Running and Writing: How Movement Can Inspire Us
I was a heavy-set child. Most of my time was spent in solitude, playing video games or writing down stories I thought of and dreams I had. Though my mom pushed for me to become more involved in sports, putting me on one of the recreational soccer teams in my small hometown, it didn’t stick. After about four, maybe five, years of soccer, I quit after deciding that I’d rather spend my time alone and in front of the latest PlayStation 2 game.
By the time middle school came around, I was the heaviest I would ever be as a child. I didn’t know it then, but looking back on those years of my life I was most likely depressed. Whenever I could I avoided my friends, shut myself inside my room, and focused on beating game after game to distance myself from reality.
The idea of facing the outside world was terrifying, overwhelming. I didn’t want to. After some time, this must’ve passed. It wasn’t long after those months of self-imposed loneliness that I was outside with my neighborhood friends, playing soccer and running from one side of the park to the other. The more I ran, the better I felt; not just physically but mentally, too.
Years later, after another bout of deep depression following high school graduation, when most my friends left for four-year universities while I decided on a two-year community college for a lack of not knowing what I wanted my life to amount to, I turned back to running. And it was during these years where I developed a routine that laid what I know now is the groundwork for my life as a writer.
I’d awake between 4 a.m. and 4:30 a.m., making coffee and breakfast, reading as I ate, then returned to my room to write for an hour, maybe more, before going for a run. I was 19, and had recently started at Barnes & Nobles as a shelver, a shift that required I be there by 7 a.m. It was some of the most productive writing I’d experienced at that point. There was an excitement about it, a joy that carried me through to the end of the day. Though I know that it was writing that brought me that joy and excitement, it was running that allowed for my mind to be clear enough to write.
And this was a habit I carried with me on and off for years afterwards.
Movement and writing, though the act of each are vastly different, have more in common than some may think. It’s precisely why many successful writers make it a point to go for a run, some a walk, every now and again while they’re working on a new creative project.
Some may have a set routine that involves writing, like Haruki Murakami, a former jazz-bar owner and manager who admittedly smoked 60 cigarettes a day and started running to get healthy after his decision to sell his jazz bar to become a full-time novelist. For him, it became part of his process that’s allowed him to write successfully for almost forty years. It kept him focused on his goal, and gave him a place and necessary time to help develop his stories. Murakami even went so far to publish a memoir about running, writing, and their intersectionality while training for the New York City Marathon.
Other writers who credit running for helping them write aren’t quite as routine. Ian McEwan goes for a walk if he becomes stuck with his writing. Most of James Joyce’s work focused on day-to-day life in Dublin, which he pulled from his own life as he walked his route around the city.
When we run, when we move, we enter into a personal contest of physical endurance. With each foot pounding against the pavement, we urge ourselves to move forward a little further. This is just the same as writing — we put one word down, then another, another; before long we have a sentence, a paragraph, two pages, ten, and it goes on.
Many times I’ve heard successful writers say that writing is easy, and when I was younger I believed them, thinking I was inadequate for thinking it wasn’t easy. I’d write in the mornings during whatever time I managed to steal away, then go for a run to clear my head. Over time, the sentences, though they didn’t become easier to write, became more purposeful, maybe a bit longer, maybe not much better than they were from when I’d first started, though there were more of them. Over time, a half mile became one, became three, four, five.
I am older now, have far less time than I did back then. Most days, especially in this time of the pandemic, I sleep until the last minute, reserve little time for my writing, for my morning runs. If I do exercise, it’s in the apartment I share with my partner. It’s just enough space for us both, but movement is limited. Though I try to be consistent with my writing, my head is overcrowded. It’s been too long since I’ve cleared it out. But all it takes is to move, to walk, just a block, a few more, faster and faster, to run. One foot hard against the sidewalk, the other trailing it.
Writing Exercise
Check the weather and decide on a day to go for a run or walk. Before leaving, give yourself about thirty minutes, maybe more, to try and write some thoughts, a poem, or a short story. If you’re unsure what to write about, this prompt might help out.
Once you feel you’ve written all that you can, head out for your run or walk. Get yourself moving. If you enjoy music while you move, turn it on, though there are many perks to running to the sound of the world.
When you’re back from your movement, no matter how long it was, and after properly sanitizing yourself, sit down as soon as you can and allow yourself to write. Record any thoughts you had while running, any ideas, on a new sheet of paper. Write down in detail what or who you saw, what you smelled, what you heard. Be specific as can be, and be concrete.
Take a moment to notice which writing felt more satisfying, and decide how to best implement movement into your life and your writing.
About Coty Poynter
Coty Poynter is the author of two poetry books. His most recent, Delirium: Collected Poems, was published by Bowen Press. His work has appeared in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Equinox, Grub Street, and Underwood Press. He lives in Baltimore with his partner, their cat Pudge, and a hodgepodge of plants.
