utter randomonium

Write on Wednesday for this week is about warm-ups. Warming up is important in a host of activities, from running to singing to, yes, writing. I suppose there are people in this world who can just sit down and churn out great prose, but alas, I am not one of those people. Often my warm-up is a blog post or a book review or a diary entry, but I’ve found even those activities, as unrelated to the task at hand as they may be, help get my mind into the writing groove.

The original post mentions morning pages, as described in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I have a copy of this book on my shelf, and have read up to the start of Week 1, so I know about the morning pages and the artist dates. I’ve never done the date, but I have tried morning pages from time to time. I can’t seem to make them stick. First off, my mornings are already pretty packed: I get up at 5:45am, eat breakfast, make my lunch, take a shower, and go to work. I’ve tried getting up earlier but every time I end up getting sick within a month. I think the idea of morning pages is fantastic; I’ve just had no success at incorporating it into my life.

That said, freewriting is still a big part of my writing practice. I use a writing prompt or just start rambling about whatever’s on my mind at the moment. Sometimes it’s focused freewriting, which is how I approach quality-free challenges such as NaNoWriMo, but most of the time I just let myself wander. From time to time a nugget of a story pops out, and that makes it all worth it.