The writer's stance

I almost forgot to write today. I was sitting outside with my laptop away from the PC where all my reminders live. Thankfully I came back inside with an hour left.

Recently I’ve been looking through writing sprints I saved from 2021 and I think I found the inception point for my writing exercises.

9-11-2021 @10:20am

I’m watching a live stream of a boxer working through exercises, and it seems to me this is what writers are missing. Sort of like the art assignment. Why don’t you see more writing assignments? Exercises and drills to specifically work one particular aspect of your writing craft.

So I was sitting outside discussing my exercises with Claude, and I realize I need to adjust what I’m producing. My exercises have become too mechanical, focused on the moves being made rather than the field of play. This leads to exercises that disrupt the writer’s natural stance. In soccer/football a common exercise is to dribble the ball between cones. The problem with this exercise is it trains the player to look down (where the cones are) rather than up (where the other players are). It’s the same reason I can’t touch type – I keep looking down at the keys. A better exercise has the players face off against each other in small-sided games that require them to dribble past a defending player.

My exercises are doing the same thing as the cones. I have to work on preserving the writer’s natural stance when writing.