I’m a walker. And I’m a writer. But it’s only recently that I’ve come to fully appreciate the profound influence my daily walks have on my writing self. It’s not as if I set out to brainstorm a story turn or character quirk or poetic phrase. It just happens unbidden in those early morning hours as I’m fast-walking alone in my quasi-leafy neighborhood: a creative answer to a question I didn’t know I was asking. Insights don’t pop up during every single walk but often enough to leave me inspired and grateful.
The New Yorker writer Ferris Jabr, in his article “Why Walking Helps Us Think,” helped me understand this common phenomenon:
What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain…Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age…and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them…Because we don’t have to devote much conscious effort to the act of walking, our attention is free to wander—to overlay the world before us with a parade of images from the mind’s theatre. This is precisely the kind of mental state that studies have linked to innovative ideas and strokes of insight.
The studies to which Jabr refers are those published by Stanford researchers Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz, which directly measure the way walking boosts creative inspiration.
Anecdotal testimony by celebrated authors and their biographers bolsters the scientific evidence of the walking-creativity connection. According to Michael Slater, professor emeritus at the University of London and author of a Dickens biography, Charles Dickens “built much of the work in his head while taking night time walks of 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 km) around London.” And Claire Tomalin, in her biography of the same author, points out that Dickens’ walking routine fundamentally contributed to his success as a writer: “He would set off after working at his desk from five in the morning to midday…thinking out the next day’s work, observing, returning to his family full of new ideas.”
Fellow Londoner and author most recently of The Fraud, Zadie Smith testified to the welcome insight that breaks through while she’s walking: “The solution to a problem—a plot problem, a character problem—often comes to me when I’m walking. There’s something about the rhythm of walking that seems to unlock the rhythm of thinking.”
Walking’s ability to jumpstart a writer’s creative process is attested to as well by Michael Pollan, author of numerous nonfiction books including The Omnivore's Dilemma and Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. In an article about unlocking creativity, he told GQ that “Walking somehow lubricates a mind that has seized up, and produces lots of good ideas.”
Science-fiction writer and author of bestsellers Ender’s Game and Shadow Puppets Orson Scott Card agrees: “It’s worth the time to take an hour’s walk before writing. You may write a bit less for the time spent, but you may find that you write better.”
I’ve saved the last quote for that of my favorite 21st-century poet and novelist, Ocean Vuong. He told The New Yorker in 2022, “When I’m stuck at a poem, usually it’s on a phrase. And I would stop writing and lift that phrase, almost treat it like a haiku and then solve it. I’ll take it on a walk, I’ll repeat it over and over, and try to solve the logic in the image.”
So lace up your shoes, leave your laptop behind, and take your writer’s brain for an inspiring walk!
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