Writing Routine
 

I recently read Mason Curry's Daily Rituals: How Artists Work and it was pretty inspiring. For those of you who haven't heard of this work, it is a coffee table-type book that is a compilation of the author's accounts of various famous creative persons' (not just artists) daily routines that he either wrote himself or collected secondhand. There are a few poets listed; Yeats, Auden, Goethe, Schiller, and Angelou immediately come to mind. Some of the accounts are pretty detailed.


I envy those who can just sit down and write anytime during the day. Being as dissipated as I am, I've found I need set times to sit down and focus. On a normal weekday, I'll write without breaks from around 6:00-7:30 in the morning before breakfast. In the afternoons, I work on music for around the same time span. I suppose I have a morning ritual; I get up at 4:30, shower, meditate/do yoga for an hour, than brew a cup of Tulsi tea with lemon, ghee, and jaggery and sit down to write :).

So I was wondering, do any of you have a routine or rituals for creative work? Any tips or tricks you would like to share?

Justin

Any routine I have will from now on need to include jaggery. :-)

Cheers,
John

Ha! I had no idea what jaggery was either! Had to look it up :)

But Justin, I'm impressed by anyone who can wake up at 4:30, meditate, do yoga, and write for an hour and a half -- all before it's even time for breakfast! That's a whole lotta good habits -- I admire that kind of discipline. Something to aspire to -- esp. as I try to get thru my dissertation... :(

Nausheen

Justin,

I'm absolutely staggered that you have such self-discipline! Getting up at 4.30am, writing for an hour and a half every morning...

You presumably don't have a job. Or are you a monk, or something? You're very young to live the life you're living!!
(I'm still reeling from the notion of getting up in the middle of the night. I don't usually go to bed till around 1am.)

Anyway, to answer your question: How I wish I had a routine for writing. I'm a retired teacher, and you'd think I'd have loads of time on my hands - but I lead a very busy life, and have seven grandchildren... so I write haphazardly, nowhere near as often as I'd like, scribbling ideas in myriad notebooks... most of which never materialise into a poem.

In short, I lack self-discipline. How on earth do you manage it??
I have a gym membership but easily talk myself out of going there most days, because "I'm Far Too Busy Today" :rolleyes:

(I had to Google jaggery too. Great word :))

Jayne

That book sounds good, Justin. Old Papa Hemingway used to write in the mornings, as I recall; he’d take a pitcher of martinis up to his study and work till lunch. I assume he made the martinis after breakfast.

I’m a morning writer, too, but without the martinis. The morning is my favorite time of day and I usually rise with the Sun. I sit down on the couch in my study and write with pencil (always pencil) into a notebook. I need perfect silence except for birdsong and the snoring dog. What I’ve written may or may not make it into a computer file, and once it’s in the file, if may or may not survive editing. I’m an aggressive editor / trasher.

The exception is journal entries, which I compose directly at the computer and almost never delete, though I do edit them, mostly for mistakes and typos. I view journal writing as a way of recording and working out thoughts; it also keeps the mind and fingers nimble when the other Muse has skipped town or lost her senses. I highly recommend it.

Between verse and journal entries, I write something to keep maybe three days a week, though sometimes little more than a sentence or a quotation for the journal.

It's been my experience that too much routine scares the raw imagination away --Though it is well-documented that the best writers follow one. But they are not limited to it.
Ideas come whenever and wherever they occur, usually because of some random external stimulus that locks in to something internal. Who can write while shaving? In the shower? Driving the speed limit? I try my best to make note of it and hope that when I come back to it the spark is still flickering. I've carried fragments in my head for hours, repeating them over and over so as not to forget them, until I get to a "safe place" to jot them down -- only to delete them a day later in disgust.

But routine is definitely a key to getting anything of any value done. I just don't have a very good one. Mine is a much paired down version of yours: Wake early (5:15, shower, coffee, then to my flickering notes...)
x

Thanks Jayne! I do have a job, two actually, but they are both part time. I am very lucky in that my teaching gig from Mon-Fri starts at 9am, is only three hours long and two minutes walking distance away from my apartment :) so I have quite a bit of free time on the weekdays.

It is difficult waking up at 4:30 every morning and it is not uncommon that I fail to do so (like this morning since I have a cold) but you just gotta move on and try again. Its a nice way to start the morning getting up at a set time. One way I manage it is taking cat naps in the afternoon (which I have the luxury of doing since I finish teaching before lunch). I usually go to bed anywhere from 9:30-10:30. My diet is also pretty light and vegetarian so it is much less tempting for me than the average person to sleep off a heavy dinner the night before.

Justin

Justin,

Even though I write a weekly-ish column in a local paper, my writing habit is hardly exemplary. Procrastination is the name of the game. My column is normally due by noon on Mondays. And so, it arrives at the editor's box by two. I usually do not start writing until the Morning, and try as I might, unless there is the stress of time, I find that nothing gets done. (Routines are desirable, but I constantly fail at getting a routine resolved.)

