Walk Like a Dog
By Barbara O'Neal | July 29, 2019 |
I am in a swarm of family and work this summer and even forgot to do my post on Wednesday, which dear Therese forgave. I still had no time to write a new post, thanks to conferences and family and a new book out, but here is an offering–my very first post at Writer Unboxed, dated April 23, 2008.
Almost every word is still the same. Different dogs, longer walks, but still the same actions.
——————–
“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?
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.
Barbara, this post is as fresh and relevant for me as a morning breeze. I’m fortunate to live on a farm with a pond and 11 acres of woods. I’ve always had a dog and so the morning walk is a long-time ritual. The only rule is coffee first (for me, that is). When my last dog passed away, I maintained our ‘loop’ and have been doing it every day since. On these walks I’ve seen spiderwebs illuminated by the sunrise and frost turned into rainbows. I’ve seen herons and egrets and newly hatched goslings and minutes-old fawns curled up in the grass. I’ve also untangled plot-knots and learned surprising new things about my characters. But I miss the companionship of a four-legged friend. Brule was a good listener (he didn’t roll his eyes when I thought out loud), and hard to replace, but I think it’s time.
Lovely route, Susan. The thing that has changed for me is the dogs, though they’re still red. :)
I’m also a writer who loves walking!
The time of day depends on which season we’re in. July and August are far too hot here in Toronto for long walks in the middle of the day, so I prefer mornings or evenings now.
Once the weather grows cool, it can be nice to do a lunchtime walk at the warmest part of the day.
It gets too hot here in the summertime, too. We walk first thing during the summer.
So glad you posted this again, Barbara, it could be an annual. I walk too, almost every day and have for years. I started in the days of the Walkman and conceived of a string of tunes that would create an exercise pattern. But it wasn’t always the music that captivated, but the words too. Now it’s mostly WORDS that I walk with, as my husband is along and likes to be able to chat now and again. If he isn’t my partner on a given day, then bird song is the best for helping me if I’m “stuck” in my writing, nothing better than a walk to work that out.
I do like taking walks or hikes with my partner, too. We walk the dogs on a big hike Sunday mornings, and it’s great to mull things over, test out plot points, plan things for the future. Family time.
Bird song is the best, isn’t it?
All of you ladies have offered words that I have also have enjoyed on my daily walk. Like Bird Song….I live in the north woods of Minnesota, and so many of the things you have seen, I have seen as well. My dogs are all gone to doggie heaven, but I still walk the old dirt road and enjoy the lake and the woods, and all the wild critters. I have barely started my 3rd novel, and have run into a wall already, but I am counting on my walking time,to untie the knot! Thank you for all your wonderful thoughts and words.
“Dogs can be walked at any point during the day.” As you go on to make clear, Barbara, this is a laugh line. Like Jack, my dog Skylar has a precisely calibrated set of steps or stages aimed at breaking any laughable notion I might entertain of being in charge. That goes for the walking schedule, or anything else related to her. Meals, for instance, or the Afternoon Nap, or Bedtime. As any rational dog knows, the daily schedule–walking especially–was established in heaven. It is sacrosanct, and can only be altered by acts of God. For instance, thunder storms.
As for walking and writing, everything you say is true. I think I will probably dedicate my next novel to Skylar. Without her steady hand of the scheduling tiller, I doubt anything would get done.
Yes, we do so like to pretend we are in charge…but ha!
I love the idea of dedicating your next novel to Skylar. She’s earned it!
Funny that I came across this after running the dog out and spending twenty minutes outside with him after all morning staring bleary-eyed at the screen. I always feel refreshed and ready to tackle the next thing when we return. And him? He lays down on his blanket behind me and goes to sleep.
That’s the second part that’s great–they sleep afterward. And I feel like a good person for doing the right thing.
Agreed. But mostly I was enthralled by your evocative writing. Sweet. Thanks.
Thanks, Ray.
Thanks, Barbara. This is exactly what I needed to see as I confirm my intentions to add a daily walk to my routine. I don’t have a dog, but my “fitbit” arrived yesterday, which I will set to alert me when it’s time to get up and get out.
I always enjoy reading your posts. This one is both an enjoyable read and a boost of encouragement. Thanks.
Barb, a lovely offering. Our dog is 11 years old and slowing down a bit but we enjoy our rosary walks, listening to the rustle of birches, the hum of insects, flying fish! Today a little alligator swam toward us as turtles swam away.
I enjoy my solitary walks much more than when I have company, so never make dates to go walking, except with my husband :) I think every writer needs a dog, and a cat too, because unlike dogs, cats take writing matters into their own paws.
Oh yes, one needs a cat (or three) to write, I believe. One is asleep on my feet now.
I love that you take a rosary walk.
Walking the dog(s) has been part of my morning routine for the past twenty years. Here on the ranch I do a loop — north to the barn to check on the horses and let Wrangler scare the marmots back into their burrows, then west through the far hay field where the leash is switched so Cinders gets to run and hunt through the grass (or under the snow in winter) for voles. I do a reverse loop in the evening.
Even though they have a roomy outdoor pen, the walk is their chance to race around and look for critters. (Cinders came to us five years ago with the habit of going walkabout for hours or sometimes days so we can’t let them both run free at the same time, lest they run into traffic or chase a neighbor’s cows or chickens.) And it’s my chance to remind myself of man’s place in nature, and nature’s place in my life.
Like the mail carriers, we don’t let rain or snow or sub-zero temperatures keep us from our daily rounds. Sometimes I think I’d rather stay inside by the fire, but I’ve never been sorry that they’ve guilted me into going out.
I love a sentence that has “here on the ranch,..” in it. Have you read Pam Houston’s latest memoir, DEEP CREEK? It’s a wonder.
I haven’t read Deep Creek, but I will. I bought my first farm in 1998, two years after my husband died. I called it Tickety Boo Farm, after an expression he often used. I’ve never had a working farm (the hay on the ranch is for our own horses only), but staying close to nature is easier when you live surrounded by it and that’s always been important to me.
Obviously Pam Houston feels the same. Thanks very much for the recommendation.
Well, it’s dark out and I really need to sleep, but you’ve made me want to get out and walk. When I was a kid living on the farm, I used to go out in star shadows (yes they do make shadows) and walk around the section. Four miles of night air and quiet, just random sounds of animals snuffling in pastures, windmills creaking, and occasional vehicle with gravel pinging on its undercarriage, maybe a hog leaving the feeder, dropping the metal door . . .