Warm Up Your Writing Muscles

Exercises for some Feb-meh!-ry motivation

Photo by Sandra on Unsplash

It’s the endless coda of winter here in the UK. Janxiety (which I wrote about last month) has been replaced by a kind of sluggish resignation, as we see out this final month of winter. I call it Feb-meh!-ry. With a big emphasis on the meh!

It’s all single figure temperatures, and skies filthy with belly-flopped clouds. An aired of tiredness about the place. Not shocking, take-your-breath-away, cold, but more a seeping, insidious cold, that wraps itself round your fingers and lips and cheeks.

Where I live, people shoal about on the streets, their bodies layered under thermals and bobble hats and gloves and winter coats. Apart, that is, from one stocky man of a hard-to-place age, who walks to the shop every morning past my window. He strides by in flip flops and shorts. His only concession to the conditions is a quicker stride. I envy his insulation.

This time of the year always reminds me of the William Carlos Williams poem Winter Trees:

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

Sadly, writers are not wise trees waiting until spring comes again. Most of us can’t hibernate through the winter months, spooning like bears. Motivation can be hard where there’s more dark than light in the day.

What can help is some warm-ups. As someone who is also a musician (bassoon, thanks for asking), I wouldn’t dream of trying to play before warming up with some simple scales and easy pieces. The same applies when go for a run, especially in the winter months.

Warming up is not just physical. Sure, you need to increase body temperature, redistribute blood flow, get cold joints and tendons moving so that your range of motion increases. But it’s also mental – it’s saying, ‘I’m going to do something, I’m going to make effort, I’m easing my way into being in some kind of flow’.

So why not apply this to writing. I struggle with the dulling effects of this time of the year, and feel like writing is an effort. There’s a stiffness and tightness to the flow of words and ideas. I find it useful to give myself some ‘no-consequence’ writing exercises that are intended to be simple and quick. They probably won’t lead to a great work of art (though never say never), but they might just give you a boost, a bit of motivation, or a kick up the ass to get something done.

Try out one or more of the exercises below. Get your blood flowing, get your writing muscles flexed. Get going!