“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

Why do athletes need to warm up? Athletes not only warm up to physically prepare their bodies for training or competition but also to mentally warm themselves up. Warm ups are an important part of performance.

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Warms up is initial step which the athletes need to do before the real activity. Confucius says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” To make single step in writing, we must do warm ups too.

So, do writers need warm ups? Writing is not only activity of mind but it is physical activity as well. In writing, we need to move our hands and fingers to type or write. Some people are lazy to do it even if their mind is full of idea. Sometimes, we are lazy to organize our mind systematically so we do not start to write. The objectives of warm ups in writing are to overcome the laziness and mentally prepare our mind to receive incoming ideas, as well as to adjust our hands and fingers to type or write.

According to Joe Vitale, a guru of The Secret and the writer of Hypnotic Writing, to start writing we need to shutdown the editor in our mind. In our mind, there is an editor, who always criticizes and edits what we think and what we type. We need the existence of this mental editor in the final process. However, if we always obey the editor at the beginning, the editor within your mind may slow the process down or make resistance to your idea.

Joe Vitale states that to shutdown the editor, the speed writing to write or type rude draft is necessary. Write everything comes to your mind and try to write fast. This process is also called brainstorming. Brainstorming is warming up process to invite the ideas to come to your mind. Brainstorming is group creativity technique, designed to generate large number of ideas for the solution of problem. The method was first popularized by Alex Faickney Osborn in a book called Applied Imagination in 1930s.

The editor is activated when we see our previous sentences or words. Your previous words or sentences are visual information to your brain. They can be the distraction for the initial process to of writing. To overcome the distraction, you can turn off some links to visual access to your mind so your mind and hands can continue the writing process. It is like meditation process in which people close their eyes to overcome the distraction. If you write manually with pencil or pen and paper, you can switch off the lamp or close your eyes. By writing in the dark, the idea flow to your mind and your hands move directly to follow the command of your mind and ignore your mental editor. If you type with PC, switch off your PC monitor. You see the black on your monitor and in this process you only move your hands and fingers to respond the ideas come to you.

When the warm ups run, the ideas flow to you and you can write by following the flow for your mind. You can write fearlessly. The editor within your mind shuts up and does not over-criticize your work.

Of course, this process is only for warms up or initial process of writing to invite the ideas easily comes to you and you write fearlessly. In the final process, you need to switch on your monitor and lamp, to see your work, edit and organize it.

It is like a magic. I practice it and it works.