Writing & Running

“You’re crazy.”

I get this a lot. Mayhap it’s true. I’m a weird little writer of weird little stories. Anyone who writes knows it’s an utterly nonsensical thing to do. Even I know that. But my sanity is most often called into question not over writing.

That’s right, I’m not just a writer, I’m also one of those goofy people who will routinely run for miles, on purpose, without any bears or sharks chasing me.

I do it for the usual reasons: healthy heart, weight maintenance, whatever. Really though? It’s about the wad of unmyelinated neurons floating between my ears.

Writing doesn’t exactly encourage balance. We’re familiar with the stereotypes, and where we fit into them. We spend too much time sitting on our behinds. We don’t know how to act. We’re frustrated, distracted, anxious, obsessed, and depressed. Maybe we drink too much. Perhaps we have serious mental disorders that may or may not be appropriately treated.

Certainly not all writers are snarled up in these problems, but you get the picture. Writing, while a worthy pursuit, is hard on your body and your grey matter. It’s important to stay balanced.

While I can’t speak for everyone, I want to share with you why I believe running and writing go together at least as well as coffee and cigarettes.

Exercise is housekeeping for the brain. A good run mucks out my noggin like nobody’s business. The accumulated detritus gets thrown out and I’m left with a clear, calm space where I can settle in with clear calm thoughts.

So there’s the chill out effect—that alone makes it worthwhile—but it also stimulates creative mojonation (a made-up word, I know).

Running grounds me in the physical world. It calls me to attention, to intention. I’m never quite comfortable when I run. It’s work after all. It might be hot or cold outside, my knee aches, it smells like someone hit a skunk on the highway, or maybe I’m tired from a long day, but I push through, intentionally. The idea isn’t to hold on, or mentally catalogue. It’s about allowing sensory information to wash over me, unmuted by everyday distractions. I simply let go, and feel.

I need that regular exposure to pure physicality. If I can’t feel it, I can’t write it.

Which isn’t to say my noodle goes entirely limp. I do think about things. When I run, however, the way I think is a little different. There’s a strange economy of thought that comes into play, a distillation of consciousness. I lose the facility for guile, for manipulation. No wonder this is when I have the best chats with my characters—when they’re out of harness, free to do and say what comes naturally.

Running puts me in that very basic, very honest place. For me, writing well means telling the truth, even when I’m lying.

You don’t have to go Powerade, running hurdles and flinging javelins. I would be a danger to myself and others. The heel-toe express is good enough for me. My point is that writing is stressful, people. It’s important to manage that in a healthy way, and exercise can make your writing better. There is no bad here.

So get up, move around, be intentionally dumb for a while and let the lizard brain take over. You might be surprised at what happens when you come back to your desk.