Tuesday, August 07, 2007

warming up

Emma Lou Thayne gave me this great tip for writing. Before you start to write something, just warm up. You don't just launch into a tennis match, you hit a few balls first. At swim meets there's always a warm up time. Swimming for 15 minutes and then sitting around for a few hours before you compete didn't seem all that useful. But I did it anyway. And today as I swam both at lunch and after work, I realized that the earlier event did help the later one. So now I'm using the blog to warm up. I'm going to be doing some other writing tonight, but for now I've at least got my fingers moving on the keyboard. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Yes, Truman, that's typing not writing. But even typing helps. The fingers do feel a little warmer. The words do flow a bit easier. Oh the magic of just transcribing the words you hear. It doesn't happen to me very often, but then again, how often do I take the time to warm up?