me panicked I had torn it (again). Thankfully no, but it did make me realise what a damn idiot I was. I should have taken the week off and let my overworked muscles recover. Once more my own bloody-mindedness had taken me into the danger zone.
I think the same can be true for writing. There is often so much emphasis on keeping at the grindstone – writing every day – that we forget to mix things up. After the marathon – i.e. getting to the end of the nth draft of that work-in-progress – I think it’s beneficial for most people to give the grey-matter a break. Do some light ‘training’ maybe – ideas or unrelated writing just for fun or expression – get the body energy back up – i.e. recharge the motivational cells. I think as a writer you really can ‘tear a mental muscle’ pushing too hard.
At one point I was very serious about classical guitar. I wanted to enter the conservatorium and do a 3-year music degree majoring in guitar and voice. My teacher would regularly have a little ‘concert’ where his students played their pieces for the group. The thing I remember most about this group was the differing focus on technique. Some players did a lot of hand drills – arpeggios etc – to keep their playing fluid. They even did these to ‘warm up’ before playing. Me – I would work at the technique exercises then never deliberately practise them again. I guess I developed my technique while actually playing pieces (or hoped I did!). I’m not saying there is any right way, only that different approaches work for different people. If you are the sort to write in blocks – then take a break where you cogitate and take in new material rather than pump out 1000 words a day – who is to say whether that’s the right or wrong approach?
For me, I tend to chug away pretty regularly on the writing, but every now and then I do really benefit from a complete break. It helps to recharge the creative juices and give me the mental space to come up fresh.
How do you approach your writing?
Mad Genius Club 
4 responses to “Post-Marathon Recovery”
Chaotically.
I write for days, weeks . . . then waste time fooling around the internet. I keep meaning to start regimenting myself. Schedule things. But my best writing time seems to _start_ about the time I used to go to bed. I’ve got a huge backlog of stuff to edit and get into the Kindle store, and new stuff that’s coming along at a reasonable clip–if one looks at the annual production, not the start and stop all through the year. So I guess it works for me. It just doesn’t feel like I’m trying hard enough.
Hey, Pam. I would not worry about the starts and stops if you are producing things. That’s probably more a natural flow.
That voice telling me I need to be writing seems to be always in the back of my mind and never changes its tune no matter how much I apply myself. I think it’s just an element of the whole psychic landscape – and probably a generally positive one since it makes you keep checking if you are working or not.
I alternate fiction and non-fiction. When I’m working on non-fiction, then my short stories and novellas are a break and a refreshment. When I was pounding away on the novel or working through a four story campaign, reading non-fiction and outlining short articles helped keep things loose mentally. Before I started writing science fiction, when I was writing US history I’d read Asian or medieval European history. The gray cells still had to work, but the variety kept me fresh. And in some cases it led to connections that I had not seen (and in some cases that the senior faculty had not seen either. Hyper-specialization is not always your friend.)
Interesting. I’ve never written non-fiction – well at least outside of my professional life – except for very short blog articles on space science etc That would be an interesting way to keep things fresh. I had a dream that I compiled this massive book full of equations vaguely related to space engineering, which was strange since I had never considered it.
I remember reading in Bradbury’s ‘Zen and the Art of Writing’ that he himself did not read in the genre, reading a lot of non-fiction. Maybe that’s what gave his ficiton such a peculiar appeal.The writing process is so fascinating! Varies with everyone.