An interesting work on authorship is a book called "Author, Author" or, for our British friends, "Performing Flea." It is a collection of letters written to a fellow named Townend. While not all of it concerns itself with writing, Wodehouse, throughout the letters, offers a lot of down-to-earth and often humorous (humourous) advice to writers.

Sincerely,
PM

My rule is that I have few rules as to when or how to write. Brand new poems often seem to arise in the early morning hours when I'm half awake, and if I'm lucky I scribble a few lines on a pad I keep by the bed, or the pillow case, or my toenail, and hope I can read it later. Beyond jotting down ideas, I rarely write before late afternoon or evening. My grind-it-out-get-the-thing-to-work writing generally starts late in the evening and runs till two or three in the morning if I'm on a roll. Or I'll watch television. Or read. I'm lucky enough (and disgustingly old enough) to be retired, so I can write when I want.

My sense is that novelists and non-fiction writers are much more structured in their work habits than poets. They often set aside set times or number of pages per day, and bang away till the bell rings. Poets seem to be more at the mercy of the muse, less structured. All of which makes sense when you consider the different outputs. Assuming you adjust, of course, for novelists or travel writers who write poetically, and poets who can't.

Yeah, I agree with what Michael said. That said, I do like to make sure I spend a certain amount of time a day, even if that means catatonic at the screen. Much inspiration comes outside of that, but it keeps the engine running.

I don't have a writing routine because I have a full-time teaching job in a secondary school, my wife also works full-time and we have 11 year old twins. Oh, and I have a (wonderful) 24 year old daughter who likes to pop by with her boyfriend unexpectedly for the weekend in search of free beer and Indian meals. Nobody will allow me the luxury of cloistering myself away with a 'do not disturb' sign on the door. Besides, on the rare occasion when I do have 'alone time' (Rebecca taking twins overnight to her friend's who has kids) I build up the idea of precious solitude in my head and then inevitably sit frustrated in front of a blank sheet of paper. It doesn't seem to work like that.

But I'm always writing. By 'writing' I mean I'm constantly mumbling half-formed lines to myself in my head, obsessively panicking that I'll never write a poem again, staring into space, and jotting things down on bits of paper which I then lose. And jabbing away at the sphere, of course. All this results in me not focussing as I should at work and mixing up simple words at home, like 'fridge' when I mean 'washing machine'.

But then sometimes, suddenly, all the mumbling, panicking and staring into space coalesces into a poem which usually comes very quickly. I can feel that it's ready and I might write it parked in the car or I go to the pub for an hour after work. Then it's just tinkering. Lots of my poems happen in the pub.

Maybe I should build a shed...

Edit: or I get up in the middle of the night and sit on the chair in the garden with a blanket and a notebook. That's resulted in a few good ones!

Patrick,
Whilst you guys have humor and we have humour (for some reason!), we're totally agreed on humorous, because ''humourous" doesn't even exist!!

"Two nations divided [but hey! only partially] by a common language" :D

Jayne

Mark: "mixing up simple words at home, like 'fridge' when I mean 'washing machine'."
My solution to this problem is to refer to every item whose name escapes me as 'thingy.'

Cheers,
John

I've pretty much been writing a poem a day since 2012. Not always good or long ones, but it's a useful discipline for me. I mostly write them before folks are up (my wife and our son). Lots of dawn poems.

Oh - also, I essentially never compose verse directly on the computer. It's longhand.

Haha! I've been there before.

Do you rewrite? How much time do you devote to rewriting? Do you go over poems again before you submit? Do you revisit them? Is the emphasis on getting out a poem a day, or on writing the best possible poem you can. Is that morning spent writing the poem just the very start of the creative process, or is each poem essentially done - bango - on to the next - every day? Do you rewrite and rethink when you transfer the poem to the computer?

Personally. I think that the working and reworking and rereworking the poem - and then putting it aside for a month and reworking again - the amount of effort you put into a poem before you think it's possibly ready - is a lot more important than whether you use a 2H pencil or where and how you write. And I have the feeling that more members than usual are putting up early drafts, and depending too much on the Sphere to help finish the poem. One of the dangers of the Sphere is that it encourages this.

I'm at my own nutty end of the spectrum. I have a dozen or more poems in process at a time, I may not look at one for a month or more and then go back to it, I rarely "finish" a poem in less than a month from when I first had the idea, and it's often a year, I'm lucky if I grind out a poem a month that I'm happy with - I look at possible rewrites every time I submit - and I never stop kicking at the tires. And then I post a poem from time to time, and still get good suggestions and make changes.

I think I'm much more like Michael and Mark than John or Justin. I'm always thinking and keeping my eyes open. I have a ton of files on my computer that have a line or an image. Sometimes the juxtaposition of two will make it work, sometimes nothing ever comes. I go through phases where I'll write 3-5 in a week, and then a month where a write nothing complete.

