A lot of times I feel like cranking my writing engine is like starting a lawn mover with one of those pulleys with a rope wrapped around it.  It takes a lot of pulling, and sometimes the motor doesn’t do anything but sputter a few seconds and die.

But here are some thoughts about things to do to “get your motor running.”

1. Close your eyes.
2. Open your eyes.
3. Listen.
4. Put your fingers in your ears.
5. Smell the roses.
6. Put a handkerchief over your nose.
7. Hold a robin’s egg in your hand.
8. Put your hands in your pockets.
9. Eat homemade ice cream.
10. Fast for two days.
11. Watch the news.
12. Turn off the TV.
13. Enroll in a writing course, but don’t attend it.
14. Burn all the books you have that purport to teach writing.
15. Write early in the morning.
16. Write at noon.
17. Write between midnight and two o’clock in the morning.
18. Write five blogs per week.
19. Don’t write blogs.
20. Tweet.
21. Don’t tweet.
22. Disable your Facebook account.
23. Add friends on Facebook.
24. Comment on LinkedIn discussions.
25. Quit LinkedIn.
26. Meditate.
27. Go to a football game, sit on the visitors side and root for the home team.
28. If you are really bored, watch ice hockey on TV and drive yourself over the edge.
29. Take a 36 hour bus trip to a place you don’t want to visit.
30. Go to church, stand up during the sermon and ask the preacher a question about something he just said.
31. Visit a nursing home and stay more than thirty minutes.

Okay, enough.  My point is simple.  Everything we do whether it is mundane, edgy or somewhere in between is grist for the writing mill. So, there is really only one way to start our engines.

Sit down and write.

Was that number 32?