Tag: walking

Why Walking More Impacts a Writer’s Brain

Lori Twining 4 Comments
Discovering new places by walking in nature ~ Lori Twining

Last week, I scheduled some time away from work and my every day responsibilities to attend a seven-day writing retreat in the middle of the woods in Haliburton County. I hoped to review and revise my current novel by taking my characters deeper and solving a few lingering issues I had with plot holes.

The weeks leading up to this retreat stressed me out. Lists needed to be made for everything I required to accomplish at work before I could leave. I had lists of food that I must shop for and pack. I also had a weekend wedding in Hamilton to get ready for that followed the writing retreat with only a one-hour break between them. My brain was fried when I finally arrived at the retreat, and I didn’t have a plan of exactly what I would be working on. Poor planning.

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Walking on the Edge of Chaos

Seana Moorhead Leave a comment

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Charles Dickens walked at night, roaming the streets of London to work on plot lines.

Mark Twain paced.

J.K. Rowling stated: “Nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas.”

Hemmingway also walked to think through his stories.

Is there a connection between walking and sparking creativity?

When you walk, you allow your conscious mind to access new ideas in the subconscious. For most of us, walking doesn’t take a lot of thought but does get our body moving and allows our mind to meander at the same time as our feet are wandering.

I recently listened to a radio program interviewing Eric Weiner about his new book, “The Geography of Genius”.   Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book, but I was curious enough about his idea to read online reviews, on which I based the following. I gather that his thesis is something about geography – in his theory, urban centres – being important to producing works of genius. He claims that genius thrives in chaos: in terms of geography, that means, cities. Urban centres abound with chaos as anyone from Grey and Bruce Counties knows when we try to navigate Toronto traffic. He points to historical genius figures who lived in cities, such as Mozart’s Vienna, and the Greek philosophers in Athens.

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