Keep Your Writing Muscle in the Springtime of Its Life

By D.L. Koontz, @DLKoontz

In their terrific book, Younger Next Year, authors Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, M.D explain that as we age, we send signals to our body to enter either the spring or the winter of our lives.

It’s our choice.

Spring is the time to live and grow. In response to the chemical signals we send, our bodies become lean, powerful and efficient. Our brains become hopeful, optimistic, curious, exploratory.

However, if we send messages of peril (junk food, no activity/exercise, too much TV, no job or purpose or nowhere to be, disengagement from friends and family), then we signal to our bodies to decay because we’ve entered the winter of our lives.

Our physical brains know only what we tell it by the way we live our lives. The authors say, we send “trillions of internal signals all day, every day, from the moment of your conception until you die. You talk to your body all the time in a constant stream of chatter, day and night, year in and year out.”

Everything in our bodies listens to these internal signals. But, rather than hearing us in English, our bodies read the particular language of the signals we send. The authors say we would shudder if we learn what we’ve been telling ourselves.

Being sedentary is the most important signal for decay. Our bodies watch what we do, our physical behavior, every day, like a hawk. In nature, there is no reason to be sedentary except lack of food.

What’s That Got To Do With Writing?

We, as writers, each have a writing muscle we must exercise and value, and to which we send signals.

But, are we sending it positive or negative signals?

If we treat our writing as vital, purposeful, worthwhile, fun, a calling from God, a commitment, then we will remain in the spring of our writing lives. We—and our writing—will remain vital, powerful, efficient, hopeful, optimistic, etc.

However, if we let negative reviews or rejection stifle us, or give in to the notion that we’ve failed, or we stop writing when we don’t get our first sale or when the fifth book doesn’t sell well, we signal to our brain and body that we’ve entered the winter of our writing careers.

As a result, our writing muscle will decay.

How We View Our Writing Has A Huge Role In Determining How Our Writing Goes.

We should place a premium on sending positive signals through positive practices and routines, to stay in the spring of our writing. (It takes faith. After all, it’s not over until God says it’s over—this applies to both our life and our writing.)

Aging is up to nature, but decay is up to us. Likewise, rejection and writing challenges are prone to external influences, but defeat is up to us.

Just as our bodies know only what we tell them by the way we live our lives, so too our writing muscles know only what we tell them by the way—and the consistency with which—we approach writing.

So, write often. Write every day. Write with optimism. Write with determination. Write with gusto. Write with faith that it serves a purpose (because it does!)…even if we don’t make a sale.

Here’s to keeping our writing muscles in the springtime of their lives!

An award-winning writer, former journalist and corporate escapee, Debra (writing as D. L. Koontz) is the author of Crossing into the Mystic, Edging through the Darkness, and Escaping from the Abyss. Her fourth novel What the Moon Saw comes out in March 2018. She has been published in seven languages. Growing up, she learned the power of stories on the front porch of her Appalachian, Pennsylvanian farmhouse. She now lives with her husband in rural Georgia on a cattle ranch, where she divides her time between writing, teaching, church activities, and working any muscles that don’t hurt.