The Organ That's Also A Muscle

I'm talking about the brain. Technically, it's an organ, but when we talk about it, it is far more like a muscle. The brain can be strong or weak. Strength is relative; we can be smart enough to do what we need to do for everyday life or we can be smart enough to change the world. If we want to get stronger, we need to work out. If we don't exercise, we atrophy.

It seems like such an obvious thing to say, but it's easy to forget. I know that I myself am guilty of not writing unless I have an idea and then I only write on that. This isn't a good idea. You don't wake up and then run the 400 meter. You stretch out some, you walk around. You do some light runs or jog around. You prepare your body to work hard. Then you work hard. Then you relax. Writing is the same way. If the only thing you work on is the idea you really want to work on, then you're going to write a lot of crap.

A professor of mine said that when he would read his students' 7-page papers, it wasn't until the last page that they started saying something really interesting (it's safe to say that most of these papers were first drafts written in one sitting). This is because the first 6 pages were exercise. They were warm-ups for the mind, jostling and rustling it to start thinking about something ineresting and saying things in an interesting way.

In terms of writing, I think we have two options if we want to write something good: Either do writing exercises to warm up before working on your main project or use your main project as both the warm-up and main event, but having to write more drafts of it to clean up the practice parts.