Walk Like a Dog
By Barbara O'Neal | April 23, 2008 |
Kathleen and Therese step in for a second to officially welcome Barbara Samuel to the forum. This is her first post.
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“If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.” ~Raymond Inmon
I am a great believer in walking. Not speed walking or to win some contest; not to conquer or prove anything (although competition, too, can be good for the soul). Just plain old walking. Walking to shake out the tight spots in a body. Walking to fire up the imagination, to cure the blues, to nourish the spirit.
I especially believe in writers walking. Sitting at a keyboard for unending hours is hardly a healthy act for the body, and sitting in a single room, all by yourself with only a cup of coffee and your iPod for company hardly does a thing for refilling the well. Walking takes no special clothing, and almost everyone can do it. You don’t have to walk fast to get the benefit, or even go anywhere special. Walk out your front door and walk along your street or lane or alley or field. Walk like a dog, imbued with curiosity and pleasure in the moment itself: right now, walking!
Every day around 8:30, my chow mix patters into my office and sits down with a heavy sigh. I ignore him at first, usually, since My Writing Is Important and dogs can be walked at any point during the day. Jack disagrees. After ten minutes, he creeps closer to my chair and breathes on my side. Just that hot, hopeful breath, unbelievably annoying. Still, I can often ignore it a little longer.
At which point, he will raise his glittery gold-red paw and put it lightly on my leg. Please? Which he knows I cannot resist.
So I gather up leashes and harnesses and treats and poo bags and off we go, into the neighborhood, on a single 1.5 mile loop around the suburban park system between houses. Every day, the same walk, though we sometimes switch direction. Every day, the dogs—there is a terrier mix, too—can barely restrain their joy at getting out the door, into the world. The world! The great big amazing world! They snuffle the same bushes with fresh curiosity every day, stick their noses in the same prairie dog holes hoping this time to snare some tidbit of baby rodent. They prance along the same routes to lift their legs, offering their comments on the neighborhood dog blog.
It takes roughly a half hour. While the dogs are doing dog things, my writer brain is inevitably unknotting some little issue with the work, whether it is a sentence or a plot, a character issue or a connection. Some days I am tired and don’t want to think at all; often it is those days, when I’m yawning while the dogs snuffle over the juniper bush, that I notice something I haven’t seen. A landscape drawn in colored chalk, perhaps by a knot of teenagers who cheerily waved at me not too long ago at dusk, hoping their friendliness would distract me from the scent of burning cannibis in the air. Or perhaps I notice the border collie on the corner is sticking his nose over the fence and it reminds me of a dog I once loved, who would be a perfect addition to the character who is so flat. If I am walking like my dogs, I see the grove of aspens anew each day, and the sky, and the mountains, changing every hour.
Walking every morning this way shakes out my limbs, gets some sunshine on my face, opens the shutters of my brain and lets a freshening wind blow through. I collect images—that old leaf, that smell of pine needles, spicy and wet, the curtains hanging askew in an upstairs bedroom—and music, of birds, of traffic, of the echoey, lost sound of children playing in the distance, out of sight. When I return to the keyboard, the usual stiffness of a long-time writer is shaken out. My spine is straighter, my oxygen-enriched brain a much more efficient organ, and the work much better, and I’ve worked out some knot of tension in my body, and in the work.
Do you like to walk? Is there a time of day you like best?
Photo courtesty Flickr’s Maddie Digital
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
Welcome to the team, Barbara! I walk twice a day with my two dogs, and I especially love the long morning walk beside the river with its ever-changing moods. The natural beauty of the surroundings, the physical exercise of walking and the joyful canine company seem to switch my brain into a different mode, one in which ideas spark and solutions fall into place. Many of my best scenes are written in my head while walking.
When we get home I start writing for the day. Outlaw and Gretel would think it quite wrong if I tried to write BEFORE the walk.
I’m also big on the dog walk–and so is Kismet! I use the time to quiet my mind. I usually walk right beside a river, too, so there’s plenty of beauty, even on a grey winter day. But watching Kismet is what makes the walk fun–how she focuses on every detail and scent, how fresh air and running and chasing squirrels reinvigorates her. Seeing her derive such simple pleasure from it reinvigorates me, too.
Thanks for a great post, Barbara, and welcome to WU!
