Don't Win the Warm-Up

November 2025

Hello! And Happy November!! It’s the Most Wonderful Month of the Year!!​

✨November✨—Breathe it in, breathe it out. You catch a whiff of something… Maybe it’s pumpkin spice, maybe it’s baked goods caramelizing in the oven, or maybe it’s the glorious aroma of a million new book ideas budding into existence! 🤩🪷

Yep, it’s that time of year again, when all the writers you know and love embark upon one challenge or another to draft a brand new book! I myself am doing the PaWriCo25 challenge hosted by Pathfinders Writing Collective. (This challenge is totally customizable btw (from goals, to duration, and beyond) and open to all! No, it’s not too late to join the fun!) And just last night, on Day 6 of the challenge, I hit my first benchmark: 10k brand new words!! Huzzah!!

Ron Swanson from Parks & Rec smiling gif. Aka, me when I reached 10k.

But after tacking a wicked little cliffhanger to the end of chapter 3 and crawling into bed, all the imperfections I’d left behind in those first 10,000 words began to haunt me. And I don’t mean the typos and the run-ons, those are small potatoes, I mean the BIG potatoes like “my main character figured out the *bum-bum-buuuummmm* twist way too easily,” and “my fictional science 💉, on which my entire science fiction novel hinges, kinda sorta doesn’t make sense...” And in no time at all, I’d convinced myself that as soon as I woke up, the best thing I could do for my story was start over.

I know more now!

I can avoid those same mistakes!

This’ll make it 10x easier to write the next 10k!

zzzzzzzzzz....

Then I woke up, had a cup of tea, rubbed the BS from my eyes, and told Past Me to stuff it.

This is only Draft 1, baby. I’m still warming up.

Musing of the Month: Don’t Win the Warm-Up

I was a gymnast for sixteen years which means I heard my coach say “Don’t win the warm-up” every week (often multiple times/week) for over 832 consecutive weeks during my most formative years. He’d say it at competitions, “Don’t win the warm-up, save it for the judges.” He’d say it at practice, “Don’t win the warm-up, you’ve still got three hours of training left.” And he’d say it when everything—competitions, practice, school, life, whatever—was going all wrong, “Don’t win the warm-up, kid, you’re only fifteen.”

I swear, that line’s branded into the side of my brain, but damn it, I am so grateful that it is. Because as much as we all know our first attempt at something new is probably gonna suck—first painting, first book, first time driving a car (I may have slowly but surely rolled into a small bush)—I think we sometimes forget that our second, third, or one millionth attempt at something, even something we’re really good at, still requires a “warm-up.”

Gymnasts don’t just show up to practice and start throwing backflips on the balance beam, even if they’ve been doing balance beam backflips for years. They jog a little, stretch a little, then do a couple backflips on the floor, then a few on the low beam, then finally, when they’re ready, they move up to the high beam. And all that, plus a whole day of swinging bars and tumbling down the diagonal, is really just part of a greater warm-up prepping them for competitions that are months away.

A lot of artists do this too. A few warm-up sketches to get a feel for your pen again, then some fuller sketches to hopefully spark an idea that’ll maybe lead to a question, or better yet, a shift in perspective, that one day becomes the basis for a final piece. Scales and held harmonies to wake up the vocal chords, then rehearsals, day in and day out, for a show that comes out next year.

But writers... I think a lot of us consider ourselves—what’s the word?—exempt from the whole “warm-up” thing, especially when this first draft isn’t our first first draft. Yeah, we’ll do a free write here and there to get the juices flowing, but surely our past books/stories/etc. were warm-up enough, no?

No.

Every project requires a full warm-up: room to play, and wobble, and make weird mistakes we’ve never made before, to shake out the jitters and know, deep down, “this doesn’t count.”

So, when I say “warm-up,” I don’t just mean day-of wrist stretches and a wake-up sprint or two, I mean an entire “warm-up” manuscript that’s just for getting down all those bizarro, out-of-order, may-never-make-it-to-the-final-draft ideas.

What if Draft 1, all Draft 1s, were simply warm-up drafts?

😭: “But that’s so much time and effort wasted, wouldn’t it be so much easier to at least try and make Draft 1 not suck?”

My honest-to-Odin answer: No.

Because trying to “make Draft 1 not suck,” a.k.a, trying to “win the warm-up,” will burn you out or break you. Draft 1 is supposed to be fun and explorative, riddled with mistakes and it should…not count.

You wouldn’t tell a gymnast, even a highly skilled one, who’s learning a new routine to just “get it right on the first try,” would you? No, so don’t do that to yourself, even if it’s not your first first draft.

To all my writers starting something new this fabulous November, and anyone else starting anything new whenever you’re reading this, remember to give yourself a proper (expectation-free) warm-up, even if you’re not a newbie.

The Weather (stuff…at a glance):

📃Current WIP(s): 🌺 Project Hybrid (true title TBD) - adult sci-fi/dystopian

📈WIP status(es): ✍️ Drafting! 10k in!

📚Current read(s): 🦈 Shark Heart by Emily Habeck

⭐ Other: 📖 I set out to write 6 new short stories this year and just penned the 6th yesterday!!

Rain’s Random Recs:

📘: 🐙 Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snider - wickedly delicious, beautifully disturbing, totally un-put-down-able sapphic horror. 10/10.

🎥: 🦭 Song of the Sea by Tomm Morre - some of the most fascinating and captivating animation I’ve ever seen, plus SUCH a heartwarming and equally heartbreaking story.

🎵: 🦠🦋 Nova Twins...again. Sorry, not sorry. I went to their concert a few weeks ago and haven’t stopped playing their ENTIRE discography since.

📺: 🫣 Wayward starring Mae Martin and Toni Collette - Ahhhhh! Freaky, twisty, culty, trippy, and the cast just nails it. A must see...but maybe with a buddy nearby 😅

​Happy November everyone! May your words flow and your high-expectations go...far, far away, at least for a little while. As always, questions, comments, topic requests always welcome. Stay safe. Stay sane. Tell your loved ones you love them.

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XOXO,

Rain ☔ she/her