Can posture improve your writing?

This was a question I pondered when author Amber Smith visited me for a few days. In my efforts to be a good host, I kept trying to encourage her to write in “comfy” spots, like my soft couch or a beanbag chair outside. She confessed she had to sit upright at a desk or table to feel like she got any real writing done. She’s a New York Times-bestselling author, so I took her comment to heart.

Almost immediately, I found the TED Talk by Amy Cuddy*, “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are,” then read her book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges. Both convinced me that Amber was on to something.

Cuddy’s best-known research is about the power of “power posing,” holding a pose like arms akimbo or raised in a V. After only two minutes, your hormones change. You read that correctly: Your body literally, physically changes based on how you hold it.

A position can “configure your brain to be either assertive, confident, and comfortable, or really stress-reactive and feeling sort of shut down.” Cuddy also points out that people who feel more powerful “tend to be more optimistic, able to think more abstractly, [and] take more risks.” Imagine sitting down to write and feeling confident, optimistic, able to process abstract thoughts, and take risks.

So, I did it. During the last year, I’ve written while sitting at my kitchen table with a conscious effort at decent posture. I have gotten a lot done—like, three times as much as I accomplished in the previous year. Is my work better? I feel like it is. I definitely feel better about it.

It turns out one of the reasons I feel better about it—and about my abilities in general—is that “poor posture can put you in a lousy mood and make you feel more stressed and depressed.” Sitting down to write while adopting a posture that makes us feel bad is not a recipe for success, even if the success we want is a crappy first draft. Also, publishing already includes a lot of things to make us feel stressed and depressed, things that are beyond our control. If something like good posture can alleviate some of that, I’m in!

But one of my favorite reasons for working at my table is that good posture can “make you less guarded.” Most authors have shared some version of the same advice, “Put yourself out there. Share part of yourself. Admit the thing that makes you afraid/passionate/ashamed/laugh.” Our personal truths inform everything we write, whether or not we admit it to ourselves. So whether I’m writing fart jokes or about a time I was cruel to someone, I don’t want to guard my heart but to let it loose.

To quote Cuddy one last time, “Our bodies change our minds, and our minds can change our behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes.” The changed outcome I hoped for was more writing and more writing I felt good about. Sitting at a table, back straight, worked for me.

At the very least, we can all set a two-minute timer before a writing session and stand in Wonder Woman pose. Not only because it will pump up our hormones but also because if that’s all it takes to channel some of the awesome that is Wonder Woman, I’m in!

* Cuddy had some haters, which she successfully fended off–and she didn’t even have Wonder Woman’s Bracelets of Submission!

Rebecca Petruck is the author of Boy Bites Bug and Steering Toward Normal, both with ABRAMS/Amulet. BUG received a starred review from ABA Booklist, who said it’s “…funny, perceptive, and topical in more ways than one.” It is a Louisiana Young Readers Choice selection for 2020-2021. STEERING was an American Booksellers Association New Voices selection as well as a Kids Indie Next List title. She has been a mentor for SCBWI Carolinas, Pitch Wars, and Writing in the Margins. Petruck holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UNC Wilmington and is represented by Kate Testerman of kt literary.