Have you ever gone through a period of time without exercising? When you restart, your body aches like you’ve been run over by a truck until it gets back to “normal.”
Right now, I’m trying to rejuvenate two different muscle groups. One is music and the other is creative writing. I’ve been hard at it on my trumpet for several months and have seen progress, but I fight hard not to measure where I am to where I was (fifty years ago).
As for creative writing, I had a pretty good practice going, but I put it down when I couldn’t come up with a suitable ending to my first draft. Here are some ideas that I am trying to get back on track:
- Find a regular time each day to devote to writing and commit to one hour.
- I am avoiding looking at the manuscript for now to not put any pressure on forcing an ending.
- Creative writing, for me, is like pulling a loose thread. In this case, an idea. Then simply (hahaha) putting my fingers on the keyboard and writing without stopping for ten minutes at a time, even if I write blah, blah, blah, the idea is to maintain a flow.
I’m happy to receive your thoughts and ideas on a writing practice if you have any.
What are you doing to exercise unused muscles?
