Why Famous Writers Loved Long Walks
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How a daily walk can boost your creativity
If you’re a writer, you probably spend a big part of your day seated at a desk in front of a computer. (In today’s world, this is true of most people too.)
There’s work to be done, stories and blog posts to write, comments to reply to, emails to send, Facebook pages and Instagram accounts to update, articles to Tweet, and the list goes on.
If we’re not careful, we can easily fall into the trap of staring at a screen for hours.
And that’s not only detrimental to our health but also detrimental to our creativity.
Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card once observed,
“Take care of your body. Writing is a sedentary business; it’s easy for many of us to get fat and sluggish. Your brain is attached to the rest of your body. You can’t do your best work when you’re weak or in ill health.”
Card’s solution? A daily walk. He writes,
“It’s worth the time to take an hour’s walk before writing. You may write a bit less for the time spent, but you may find that you write better.”
Card isn’t the only writer who lauded the benefits of walking. Read on to discover several famous writers who were also walkers and how a daily walk can boost your creativity.
Writers Who Loved Taking a Daily Walk
The ancients had a Latin phrase about the importance of walking: Solvitur Ambulando. It means, “It is solved by walking.”
The term originally referred to the Greek philosopher Diogenes’ response when asked whether or not motion was real. He stood up and walked away. Soon the phrase was adopted as a way to describe how taking a walk energizes us and helps us think through our problems.
For many famous writers, a walk was an essential part of their daily routine and writing process.
Charles Dickens loved traveling by foot. In his book The Uncommercial…
