Monday, December 12, 2011

Warm up your writing

How is writing like playing sports?

Your performance will be better if you take the time to warm up.

Ever have a tough time starting a writing project? You stare at the blank page, have a few false starts, and finally set it aside in frustration, only to come back a short time later and have the words just flow?

You just experienced the effect of a writing warm up.

I read about this recently, how warming up before writing helps the process of writing immensely. And I’m not talking about swinging your arms around or jogging in place (though that won’t hurt). I’m referring to doing some warm up writing.

You can warm up quickly and easily by simply sitting down and writing a journal entry first thing in the morning. It doesn’t have to be pretty or grammatically correct, and you never have to show it to anyone if you don’t want to. It only has to take a few minutes. But just the act of writing, a free-form mind-dump onto a page, will prime you for whatever you will be writing next.

Give it a try. You may be surprised with the results.

Happy writing!


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