What's Your Writing Routine?

Cricket McRae

"Can you tell us a little about your writing routine?"

"What time of day do you write?"

"Do you have a daily quota?"

Sound familiar? Lately I've been speaking to local libraries about my books, home crafts, and writing. There are always aspiring writers in the audience, and they always ask one or more of those questions.

Always.

I'm a signing/reading junkie from way back, so I get it. When I first began writing I wanted to know the magic formula as much as anyone else. Of course, there isn't one, but it sure seems like there ought to be.

JB's post yesterday touched on a lot of the magic, not least of which is applying butt glue, sitting down, and writing in some kind of regular way. That's what I encourage folks because I can't really recommend my personal routine to anyone else. Everyone has to find what works for them.

Having said that, here is mine in brief:

I research primarily at night. After seven o'clock I lack creative bandwidth, but am able to spend long hours reading, googling, checking and cross checking to the point of tedium. First drafts are better written in the morning. I start out writing a thousand words a day on a book, which eventually turns into about twenty-five hundred as the story gains momentum. My left brain likes afternoons, so editing and rewriting happens then, and I try to sit outside if it's nice. However, I may polish twenty pages or only three.

So my routine depends completely on what stage of a project I'm in. And when I'm working on more than one project, I may be at it at all hours of the day, especially taking into consideration how much time goes into book promotion.

My writing habits don't make much sense to anyone but me. However, the desire to know how other people write and create is so strong that there is a site called Daily Routines where you can try to discern the magic formula from the greats.

For example, did you know W.H. Auden consumed Benzadrine, Seconal, and vodka to keep his routine balanced? Not high on my list of recommendations, btw, but still.

A few other tidbits:

According to Lisa Rogak who wrote Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King, King has a glass or water or tea and begins writing in the morning between 8:00 and 8:30. “I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon."

John Grisham told the San Francisco Chronicle in February, 2008 that when he began writing he had "these little rituals that were silly and brutal but very important ... The alarm clock would go off at 5, and I'd jump in the shower. My office was 5 minutes away. And I had to be at my desk, at my office, with the first cup of coffee, a legal pad and write the first word at 5:30, five days a week."

From Joan Acocella's article about writer's block in The New Yorker, June 14, 2004: "[Anthony] Trollope reported in his 'Autobiography,' he woke in darkness and wrote from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., with his watch in front of him. He required of himself two hundred and fifty words every quarter of an hour. If he finished one novel before eight-thirty, he took out a fresh piece of paper and started the next. The writing session was followed, for a long stretch of time, by a day job with the postal service. Plus, he said, he always hunted at least twice a week. Under this regimen, he produced forty-nine novels in thirty-five years. Having prospered so well, he urged his method on all writers: 'Let their work be to them as is his common work to the common laborer. No gigantic efforts will then be necessary. He need tie no wet towels round his brow, nor sit for thirty hours at his desk without moving,—as men have sat, or said that they have sat.'"

Also from The New Yorker in October of 2008, regarding Emily Post: "Post worked on 'Etiquette' for nearly two years. Claridge describes her daily routine as follows: she woke at 6:30 A.M., ate breakfast in bed, and began to write. Midmorning, she took a break to give instructions to the household help; then, still in bed, she continued to write until noon."

I rather like Emily's regimen, myself.

Okay, so how do you write? You know you've developed the short answer to the question, so give!

When Writers Have Two Jobs

by Julia Buckley
I'm glad summer is here; it's a time when I can take deep breaths, sleep a little later, enjoy my back yard, watch DVDs with my boys. This leisure is especially important now--sort of the calm before the storm. I have a book coming out on August 1st, which is just a couple of weeks before I go back to work and school. Before I took the plunge into the writing life, I didn't realize how crazy it would be to have so many jobs, as though I was several women fused together. You can get a better idea from this "Day in the Life" diary entry I composed about my job this year . . . .

Breakfast is chaotic. My children are watching Spongebob and not paying attention to the clock; then there is much yelling as they try to find homework, lunches, jackets, and somehow I am to blame. This is nothing new, so I don’t bother to protest the injustice. We run to the car, I with my bag and lunch, they with theirs. On the way my little one decides that he doesn’t like school and starts to cry. I reach awkwardly into the back seat to pat his leg, my eyes on the clock. If we are late, I will be blamed again. Mothers, I find, are blamed for everything. At school we find the appropriate lines, say our goodbyes; I dab at my son’s eyes and tell him everything will be fine. He marches in, his face as grave as a soldier’s.