I love to walk. I do it to unwind, to de-stress, to brainstorm… I found out the hard way that it’s very unhealthy to sit at a computer all the time as it led to back problems. (Of course, I used the experience to bring more life to my characters, but that’s beside the point.)
I often walk with my mp3 player set to classical music, but I keep the volume ridiculously low so I can still hear what’s going on around me. It’s amazing what people will say when they think you can’t hear. And how rhythmic the world is when you put it to music. I may be waxing poetical, but there’s something amazing about walking past a pond where the ducks are paddling around to The Truman Show soundtrack. It just makes you smile, and see the world in a different way, which is always good for a writer.
Thanks for the warm welcome. I’m very pleased to be participating here.
How nice to walk along a river! I used to walk by the Arkansas when I lived in Pueblo.
Oh, music! On my long walks (sans dogs) I take my Ipod and listen in one ear so I can hear cyclists coming. When I walk the dogs, I have to listen for other dogs before or behind (that chow mix, ya know)!
Welcome, Barbara!
And it’s great to find another fellow writer/walker. I basically feel crummy if I don’t get my walk in everyday, and it’s amazing how I hone in on a problem during a walk. I’ve even gotten it down to a “geez, I think I’ll get rid of the comma at the bottom of Scene X when I get back.” Walking unleashes clarity and creativity, and I’m torn on why that is….endorphins? Change of scenery? More oxygen to the brain in the form of fresh air?
Whatever it is, it works.
Wonderful post, Barbara!
I love to take walks, but lately they’ve been on the treadmill and at a very fast pace to rid myself of this unwanted weight. But my dog Charlie and I love to take walks around the neighborhood and since the weather is warming up, I plan to do that more and more. I’ve worked out many a plot issue on walks. :-)
“Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.” How beautiful, how true. And “walk like a dog.” I love it! I don’t walk often enough, and don’t always take my two dogs because I have not leash-trained them very well, and one is a 40 pound dog and one is a 15 pound dog, and they never seem to want to go in the same direction. I need to walk them more so they can get used to it and cease trying to dislocate my shoulders . . . I wish I had somewhere lovely to walk like you Barbara, but my ordinary middle-class neighborhood, with NO sidewalks, which annoys me, will have to do. Wish I could walk in the mornings, but in order to get a walk in before I have to get ready for work, I’d be walking in the dark. Gonna have to shoot for afternoon or early evening. I’m working on hubby to come with and wrangle one dog, but he has RA and at the end of the day he’s so beat, he just doesn’t believe me that he’d feel better.
So glad you have joined this blog Barbara!
People often say they get ideas in the shower, and I think it’s for the same reason as taking a walk. It’s personal time — just you and your thoughts.
And yes, I often get my best ideas in the morning. Even if I’m tired, sometimes there’s just that little spark of something as I’m stumbling around trying to make coffee. Two ideas connect in a splash of synthesis. “Hey, maybe I could…”
And for creativity, sometimes that’s all you need. :)
Shower, walking, driving….they all seem to work for stimulating creativity. Something about getting into your body, focusing another part of the brain?
Barbara, I get my best ideas while walking. My dog loves it too, of course. Walking is a great way to turn off the noisy conscious brain and allow us to hear the subconscious. I think it’s been talking all along, but we’re not listening.
Barbara said: “Something about getting into your body, focusing another part of the brain?”
Actually, I think it’s a lot like over-watering a plant. If you sit and stare at the plant you’re trying to grow, you may be tempted to keep dumping water on it, trimming, etc. — You’re going to kill it! Sometimes you just have to back off a little.
Some portion of creativity is subconscious. That is not to say that creativity is unconscious, or never conscious — I would actually strongly disagree with that.
But I can always tell when I’m trying too hard to make something work and I just need to back off. Consciously allowing your subconscious some room to work on the problem is important.
welcome, barbara! you are associated with a great blog!! i’d love to walk my dogs, but they behave horribly on walks. they’ve got the run of a large fenced in yard, and they are the darlings of the neighborhood, but, well, let’s put it this way, i’m not the one taking them for a walk!! i guess it’s because they are so eager for the adventure – new characters to meet, new settings, lots of new plots to sniff out, a villain or two to challenge, a heroine to defend…yup, walkin the dog is good for the writing!!
That’s what I love about dogs, and definitely what they teach me–be open. You never know when you are going to go on a great adventure!!