Do You Suffer from Writer Lactic Acid?
Returning To Writing After A Break 
Ill-advised by Pascal via Flickr CC (CC0 1.0)
http://www.gratisography.com/ Once upon a time, in a land far far in the past, where the word 'Offspring' had me thinking of pretty fly white guys, not nappies and late night feeds, back then I was a devout gym junkie. And Body Pump was my drug of choice.
I loved the grunt and sweat of it, the faint ache the next morning that indicated I'd torn muscles and made them stronger. Yeah, feel that burn! Then came full time work and the demands of school age children (read: before and after school care, homework, music lessons, soccer practice, netball training ...), and for better or worse, I was cured of my barbell addiction.
Fast forward to 2015. The lack of exercise is taking its toll, so a few weeks ago I decide to sign up to the local gym and ... yay! They have Pump classes. Now, I'm the sensible sort, so at the start of the first class I heed the instructor's advice and load ... relatively lightly. Hey, I'm not a complete newbie; I've done this before, ya know. Sixty minutes later I walk out of the class a little wobbly but chuffed with my effort nonetheless. But in the light of morning ...
HOLY. MOTHER. OF. LACTIC. ACID!
I swing my legs out of bed and stop short of kissing the floorboards. Walking sends knives plunging into my thighs. Walking up stairs is a chore on a good day, but now someone is holding a taser to my butt with every single step I take. And walking down stairs? I'll take childbirth, thank you very much. Then there are my shoulders - oh wait, I can't feel my shoulders! You know how your arms swing gently by your side when you walk? Yeah, I can't do that - because there's nothing GENTLE about the usually innocuous action that fateful morning.
The pain! THE PAIN!
For me, the return to writing after a break is a little like that. The longer I break from pounding the keyboard, the harder the recovery time. My movement through the prose feels stilted, forced. The more days away from a story, the less I produce of my regular daily word target. I need more time to run with a scene than I normally would, because I have to reacquaint myself with the rhythm of my characters' voices, remind myself of their unique personality ticks. At times I almost see them shaking their heads at me, filling the empty page with their huffs of frustration as I fumble though their dialogue or leave them sitting on a highway for three weeks, petrol long gone, when the trip itself is all off half an hour long once the scene is finally written.
The pain. THE PAIN.
It's writer lactic acid. It's a reminder that the old adage 'write every day' might have some merit and wasn't just invented by smug successful authors with the sole intent of making us unpublished chumps feel bad about our lack of writing discipline.
So, do you suffer from writer lactic acid? Or are you one of those freak geniuses who can produce breathtaking prose no matter how many cobwebs are hanging off your fountain pen? If you are, I challenge you to a Pump class!
Ill-advised by Pascal via Flickr CC (CC0 1.0)
http://www.gratisography.com/ Once upon a time, in a land far far in the past, where the word 'Offspring' had me thinking of pretty fly white guys, not nappies and late night feeds, back then I was a devout gym junkie. And Body Pump was my drug of choice.I loved the grunt and sweat of it, the faint ache the next morning that indicated I'd torn muscles and made them stronger. Yeah, feel that burn! Then came full time work and the demands of school age children (read: before and after school care, homework, music lessons, soccer practice, netball training ...), and for better or worse, I was cured of my barbell addiction.
Fast forward to 2015. The lack of exercise is taking its toll, so a few weeks ago I decide to sign up to the local gym and ... yay! They have Pump classes. Now, I'm the sensible sort, so at the start of the first class I heed the instructor's advice and load ... relatively lightly. Hey, I'm not a complete newbie; I've done this before, ya know. Sixty minutes later I walk out of the class a little wobbly but chuffed with my effort nonetheless. But in the light of morning ...
HOLY. MOTHER. OF. LACTIC. ACID!
I swing my legs out of bed and stop short of kissing the floorboards. Walking sends knives plunging into my thighs. Walking up stairs is a chore on a good day, but now someone is holding a taser to my butt with every single step I take. And walking down stairs? I'll take childbirth, thank you very much. Then there are my shoulders - oh wait, I can't feel my shoulders! You know how your arms swing gently by your side when you walk? Yeah, I can't do that - because there's nothing GENTLE about the usually innocuous action that fateful morning.
The pain! THE PAIN!
For me, the return to writing after a break is a little like that. The longer I break from pounding the keyboard, the harder the recovery time. My movement through the prose feels stilted, forced. The more days away from a story, the less I produce of my regular daily word target. I need more time to run with a scene than I normally would, because I have to reacquaint myself with the rhythm of my characters' voices, remind myself of their unique personality ticks. At times I almost see them shaking their heads at me, filling the empty page with their huffs of frustration as I fumble though their dialogue or leave them sitting on a highway for three weeks, petrol long gone, when the trip itself is all off half an hour long once the scene is finally written.
The pain. THE PAIN.
It's writer lactic acid. It's a reminder that the old adage 'write every day' might have some merit and wasn't just invented by smug successful authors with the sole intent of making us unpublished chumps feel bad about our lack of writing discipline.
So, do you suffer from writer lactic acid? Or are you one of those freak geniuses who can produce breathtaking prose no matter how many cobwebs are hanging off your fountain pen? If you are, I challenge you to a Pump class!
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