Movement and Flow in Swimming & Writing
Maplewood, NJ, public pool. June 2025
Feed the flow. Write with less resistance, write better, & enjoy it more.
For me, summer means swimming. All year I wait for the weather to turn warm enough for me to swim laps. To anyone remotely receptive to my rambling, I’ll go on and on about the benefits of swimming: a full-body, zero-impact exercise that activates deep breathing. As I move through the water, I am fluid. My weightless body repeats the same motion over and over until I exist in a meditative state. About swimming, Lidia Yuknavitch writes, “Swimming in water is the only state of being I know where I feel free.” I agree. When I swim, I am in flow.
This summer I actually need to swim. There is something wrong with my right arm. My arm has lost its strength and I am often in pain. Exacerbating these issues is the fact that no one knows what is wrong with my arm so no one knows how to fix it. I have discovered that swimming freestyle helps. As my right arm begins its first stroke, moving behind me and then up and out of the water, my shoulder feels tight and pain shoots through it. My arm then moves through the water, propelling me forward by pushing water behind me. The pressure of the water against my arm makes my arm ache. I keep going, rotating my arms like windmills, up through the air, down through the water. By the second or third lap, my muscles have acclimated to the movement and my arm is pain-free. The more I swim, the less pain I feel. The stronger I become.
Can I apply this experience to writing? You bet I can! If my arm rests for too long, pain and stiffness set in. The more I swim, the more I both loosen and build my muscles. The more I swim, the more my body responds to the motion with ease. The more I swim, the better I get at it and the more I enjoy it. All of these statements can be applied to my writing practice.
The worst condition for any writer is stasis, or not to write. Inactivity interrupts and cuts off your creative flow. Once it’s weakened, it’s harder to get it going again. The more you exercise your creativity, and strengthen it, the easier it is to tap into it and reap its rewards. So write. Often. Write anything. If a certain scene is giving you a problem, move past it for now. Move to a scene that you’re excited to write. The same goes for character descriptions, exposition and backstory, setup, reflection, beginnings, endings… If what you’re currently working on is bringing you to a halt, or driving you away from your practice, move on for now. Just keep writing. Keep moving forward. Feed the creative flow.
On occasion, as I’m writing, I become so lost in my work that I feel suspended in time, free from my space, as if I’m floating. I am weightless, the same sensation I experience when I’m swimming. Only my writing exists. The words spill out, one after the other, at a pace that feels energized but effortless. During those rare moments, I am in flow. I don’t feel this way often, but when I do, nothing beats it. The more I write, the more those moments come to me. The more I love the work. Keep moving. Keep writing.