There is something electric and energizing about understanding and doing the right thing, a kind act, working out, eating well, or completing a solid sit with the page. I especially feel good when I take my writer out for a walk every day. It’s in my nature to play on the page. I need it.

If you don’t take your dog for regular walks, he’s more likely to destroy the cushions and chew on your shoes. Ask any vet or dog trainer.

If you don’t allow your koi to eat most of their eggs and fry in the spring, you’ll have too many koi come winter. Ask me or any other koi pond keeper.

If you don’t let your inner writer out to play on the page, you’ll become cranky and twitchy. Ask Steven or any other partner of someone who identifies as writer.

Distractions and duties can keep dog owners too busy for walks, emotions might incline koi owners to protect eggs and fry, and temptations often lure a writer’s butt out of the chair and away from the page. But those distractions, emotions, and temptations are self-defeating.

Some 1850 years ago, Marcus Aurelius journaled about the components of being a proper human. One aspect is “contemplating the natural order and all that happens in keeping with it.”

Are you writer? Did you take your writer out for a walk today? I’m asking both literally and figuratively. Not just through the streets or park, but also on a pen-to-paper stroll. And I ask because it’s important not only to the writer, but also to those close to the writer.

Did you allow your writer to cull her environment or did you give priority to distractions and temptations? Did you sit with the page and let him play?

The natural order of dogs is to do some daily work: walk in the park, chase a frisbee, herd sheep (or the owner), and chase squirrels. The walk is good for the dog as well as the human.

Consuming most of their eggs and fry is in keeping with the natural order of koi and helps avert overpopulation. Also good for both the koi pond and the human who cares for it.

Writers? Perhaps there is no prevailing biological natural order for writers. But I would argue that we do share a mental-emotional natural order: the need to spend a healthy amount of time at the page.

If you’re a writer, sit your butt down. If you’re in relation with a writer, do yourself a favor and make sure that writer takes time for their craft. We don’t have to pump out prize-winning words every day. But our notebooks and pens afford us a modicum of sanity and protect those who hazard relations with us.

©Pennie A. Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2025