Routine

I wake and I am hungry. Coffee is also needed. Everything in mid-January is too cold until I put on some kind of feet coverings and patter down the stairs. Most times the cats are too lazy to follow me right away. But then the cat food cans are open and they are there by my side, mewing as if to remind me to feed them. Fitz, Olive, when have I let you down?

I have oatmeal with my coffee. I open the windows, start the gas-powered fire. But even still, it is not enough. And so, I will read until my coffee mug is empty. Until each granule of oats has disappeared.

This is my morning routine. Before this I had nothing at all. I would wake with just enough time to make something of myself and head off on the 20-plus minute commute to my full time job. Lately, however, I’ve tried my best to replace this reading with writing. It is so much easier (and possibly more fun) to read someone else’s words, isn’t it? A book that is already done, edited, and published? But there is nothing more fulfilling than going to work—if you write part-time—knowing that you have hit one thousand words. All by 7 am.

Looking back, I was satisfied if I got any writing done in the week. There is something to be said about this. Smaller goals is about being extremely forgiving of yourself, especially just starting off as a writer. It’s hard to disconnect yourself from more prolific authors. The more you research, the more you see the writers out there with a three-thousand-words-a-day routine (!). But that doesn’t have to be you. When no one knows you are a writer then no one is waiting on your book. You’ll feel as if the clock is against you, but who hung that clock in the first place? Probably you.

Being a writer can be a beautiful job. You take the world and filter it into words. This is daunting, but also blissfully challenging. But to manage, you can ask writer friends what it takes for them to get into a writer’s stance. To become ready to pluck the sentences from the air that don’t make much sense and bleed them onto a page. Do you need to put socks on first? Do you need a cat on each side of you? Where do you find yourself? On the couch? In bed? At a coffee shop in the middle of the day, or first thing in the morning? Everyone will try to tell you there are specific ways to do anything. But those specific ways are their ways. One of the most interesting things about being a writer is finding where you feel the muse most strongly.

However, breaking that routine can also breed interesting results. Sometimes having a strict regiment at all can be pigeonholing to some. In this case, see if keeping to some kind of plan actually makes things worse for you. Having a routine and lack of routine can mean the same thing.

I work better in the morning. It was Ursula Le Guin who said that after 8 pm she tends to be “very stupid”. Once the sun goes down, a switch is released inside me. My mind doesn’t work the same and neither do the words. If you are busy, then write when it suits you. In the quiet moments. On lunch break. Sneak a notebook where you are, write down clips and phrases.

The story is in there ready to get out. Make sure it does so by finding what routine, or none at all, works for you.