#271: Do You Need a Writing Warmup?

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Welcome back to a Another Training. This is one of our writing well trainings and my name is Shelly Hitz.

And I'm CJ Hitz and we are.

Your mentors Inside Christian Book Academy. We are the hosts of the Christian Writer or the Kingdom Writers Podcast. And just so happy to be here with you today and to talk about something that I don't know if writers always think about. Do you need a. A riding warmup?

Yeah. So this concept has come to me through the years. I picked up running 13 years ago, and what I've learned, especially as I've gotten older, is the importance of a really good warmup. You know, when I go out the door, I don't just start flying at, you know, my near hardest pace. Yeah, my legs have to take at least two miles, maybe 20 minutes, maybe even longer. There's some runs that I haven't felt good until I hit three miles. And in that first couple miles, I'm just picking up my feet and I'm just allowing my body to acclimate to the movement, to get used to it, to sort of, you know, settle in and say, oh, we're going to be doing this for a little while. And the blood flows and you get that, you know, warmth. Especially on a cold day. You know, especially on a cold day, you don't want to be just, you know, running hard right away. That's a muscle pull waiting to happen.

Yeah.

But, you know, I've had plenty of days over the course of my years where I was ready to actually bail in that first two miles. I thought, you know, I'm just not feeling it. My muscles are tight. But for some reason or another, I hung in there and I said, well, let's just see how I feel after two to three miles. And wouldn't you know it, something just snaps. It turns around, and all of a sudden I'm in that runner's high. The oxygen's getting to the brain, the endorphins, all that magical stuff that happens when we move our bodies. And it got me thinking that in so many of the same ways, we writers need a good warmup. How many of you have endeavored to write? Kind of like endeavoring to go for that run or going for that strength workout, you endeavor to write, but you know, if you just hurry and get to the computer first thing in the morning and you know you're, you're endeavoring to write, sometimes it's difficult in that cold sort of atmosphere where you're staring at that computer, you haven't really properly warmed up, maybe just taking your time, you're kind of mulling through your mind, what topic am I going to be writing on today? You're letting your coffee brew or your tea steep you. You're kind of just working into it. You might even kind of adjust your atmosphere. You might even think, you know, I want to go somewhere that would encourage my writing. Sort of a more warm, a warm atmosphere could be though, right, right inside your, your home. But rather than just rush into it, it's best in terms of what I found to just ease your in, allow yourself 30 minutes to just sort of pray, to quietly, maybe read some scripture, maybe listen to some soft music. Because it's so easy to just jump in and say, you know what, this isn't working for me. And you give up within 15 minutes, you give up within 20. But maybe after 30, maybe even after a time of prayer, something breaks. Pretty soon the dam opens and you're able to get into a writing flow. But that's hard, you know, and some of you may be different, some of you may just right away the words just start flowing, you know, right when you get to your computer in the morning or whenever your writing time is. But I got to thinking, I need a good writing warm up personally. Just like I need to get these 47 year old bones and joints and tendons warmed up before I start getting a little faster turnover.

Yeah, it makes me think of like trying to force something, you know, versus allowing it to come as it comes. And I think just like exercising. As writers, we know we need to be writing. And I think sometimes there can even come a little bit of shame, you know, if we're not writing, you know, if it's not coming here, I'm supposed to be a writer and I'm not writing. And then that can shut us down as well. But also just realizing we're all different. And sometimes.

It doesn't look like just sitting down at the computer and the words flowing. Like CJ said, sometimes you need a warmup. So this could even be just free writing in your journal with pen and paper before you start getting on your computer, like just get some words out. Let's just dump all the things out of your brain. So maybe there's things that are clogging up your mind. An issue you had with your child, you know, an hour ago, or an argument you had with your spouse last night, or a big deadline coming up for your work, or a volunteer thing, and sometimes even just doing a brain dump and writing all that out on, you know, in a journal or something, it just sets that part aside. So then you can almost like dip, dip into the reserves, you know, the reservoir of what is in there to within, you know, within you to come out through your writing.

I even think of our church services, you know, when we're all coming from different places, right. Michelle and I actually go to a Friday night service here in Colorado Springs. So, you know, people are getting out of their, you know, they're finishing up their work week. They're, they're stirred up because Friday night traffic anywhere is going to be busy. It's going to be frantic. People are making their plans. And so, you know, you get to church, which is half the battle, that's half the success right there. Just getting there sometimes. And then as we come into that sanctuary and we open with 20 minutes of just praise and worship music, the music just starts to seep in to our souls. We begin to feel that the chaos of the week just sort of leak out of us. And instead we're making room to say, we honor you, Father, in this place right now. And I want to leave my baggage at the foot of the cross. I want to just spend time praising you. And how many know that we all. Sometimes when we come to our writing time, we're sort of a storm. There's a storm going on inside of us. There could be that chaos. And it makes me think of Jesus calming that storm on the Sea of Galilee that day. You know, his disciples, many of them experienced fishermen, they knew this was a serious storm. They didn't take these things for granted. And they were frantic and they were actually afraid for their lives. And what is Jesus doing? Well, he's sleeping at the back of the boat. And in some translations in Mark, it even says he's sleeping on a pillow. Yeah, gets that detail in there. And they frantically wake him up. And he speaks one word.

