How’s that for an eye-catching headline? And I hate to say
it, but in some ways, I think it’s true (after all, this is Fun ‘Fact’ Friday).
Reading, and writing, is a sedentary activity. People say, “curl up in bed with
a good book” not “let’s go on a hike with our new book!”. And, in the past couple of months, I’ve
seen myself gain a tiny bit of weight. This clearly
does not have anything to do with my unrelenting sweet tooth. It has much to do with the fact that I
wake up, walk five feet to the subway station, sit on the subway for thirty
minutes, walk briskly for ten minutes to the office, sit at a desk for eight
hours, walk briskly for ten minutes to the subway station, sit on the subway
for thirty minutes, walk five feet to my apartment, cook dinner, and then, more
often than not, sit down to read a manuscript or read a book or write a blog
post or write my story. Sit sit
sit sit sit!
I’ve tried to come up with a solution to this, but it’s
hard! I need to be reading and writing- it’s not (just) that I’m lazy and
like lying in bed all afternoon (who doesn’t?). My best solution so far? Audiobooks. They can go anywhere with you- on a walk, to the gym, you
can even listen while you’re vacuuming.
You can be active AND read!
Lately, I’ve been listening to White
Cat by Holly Black on my commute and have surprisingly loved it.
I never thought I’d like audiobooks. I am very much a visual
learner and I thought I’d get lost listening to a book rather than reading the
text on a page. Not so! If you have hesitations like me I suggest you try one
audiobook first before brushing the concept aside.
The one downside is that audiobooks are expensive. From Amazon, White Cat will cost you around $30 for CDs or $23 for a direct
download to your computer. I got mine for free with a 30-day trial to
Audible.com. It’s a great way to test whether audiobooks work for you or not! Be
forewarned, though, that Audible.com is an Amazon.com company and even if they
don’t ask for your credit card information, Amazon.com has it on file to
automatically pay for your membership when your free trial is up. (Yep, had to
make some angry phone calls about that mishap). But the library always has
audiobooks, too!
Oh, and if you still need a solution for the sit sit sit-ing
of writers, author Helene Boudreau has come up with a solution (Thanks
to upcoming Katherine Tegen author of Incarnate,
Jodi Meadows, for tweeting about that ages ago).
I love this treadmill desk in theory because I think best when I'm walking. In practice, it'd probably be disastrous. I'd get so wrapped up in typing that I'd forget to move my feet! I'd be missing teeth and my epidermis before the walk was up.
ReplyDeleteI've taught myself to read on an elliptical to combat the reader/writer weight, and that suits me just fine. :) I did listen to an audiobook on a road trip once. Enjoyable, but not the same. (It really depends on the narrator.) Got any more recommendations?
I'm still working on WHITE CAT- audiobooks are long!- but when I listen to more (and I definitely will!) I will share which ones work well. :-)
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