Creative systems – training for writing

I was watching the London Marathon yesterday and as always marvelling at the runners’ ability.  I have to confess that…

I’m not sporty, never have been and am unlikely to start now.  Not that I don’t take exercise – I like Pilates and Yoga and I walk as much as possible.  But the thought of running a marathon would horrify me.

But I can understand that to do it you first have to have the mindset that you can and then you have to have a system, a process to achieve it.  Which in running is training.  Backed up by the right diet and the right way of life to accomplish it.

I enjoy watching athletics and I have respect for every person I see whatever the discipline, because they’ve made the decision to devote the time to achieve the goals they set for themselves.

What interests me as a writer is why we so often don’t apply the same process to writing.  Especially to writing novels.  For many people when I talk to them the fact thatI’m a writer seems to set me in a different category.  Some kind of rarefied person who sits and waits for inspiration.

That isn’t the way I learned to write.  I wasn’t interested in being a starving genius in a garret somewhere.  I wanted an activity that I enjoyed, rewarded me with payment and gave me a reason to get up in a morning.  And that’s what I’ve got now.

How I went about it was to learn how to do it.  Just as an athlete has the goals set for them because other people have jumped further or higher, run faster, lifted more weights, so I looked for writers in the commercial sector who had done what I wanted to do and then tried to learn from them.

What processes did they use?  How did they set about writing?  What made the difference between the successful (and wealthy) ones and those who didn’t make any money?

Like any new activity you learn it takes time.  But you can shorten the time when you check out how the successful ones did it and try out some of their practical suggestions.

Writing is like a muscle.  It has to be used to strengthen it.  If you’ve ever broken a bone, you know how fast the muscles around the area weaken.  And how much effort you have to put in to get them back to peak.  Writing isn’t any different.

Use it or lose it.  The more you write the better you become.