Writing before writing

Writing is like running. Before running, you warm up. You get your muscles wired up and ready to do that occasional 5K. Or, you prepare yourself mentally for enduring the hardship of a half-marathon. Whatever the exercise, you warm up to get ready. Writing is a lot like running. You warm up by writing. You do the writing before the real writing starts.

I’ve been writing a lot lately. A lot. And when I say a lot, I mean over 2,000 words per day. That’s about five pages. Most of what I write is rubbish. Things that I write and then throw away or hide. The purpose of most of my writing is to warm up before the actual writing happens. And then, almost magically, the real writing starts unfolding.