He says, peace, be still. Peace, be still. I imagine right when he began the word peace, that storm and those waves were beginning to get glassy. Can you imagine being in that boat and it just being glassy on that sea? And that's what can happen in our hearts. We come to the Lord. You can almost envision, you say, jesus, would you calm the Chaos in my heart right now. Would you prepare me for this writing time that I have set aside? I endeavor to write for your glory. I want to string some words together into sentences, into paragraphs, into hopefully, sections and chapters, and eventually down the road, a finished book. But one word at a time. But it begins, I think, with that warming up period, that softening period of saying, I need you, Lord, and right now I honor you and I praise you for being the God who can move through me in this writing time.

I think some of it is just changing your expectation of what is supposed to happen when you come into a writing session. I think so many of us put these high expectations on ourselves that we're just, you know, to sit down and the words just should start flowing. And when they don't, then we start beating ourselves up or, you know, it's just not what we expected. And it's like, oh, I'm wasting my time and. And bail. However, you know, some practical tips on forming a writing warmup could just simply be, like I said, do some free writing in your journal, but like what CJ was saying, use some music, maybe play some worship music. They say that in order to access that creative part of your brain, which a lot of times, you know, we talk about the left and right side of the brain in order to, you know, and access that right side, that creative part of your brain. If you do some creative things, like if you listen to music that can actually help you to access that part of your brain. So maybe you have this little writing ritual before, you know, and you kind of train yourself. This is what I'm going to do before I write. I'm going to go get my cup of coffee or cup of tea. I'm going to light this candle, I'm going to play this worship music. I'm going to spend a little bit of time journaling, just get all the stuff in my brain out. And then I'm gonna review my outline. I'm gonna review, like, what's the next section that I wanna write? You know, we do recommend if you have even just a really simple outline, then you're not starting from zero. You at least know, okay, this is the next section that I'm gonna write about. You review maybe what you wrote the day before or the week before, and then you get into your writing. And so we just recommend.

Don't expect miracles when you sit down to write, just to happen all at once. I mean, sometimes it does and sometimes God just flows through us, right? But if it's not Happening. There's nothing wrong with you. You know, just give yourself a little bit of time, you know, put into practice a writing warm up. Maybe some, you know, different things that you can put into a writing ritual. Like before you sit down to write and give it a try, you know, let us know what works best for you.

Yeah, and one other little tip. We were chatting with one of our pastors the other day, and you know, he specifically mentioned that, you know, he loves coffee and many of you are coffee lovers like myself, some of you tea. But he mentioned specifically, and I thought this was a good practical thing, is that he'll wait to drink his coffee until about 20 minutes before he wants to begin writing. He talks about this, you know, obviously that, that caffeine rush. Yeah, energy surge that happens as that caffeine begins rolling through your veins. And so it was for him, it's about timing. He finds that that works for him because his mind just becomes clear. Now for some of you, it may not work. Maybe, maybe you get jittery, you stay away from caffeine. Some of you just aren't even, you know, you're decaf coffee drinkers.

So that, that's just something for those of you that might want to sort of even like tweak the timing of your riding. I thought, hey, that, that is a practical tip, right? And it's even something that we runners use before a race. You know, the studies show that if you can do the caffeine within an hour and even sometimes 30 minutes of the race, that it kicks in at the right time. We do call caffeine in the running world. The, the, the, the most powerful legal drug that, that we're able to utilize, you know, in our running. And it still remains legal to this day. So maybe in some ways it can be a, a writing super drug that kind of helps you with that, that, that timing.

Yeah, like a writing boost. And you know, our pastor also said, like, he doesn't drink any other coffee in the day because if he did, then it would decrease the effect. You know, he just has that one cup every day. So find what works best for you. But our spiritual enemy tries to tempt us to bail on our writing in the first few minutes. You know, you may be tempted to say, I'm just not feeling it today and give up. But like CJ said, in running, you know, things could turn a corner. And then, you know, if you'll just stick with it and push through the negative feelings, give yourself some grace in the beginning of a writing session by Including a writing warmup.

Yeah.

So, cj, why don't you close us in prayer today?

Yeah. Father, we just thank you so much that.

You want to write stuff through us even more than we want it. We know that you have put messages in each of our hearts. We know that you have gifted many listening to this to write well and to write things that really impact people who need to read their books or their blog posts or whatever form that they're writing. And we want to ask that perhaps there'd be some that would give a writing warm up a chance and to really, like, ease into their writing time. I just pray that anyone that would be tempted to give up in that first few minutes would remember, you know what? I'm going to give this at least 30, and I'm going to do some of the things that C.J. and Shelley recommend. Listening to some music, praying softly, setting ourselves at your feet, and saying, would you do something in me that I don't feel like I have right now? And I pray, Lord, that you bring breakthrough, that there would be that flow that happens as we wait, as we don't just bail early, but we wait upon you for the words that you want to give us for that day. And we will give you all the glory and the honor for the things you do through us that we didn't think were possible. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen. So I hope you were encouraged today and let us know, let us know how you're doing. Are you going to try a writing warm up? Find us on Facebook and Instagram hristianbook Academy and we will talk to you next time.

God bless you guys.

Bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the kingdom of heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy, where we help you give birth to to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom writers.