Winter 2011

Too busy working on your opus to go for a walk? Suffice to say when you are exercising you are not writing. However, it seems equally logical that if you want the mind to perform, it should be housed in a reasonably healthy vessel. While I am of two minds over exercise as procrastination or exercise as necessary to the integrity of the mood and spine of a writer, it seems fairly safe to argue that exercise can have a good impact on writing. Can exercise be detected in one’s writing, in terms of quality, rhythm and output? That is an answer that changes over time.

After spending close to 1300 hours on the ice, or sitting in the Thirsty Penguin drinking certified cold Coors Lights with the boys, or standing in Jeff’s or Brent’s garage doing the same thing these past couple years — hell, even during a driveway chin-wag with Billy Day after he was finished reno-ing my bathroom — it’s come up more than a few times. My hockey buddies are curious, smart.