So I feel guilty as I drive to another school, the school where I work. I rush in to check my mailbox and my voicemail, not to be confused with my e-mail, which I will check upstairs on my computer. Maybe someday there will be mindmails. Clutching my pile of correspondence, I stand in line at the copier with my handouts for the day. Two faculty members are ahead of me; obviously their children didn’t watch Spongebob. When I get to the front, my precious quizzes and worksheets in hand, the machine mocks me with its flashing message: “Needs toner.” This is the copy machine’s way of saying “Ha, Ha!” It turns out there is no toner; the copy machine, alas, will be unavailable for a time.

Copyless, I trudge upstairs to face Period One. They are primed and ready for the vocabulary quiz. I explain, after we pray and say the Pledge of Allegiance (with varying degrees of patriotism) that I do not have the quiz copied.

“But I studied all night!” yells one indignant vocabularian. Teachers, I find, are always blamed.

“Sorry,” I say. “It’s not like you’ll forget the words now that you know them.” The class disagrees, loudly and at some length. I glance at the clock. I need to transition into a grammar lesson and then into a bit of background on the roaring twenties before we launch into a discussion of last night’s chapter of The Great Gatsby. Time is always of the essence, even when there are ninety minutes. Trying to brighten the atmosphere, I paste on a smile and say, “Who can explain the term ‘irregular verb?’”

This is met by a stony silence. Students apparently hate verbs, perhaps more than any other part of speech.

Gatsby doesn’t fare much better. Nick Carraway is less popular than a verb today; F. Scott Fitzgerald will not be recommended to friends as fun spring break reading. I have somehow failed to convey the majesty of grammar and good literature. When the bell rings they rush out, some smiling sympathetically. I wouldn’t want your job, their faces say.

In homeroom I take attendance, then pass things out and collect other things, all the while making a “ssssshhhhhh” sound so that students will be quiet during announcements. I sound like a leaky furnace, and I receive about the same respect.

In Period Two I hand a detention to a girl with a large nose stud.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“It’s a detention,” I say. “For your nose jewelry.”

She glares at me. While all the students know the rules, not one cares to be reminded of them. In fact, this is another thing which has become my fault.

“That’s not fair,” she says. She seems to believe this, even as the large faux diamond in her nose glints in the fluorescent light. Her friends glare at me, as well. I have committed a dreadful crime. I feel suddenly tired.

In Period Four I write several isms on the board: Naturalism, Darwinism, Socialism, Nihilism. I hear sighs. Students hate isms. Still, for a time we have a lively discussion. Then students are asked to write a response to something on the board. “Write?” one of them asks. “Why?”

It might surprise people to know that despite the fact that this is an English class, I get this question all the time, as well as the “Why must we read?” query. I’m not sure exactly how students, given their druthers, would go about studying language, but apparently I haven’t hit on it quite yet. Surveys, however, don’t always help me to answer this dilemma, as they elicit responses like “Try to be less boring.”

After school I race to the grade school where my children are waiting. I have broken several laws to try to get there on time, to avoid that inevitable blame. I fail.

“You’re late,” my sons tell me, piling in the car. “We were the last ones here.” They are surly in the back seat, punishing me with their silence.

“Sorry,” I say. I drive home. There the dog and cat blame me for my absence in their own ways; I must walk the dog, even though I sense he has not waited, but left his blame in a concrete form on the basement floor.

I sit with the boys as they do their homework. I try to do some of my own; there is a huge pile of essays and journals that I must grade, but I am interrupted almost every minute. Concentration is something I once achieved, in a quieter past. By the time they are finished (and I have made hardly a dent) I must clear the table and scrounge around for something resembling dinner.

I am rarely enthused about this process; I have my own homework waiting for me, tons and tons of scholarly reading, as well as an assignment from my writing group. I have a meeting this evening, so nothing will get done, which means that tomorrow I must face the eager faces asking if I graded essays and say, “Sorry.”

“I need field trip money,” one son tells me, as the other digs through his father’s shirts for an art smock. I am distracted from dinner. When I finally provide it, it is not impressive.

My husband comes home and peers into the lonely pot on the stove. “Hot dogs?” he asks, disappointment carving itself into his features.

“Sorry,” I say. Wives, I find, are always blamed.

See why I like summer?