Most of us don’t put “healthy” and “writing” into the same
sentence, much less in the same universe. If you’re like me (and Gawd help you,
you are not), the better you get at
writing, the better you get at sitting. And the better we get at sitting, the
better we get at eating, and the better we get at eating, … well, you can
imagine the rest.
I am not a particularly healthy writer. (OK, you might say,
then why is this woman bothering me about it?) However, I am a writer who wants
to become healthier. And, that might describe you, too. (And even if it
doesn’t, why not read a bit further and see how easy it just might be?)
Writing is a sedentary career, for the most part, with hours
in front of a computer screen. Some of us can dictate while we walk or
exercise, typing it in later, some few and quite fortunate of us have a
secretary or assistant (and I want to meet you if you do!), but the rest of us
end up in front of our computer, pounding away at the keyboard… sitting….on our
bottom.
So how can we make writing and our chosen calling a
healthier profession? There in one way to begin:
Buttonomics
Well, what would you call it? We are all anatomically
similar (most of us are human), and most of us probably don’t type standing,
however, a few writers are quite well known for writing while standing.
“The sedentary life (das
sitzfleisch—literally “sitting meat”) is the very sin against the Holy
Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value,” said Nietzsche about
Flaubert’s innocuous statement that “one cannot think and write except when
seated.”
According to the author of Madame Bovary (1856), Flaubert previously informed Guy de
Maupassant, “a civilized person needs much less locomotion than the doctors claim.”
We are all civilized persons here, and to write our best, we
also do not need as much “locomotion” as our doctors would have us do. Yet, to
be a healthy writer, we actually do.
This is where “buttonomics” comes in. You have two choices:
1.
Avoid bottonomics by standing while writing
2.
Practice buttonomics while writing
3.
Don’t write
Some of you more fashionista-types might know all about
cellulite and liposuction and silicon injections and even butt-padding. Others
of us go “ew.” Either way, you can help avoid all that by practicing
buttonomics.
While sitting in your favorite writing chair, squeeze your
buttocks together for several minutes at a time, either constantly squeeze or
squeeze off-and-on. If you are especially sedentary (like me), you might like
to start slow, say five squeezes, rest five minutes, then five times more, or
rest 5 pages, whatever works for you. In a few weeks buttonomics will be habit
and your bottom will be healthier while earning it’s dollar with your writing.
Or maybe you’d prefer to stand?
Virginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll, and Fernando Pessoa all wrote
standing, while Mark Twain, Marcel Proust, and Truman Capote took the
Flaubertian creed to its ultimate extent by writing lying down. Capote went so
far as to declare himself “a completely horizontal writer.”
It was the early twentieth century labor journalist and
suffragette, Mary Heaton Vorse, who pithily described the art of writing as
“the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”
However, Earnest Hemingway declared, “writing and travel
broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up,” which he
did by perching his typewriter on a chest-high shelf, while his desk became
obscured by books.
Thomas Wolfe, at six-foot-six inches tall, wrote his novels
using the top of the refrigerator as his desk. Of course, refrigerators were a
bit smaller in his time than today, but at his height, it wasn’t a problem.
Roald Dahl, the author of such books as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, also six-foot-six, climbed into
a sleeping bag before settling into an old wing-backed chair, his feet resting
immobile on a battered traveling case full of logs to write. Dahl claimed that
“all the best stuff comes at the desk.”
Another stander, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.—the Supreme
Court justice who coined the phrase “clear and present danger” to limit the
First Amendment when its practice endangered the state—wrote his concise legal
opinions while standing at a lectern because “nothing conduces to brevity like
a caving in of the knees.”
And not to be outdone, the former secretary of defense,
Donald Rumsfeld, when handed a list of approved torture techniques being used
at Guantanamo Bay, infamously scribbled a query on it: “I stand for 8-10 hours.
Why is standing [of prisoners] limited to four hours?”
Indeed, if they can do it, can we? Probably not, or at
least, not often.
But there are ways to help counteract the settling of our
body into an unhealthy blob of humanity while we are writing and sitting, and
many of these methods we’ll discuss in my upcoming class: Me
& Chi: Increase your creativity and health with Tai Chi and mediation for
writers scheduled here in July.
Pat
Hauldren writes speculative fiction in Grand Prairie, Texas, and has just
returned from a conference with 4 out of 4 agent requests on her current urban
fantasy. She’s training to become a tai chi instructor and has taken tai chi
training around the world. She enjoys chanting and meditation as well. Pat also
writes 5 gigs for Examiner.com and writes and edits freelance. Learn more about
Pat Hauldren at www.pathauldren.com
ME
& CHI:
Increase
Your Creativity and Health
with
QiGong and Meditation
Hosted
by
Fantasy-Futuristic
& Paranormal
Romance
Writers
This 7 Day class starts July 16th
For
more information click HERE
Ernest
Hemingway preferred to write standing up.
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