Reader question: Jonathan Moeller vs. carpal tunnel!

Reader Twell asks:

“Good lord, man! How on earth do you do it? There’s only a few romance writers that put out more books, and I’m betting that those are actually teams of writers using a single pen name. At the least, you must be using voice recognition, otherwise you’d be crippled by carpal tunnel years ago.”

I don’t use voice recognition. I type everything (and I write everything myself – no co-writers). How do I avoid carpal tunnel (also known as repetitive stress injury, or RSI)?

Short, glib answer: pushups! Lots and lots of pushups. 🙂

Longer answer: I do exercise a lot. Over the last year, I’ve reduced the amount of running I do, and I’ve replaced it with a lot of strength exercises – pushups, squats, various types of lifts, and so on. Ideally, I like to do strength exercises three times a week, and running three times a week, though life can interfere with that.

It seems to work. By the end of 2017, I think I’ll have written about 1.3 million words, and I don’t have any problems with RSI.

I don’t base any of my characters on myself, but I will admit that some of my fitness nuttery has bled into Nadia Moran and more recently into Jack March. I am 6 foot 2, and in 2007 I weighed 350 pounds, and realized that I needed to change. The lowest weight I ever reached was 182 in 2010, which was in hindsight was likely too low, and as of last week I was at 207. Which is probably reasonable for a man of my age, height, genetic background, and career.

So, to sum, I do exercise a lot of keep RSI from developing. So far it’s worked!

-JM