Write Now: Writing and running

Writing is a lot like running.

Both take enormous amounts of will power and stamina. Both are rather solitary. The more you do them, the better you become. Running and writing are activities that many of us dread, but once we’ve got going, they can fill us with joy, excitement and lust for life.

I only discovered these parallels recently, when I took up jogging and (quite out of character, this) became a bit obsessed with it. A few years ago, if you’d told me that I would one day join the legion of Saturday morning runners in my local park, I would have sucked on my fag and laughed in your face.

But within weeks I had the new shoes, the iPod armband and the smug, red face. Better yet: I’m writing more than ever. It can’t be a coincidence.

I’m not the first person to notice that running can make you a better writer. The most famous runner-writer is Haruki Murakami, who often talks about his exhausting schedule of writing masterful novels and running 10,000km before dawn. He even wrote a book on the topic, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

Read the rest at IdeasTap.

Image courtesy of Ed Yourdon on Flickr.