http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/features/2013/daily_rituals/is_the_key_to_becoming_a_great_writer_having_a_day_job.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/features/2013/daily_rituals/john_updike_william_faulkner_chuck_close_they_didn_t_wait_for_inspiration.html
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/20/daily-routines-writers/
Waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan.
"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work."
This doesn't mean that inspiration doesn't exist, or that some work is not more inspired than others. It merely means that you should work each day regardless of whether you feel the urge to; it is the process of working itself that will give rise to new ideas. And with steady application, you can expect to hit inspired patches from time to time.
“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”
I never listen to music when I’m working. I haven’t that kind of attentiveness.
Frankly I do feel that my mind is going. So another ‘ritual’ as you call it, is to pray to Jesus to preserve my sanity and my energy so I can help my family: that being my paralyzed mother, and my wife, and the ever-present kitties. Okay?
I work in the morning at a manual typewriter. I do about four hours and then go running. This helps me shake off one world and enter another. Trees, birds, drizzle — it’s a nice kind of interlude. Then I work again.
A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it. Looking out the window, reading random entries in the dictionary.
the photograph shows us a writer who did not waste time at the window or anywhere else. So I’ve tried to make him my guide out of lethargy and drift, into the otherworld of magic, art, and divination.
I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.
Naps are essential to my process. Not dreams, but that state adjacent to sleep, the mind on waking.
Toward the end of a book, the state of composition feels like a complex, chemically altered state that will go away if I don’t continue to give it what it needs. What it needs is simply to write all the time. Downtime other than simply sleeping becomes problematic. I’m always glad to see the back of that.
I write my stories in the morning, my diary at night.
In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. I’m just as glad they haven’t consulted me about the tiresome details.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/features/2013/daily_rituals/john_updike_william_faulkner_chuck_close_they_didn_t_wait_for_inspiration.html
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/20/daily-routines-writers/
Waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan.
"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work."
This doesn't mean that inspiration doesn't exist, or that some work is not more inspired than others. It merely means that you should work each day regardless of whether you feel the urge to; it is the process of working itself that will give rise to new ideas. And with steady application, you can expect to hit inspired patches from time to time.
“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”
I never listen to music when I’m working. I haven’t that kind of attentiveness.
Frankly I do feel that my mind is going. So another ‘ritual’ as you call it, is to pray to Jesus to preserve my sanity and my energy so I can help my family: that being my paralyzed mother, and my wife, and the ever-present kitties. Okay?
I work in the morning at a manual typewriter. I do about four hours and then go running. This helps me shake off one world and enter another. Trees, birds, drizzle — it’s a nice kind of interlude. Then I work again.
A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it. Looking out the window, reading random entries in the dictionary.
the photograph shows us a writer who did not waste time at the window or anywhere else. So I’ve tried to make him my guide out of lethargy and drift, into the otherworld of magic, art, and divination.
I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.
Naps are essential to my process. Not dreams, but that state adjacent to sleep, the mind on waking.
Toward the end of a book, the state of composition feels like a complex, chemically altered state that will go away if I don’t continue to give it what it needs. What it needs is simply to write all the time. Downtime other than simply sleeping becomes problematic. I’m always glad to see the back of that.
I write my stories in the morning, my diary at night.
In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. I’m just as glad they haven’t consulted me about the tiresome details.
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