Exercise

Monday Musings for March 10, 2025

I had been doing really well. Consistent. Knocking out the work day after day, every week day. I had a schedule, I kept to it, and it was producing results. And then work got in the way.

Every year, there is a week-long (9 days, really) celebration in my town that I am intrinsically tied to and involved in. It is a lot of long hours, driving all over town, and some frequent late nights. There is little time (or energy) for anything else. I have been doing this since the event’s inception thirteen years ago, and I was one of the founders of it. I have always loved it, and generally speaking, would not want to be doing anything else.

Until this year.

I set a goal this year to be more consistent with my writing. Starting on January 13th, I posted something nearly every weekday right up until February 26. Poems, musings, short stories, chapters from my novel-in-progress. And it felt so. Damn. Good. I am reminded of the Old Days when I was working out regularly. It wasn’t about losing weight - although that was a nice bonus - but I just felt better. My body moved better. I slept better and had more energy, and as a result, actually started to enjoy working out.

And then I stopped. I honestly don’t remember why I stopped. It might have been illness, injury, work… it doesn’t matter. The point is, I never got back into exercising at the level that I had been at, and I have never felt physically as good since. I am not going to let that happen with my writing.

Even just sitting down to write this today, I can feel those creative muscles complaining that they sat idle for a week. The groan of my brain as I draw the words out and try to form cohesive thoughts. It really does feel like the first day back in the gym after a long holiday of leisure and overindulgence. But I’m here. Sweating out the mental hangover of sloth. I don’t expect to produce great things in the next week, but I do expect myself to put words to page, each and every day. To retrain and refresh those literary tendons and wordsmithing limbs.

Even my fingers are complaining as I type. “Just another day,” they cry.” Surely one more day won’t hurt!”

My sweet babies… it already does. Now back to work, my phalangeal phriends. We have much to accomplish, you and I. We have a poem for tomorrow. A writer’s assignment for Thursday, and a short story to conceive of for Friday. And lurking behind it all, there is another chapter of Shadows Under the Palms to wrap up before Wednesday!

Side note: As I have been writing Shadows, I have also been reading some of the classic noir stories, most recently The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Setting aside the obvious dated references to some other members of our society (that is putting it nicely), it is an interesting read, and a very different style of writing than I am used to. Short, clipped, and loaded with very specific description, as though Chandler wanted to make sure he knew everything that was in the room just in case he had to go back and use it later. There is also a sense of dry humor to his writing, and I can hear the voice in my head with the tone and inflection of Humphrey Bogart, particularly in the narrative sections. One of my favorites is right in the beginning.

“I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it.”

I have to admit I did laugh out loud when I read it.

This coming week will be one of getting back into the rhythm. Working out the cramped thoughts and stretching the storytelling sinews. Back into fighting shape, as they say. Writing shape? Sure, why not.

Vivian: Why did you have to go on?

Marlowe: Too many people told me to stop.

• The Big Sleep