Take Care of Your Mortal Flesh
We writers are intellectuals. We exist largely in our brains, mining away at veins of glittering creativity. This is evident in the frequency of distracted conversations we have, or the number of times we arrive at a destination with little memory of driving there. But that brain, which lives inside our skulls, is held aloft (like the golden idol it is) by a series of calcium-rich building blocks known as a skeleton. That skeleton is nothing without muscles. And the whole thing, as we may occasionally sense, is hooked into a feedback loop known as a neurological system. What I'm trying to get at here, is that these things – however minimal your awareness of them – are integral to your success as a writer. It is difficult to write when the pain of sitting in a chair is debilitating. Yes, I'm sadly speaking from experience. I write best, creatively speaking, when I am seated. Standing up seems to get my body primed for a "fight or flight" situation. This is fine if I'm just doing tedious things. I might even do them faster! But for braining, I apparently need to shift the load-bearing from my feet to my butt. My sacroiliac joint is problematic for me, so sitting for any length of time is generally the worst. You can imagine the impact this has on my writing. Sitting to write or pursue other artistic endeavors has easily accounted for 80% of my life. I discovered, and planted myself in front of, the computer at age 13. For the next two years I didn't have Internet access or Photoshop, so I wrote Star Trek: The Next Generation fan fiction (and yes, I outlined my drafts even then! No, I don't have the story I was working on. I wish I did, even if I'd read it through my hands covering my eyes). I never cut out the creative work and so, even when I considered myself active, I was still spending large amounts of time working in a chair in front of a computer. Or drawing, bent over a bristol sheet. Or sewing, bent over fabric and sewing machines. (Yes, all these things are also bad for my carpal tunnel health!) The only way I've found to manage this chronic pain is to maintain the strength of my core muscles. I can't slack on my physical maintenance, or the pain comes back. Fair enough, let's not take breaks. But you – assuming you haven't already unlocked this achievement of growing old – don't have to feel the pain. It's hard to feel motivated by only receiving benefits of something (versus the consequences of nothing) but let this achy lady just warn you: exercise or the boogeyman will get you. And that boogeyman is debilitating joint malfunction. Be strong enough to leap from your chair after that Eureka plot moment, and run a few laps around the building before returning to your writer's throne to conquer the next one. I beg you. Someone probably begged me, so I don't expect the whippersnappers to believe me. But at least I've reserved the right to say, "I told you so." I'll put some exercise resources in my links.