A to Z Challenge: E is for Exercise

The A to Z challenge is a challenge in which bloggers post every day during the entire month, and each day has a post starting with a different letter of the alphabet. The first day, the post features “A”, the second day “B”, and so on. It’s much better explained on the Blogging from A to Z website, so I’ll just refer you there.

Writing is exercising. If you don’t do it every day, or at least very often, then your skill won’t develop at a good rate, and you won’t grow as an author. If you don’t write for a year, I guarantee the first words you pen probably won’t be as good as you’ll think they’ll be. Even if you’re suffering from writer’s block, it’s important to keep practising, to keep writing.

I think of writing as exercise, as a chore I do daily (but a chore I love as opposed to actual exercising). I keep it on my to do list, and aim for about 2k a day. And guess what? The more often I write, the more ideas I get.

Writer’s block isn’t solved by not writing. It’s solved by writing – if you can’t work on your current WIP, then work on another one. Or write a short story. Or a blog post. Any writing is better than no writing.

Think of it like jogging. When you start jogging, it’s tough. But the longer you’re at it, the more you get used to it, and the easier it gets physically. So you start running more, or going on longer jogs, or you just start to run faster. And before you know it, you can run a mile, or two miles, or five miles, and so on.

Writing is like jogging. Start out with a low word count goal, like 100 words a day. Keep it up, day after day, and then before you know it, you’ll have written a full-length novel.