Last week, I blogged about Kurt Vonnegut’s “Eight Rules for Writing a Short Story.” As many of you may know, Vonnegut passed away six years ago at the age of 84.

He lives on through his many works:

1. Player Piano (1952)
2. The Sirens of Titan (1959)
3. Canary in a Cathouse (1961)
4. Mother Night (1961)
5. Cat’s Cradle (1963)
6. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
7. Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)
8. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
9. Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971)
10. Between Time and Timbuktu (1972)
11. Breakfast of Champions (1973)
12. Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons (1974)
13. Slapstick (1976)
14. Jailbird (1976)
15. Palm Sunday (1981)
16. Deadeye Dick (1982)
17. Galapagos (1985)
18. Bluebeard (1987)
19. Hocus Pocus (1989)
20. Fates Worse Than Death (1991)
21. Timequake (1997)
22. Bagombo Snuff Box (1999)
23. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (2000)
24. A Man Without a Country (2005)
25. Armageddon in Retrospect (2008)
26. Look at the Birdie (2009)
27. While Mortals Sleep (2011)

To create such a body of work, it goes without saying that Vonnegut dedicated a lot of time to writing, but what might go unnoticed is the importance he placed on exercise. In an excerpt from a letter to his wife, Jane, dated September 28, 1965, he describes his daily routine:

I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. I do pushups and sit-ups all the time, and feel as though I am getting lean and sinewy, but maybe not.

Similarly, another one of my favorite writers, Haruki Murakami, places a huge importance on establishing a writing routine and pairing it with exercise. In Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, Jay Rubin writes:

By 1999, Murakami had run 16 full marathons and so completely identified himself with physical fitness that one magazine ran a 25-page spread on the connection between his running and his writing. ‘You’ve got to have physical strength and endurance,’ he said, ‘to be able to spend a year writing a novel and then another year rewriting it ten or fifteen times.’ He decided that he would live as if each day were 23 hours long, so that no matter how busy he might be, nothing would prevent him from devoting an hour to exercise. ‘Stamina and concentration are two sides of the same coin… I sit at my desk and write every day, whether it’s painful or enjoyable. I wake up at 4 a.m. and usually keep writing until after noon. I do this day after day, and eventually–it’s the same as running–I get to that spot where I know it’s what I’ve been looking for all along.

Murakami is the author of numerous books in his own right; most of them have been translated into English:

1. Pinball, 1973 (1985)
2. Hear the Wind Sing (1987)
3. A Wild Sheep Chase (1989)
4. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1991)
5. Dance Dance Dance (1994)
6. The Elephant Vanishes: Stories (1994)
7. The Windup Bird Chronicle (1997)
8. Norwegian Wood (2000)
9. South of the Border, West of the Sun (2000)
10. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (2000)
11. Sputnik Sweetheart (2001)
12. After the Quake: Stories (2003)
13. Kafka on the Shore (2005)
14. After Dark (2007)
15. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2007)
16. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2008)
17. 1Q84 (2011)

Take these two literary giants as primary examples.

If you hope to write for the long haul, not only do you need a writing routine, but you will also need to take care of your physical health. If you take care of your body now, you will hopefully add more years to your life, so, like Kurt Vonnegut and Haruki Murakami, you can write your heart out well into your golden years.

Photo credit: Swedish National Heritage Board / Foter