Through the Lips; Over the Fingertips

Today's #HAWMC prompt is to talk about my writing style -- "What’s your writing style? Do words just flow from your mind to your fingertips? Do you like handwriting first? Do you plan your posts? Title first or last? Where do you write best?"

This is a topic I've touched on a few times over the course of this blog and also while I was writing for Health magazine -- I don't know where the words come from, sometimes they are just there.  I generally have an idea in my head of WHAT I'm going to write about, and maybe a few key quotes or phrases that have for whatever reason resonated with me, but I don't plan out my posts any more than that.  I don't write outlines, hand-write posts, or plot them ahead of time.  

By the time I sit down to write, the words are just there.

This was a phenomenon in college too -- my friends were always absolutely shocked that I could sit down to write a paper and just bang it out and be done in a few hours.  I don't think I ever pulled an all-nighter a single time throughout college.  I always explained it that by the time I actually sat down to write, I'd been THINKING about it so long that the words were already formulated in my brain, and while that's mostly true, there were certainly plenty of times that I sat down cold and a few hours later had a finished product in front of me.

When I was writing for Health, the closest I ever came to "planning" is that while I would be out on my weekly long run, with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company, I'd usually plan my weekly column.  I'd run and run, and hink and think and think.  About life, about my training, about the signs and sounds of the run -- and by the time I got home, I usually had the "lesson" worked out that I wanted to write about.    

Writing and fitness, or health, have always been symbiotic in my mind, and as I write this right now, I'm realizing how badly I need for the rest of this challenge to resonate with me as much as writing for Health did -- motivation, determination, obligation, and inspiration were the things that kept me writing -- and thus, running -- back then, and I need for that to be a part of my life again.

Off and running (and writing),
~Jessica