Don't Forget the Warmup

I’ve been “tweaking some material I use in school workshops. I bundle a couple concepts together and put a fun name on the package. One I’m playing with now is “Don’t for get the warm-up.”


When a track star goes to a race, he or she doesn’t just pull on running shoes and wait for the starting gun. If they did, they would pull a muscle. The do a warm-up first. When we write, sometimes we pretend we heard the gun and start. If you have writer’s block, don’t know where the story is going or where to start, maybe you need a warm-up.

A writing warm-up is easy. Just start writing. Write about what happened to you that day. Write about how you feel about the weather. Write about anything, letting the writing take you wherever it wants.

When I do this, I notice the writing slowly changes. At about page 5 for me, I begin to shift to the story I’ve been thinking about or working on. My writing gets better, I start to focus, I get in a “writing groove.” When I’m done, I go back, cut out the “warm-up” part, and may need to edit the transition point to the important writing. It’s a lot better than staring at a blank page.

If you have writer’s block, try the “warm-up” technique.

Don’t be thinking and planning. Be in the moment.

Don’t be thinking about your story when you write it. An athlete or actor studies and plans before an event or filming a scene. When the athlete performs, they are in the moment. When the director says, “action,” the actor plays the role. It’s fine to think about what you are going to write, before you create it. When you are writing, be in that moment. Be in your story.