I read a column by Garrison Keillor the other day that was particularly apropos. I had just come off of a deadline for a book and I had what I like to think of has braindead head. I was reading magazines because short articles and pictures are about all I can handle until I refill the word pool in my mind.

So this is the opening line of Keillor’s article: “I know nothing about what is going on in the country. I hear nothing, I have nothing to say, I am a writer locked up with a book that is due on Tuesday, so I’m taking a break.”

His advice in this column is to get out and do something. When I’m on deadline I punish myself with staying in my office at my computer even when I’m not writing. I mean I’m on deadline so getting up and going anywhere is out of the question. With this book I just turned in I was really stuck and locked in a spiral of negative thinking.

I was talking on the phone with a friend and he said get out of your office. I said but my book is due and I have a lot of pages left to write. And he said you’re not writing. And I was like you’re write but I might start writing. It was a pretty funny conversation where I tried to talk myself in to staying stagnate. Staying in my office to wait for whatever but writing is a dynamic art form. The words come from a well deep inside that can only be filled by getting out of the office and living and interacting.

This probably seems silly to some of you, but writing is very isolating at times. When the story is flowing and the characters are alive in a writer’s head there is no place more exciting than sitting in front of the computer capturing every word, but when the words stop and there’s a brick wall where the plot used to be sitting in the office is a recipe for disaster.

I did finally get out of my house on Sunday and I went for swim which my friend suggested. Now I’m a a swimmer from a long time ago, I swam competitively from the 7th grade on . When I was about 14 I started making up stories in my head while I was at the two hour swim practice every afternoon. As I did the laps our coach assigned I was concentrating not on my strokes and on improving my times in the pool. But on the characters I was creating in my head. They were a version of fan-fiction because they were inspired by books I’d read or t.v. shows I watched.

But for me that is where I trace the beginning of my storytelling. Those swim practices where I’d entertain myself while swimming up and down the pool. And going swimming last weekend when I was stuck was the perfect thing to get back to where I needed to be.

I came back from swimming laps (I was pitiful by the way…only 15 minutes of straight lap swimming and I was out of breath! Only one length of butterfly and my arms felt like spaghetti!) And found that my story was unlocked again and the words flowed out onto the page.

It’s funny how thrity minutes out of my office was more productive than the two hours I’d spent staring at the screen trying to will words onto the page.

Is there anything like that for you? Where you stare so hard at the problem you can’t see the answer but as soon as you step away it appears?

Enjoy your Saturday!

Kathy