Those "complete" poems then usually get tinkered with a bit, and then ignored for a little while (two to three days on the short end, months on the longer end). Then I give them another re-write, and if I like them (or if I'm stuck), I'll post them here. Occasionally I get over-ambitious and post earlier than I might, but always one I'm enthusiastic about, and never one that from conception to completion is less than a week old and survived fewer than 2-3 drafts.

Michael,
I suspect that your modus operandi is the way it is for many of us; it certainly is for me! (I like "I never stop kicking at the tires". That's a great way to put it.)

A poem a day for six years, John?? That's some output! I'm impressed that you've managed to keep it up. (Was Mike hinting at quantity v quality, I wonder? ;))

"Lots of dawn poems", you say. "Dawn'' is pretty much unknown to me (except, perhaps, when having to get to an airport), being a night owl. I definitely function better in the wee small hours after midnight.

But I agree about the first words going onto paper rather than a screen. I like sitting up in bed with a cup of tea, an A4 lined pad, a pencil, and a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary to hand, just in case.

Jayne

You have 12 going at the same time, Michael? My god. When I was younger, I'd get obsessed with one and put my head through a wall trying to work it out. I do think valuable advice about habits would include having a handful going on at the same time. Working on one can unstuck another. Now I just have 3, but I think it's good to bounce from one to the other.

Yes, the thesaurus and the rhyming dictionary are a must. I know it's all on line now, but there's something tangible about leafing through those butter and mustard and salami impregnated pages that brings out the intangible in me.

I don't believe in magic. I believe in putting in time in a chair at a desk for 1-4 hours most days, now that I don't have a full-time job anymore. Sometimes I work on a computer; sometimes I start on paper before switching to a computer. I often get ideas while taking a shower or drying my hair, but the real work starts after the initial ideas. I don't tend to work on more than one poem at a time. Usually, I write a poem in a day, two or three days at most, but I tend to revise them over a week, at least, after I have posted them for feedback. Really short poems tend to take less time, longer ones more time. If I am getting no ideas for poems, I usually have several authors I like to translate, and I will pick up a poem by one of them and work on it for a while. I am not a morning person, so most of my work time is in the afternoon, or sometimes the evening. I jot down notes on scraps of paper or online if I get an idea when I don't have time to work on it. Many of those notes never lead to poems, but a few do, and sometimes years after I got the initial idea.

Susan

Jayne,

You caught me trying to be a smart aleck.

It's the French influence, I believe, that has given you the "ou" back when French was stylish and Paris the capital of fashion. I read it somewhere, but I can't recall where--ain't that convenient!

Manalive! The amount of writing some of you do--makes me wonder, and feel like the golden retriever who got beat by the hare, like the fellow who sprints the first fifty yards of a marathon than strolls the rest and arrives at the end just as the stars begin to erupt in the heavens, long after everyone has left. The street, you can imagine, is strewn with paper, water bottles, and crumpled numbers. The only thing left to do is to saunter over to a pub for beer and a sandwich.

Sincerely,
PM

Hi Michael,

Since you ask: yes, I do also obsessively reread and revise, down to the semicolon, and delete poems from MSS. Gombrich distinguishes medieval painting, which involved, to simplify him, drawing a perfect unicorn in a single draft, from Renaissance painting, which involved endlessly redrafting the seen rather than perfectly representing the ideal. There's a photo of Picasso drawing a perfect centaur in midair with a flashlight in a darkened room. I am much more like the Renaissance painter there.
What I post on the Sphere varies in age. My last posted poem, "Things with Mike," was written in 2012, but when traveling (like now), I do often post new work, which is more to hand. Otherwise, it's generally stuff from my MSS, which go back mostly through 2012, though some things date back to 1982, when I was much younger.
A thesaurus and the OED are precious to me. I don't rhyme much, so don't use a rhyming dictionary. It may be time, as Mme de Stael said after Corinne, to invest in one.
There's that Wilbur quote that what's hard is not the writing but the thinking. I am in complete agreement with him. I started writing a poem a day after reading about a poet who wrote a sonnet a day for a year; a task I would find impossible, not to say arid.
My only experience of a serious workshop, prior to the Sphere, was the Iowa Creative Writers Workshop in 2017. That may be why I am continually amazed at the cuts and splices suggested on the Sphere to work I've gone over many times, over weeks or years, and think finished (i.e., I've whittled them down to tinkering with commas). Which I guess is an answer to your question. I would love to have another pair of eyes when rereading my work, but sadly do not.
A final note that lingers with me is Frost's old remark that writing unrhymed verse is like playing tennis without a net. To write like Frost or Wilbur is, I think, very difficult indeed.
FWIW, since 2016, my MSS seem to make semifinals or finals in MS. prize competitions a few times a year. Maybe I should stop announcing my process in the blurb section, it may be self-defeating. But that doesn't mean I'll stop doing what I can to improve my craft.
Oh - I've published my share of books over the years. They are in prose.

Cheers, and thanks for the question,
John

Been involved in resurrecting some grad school poems. Where the kernel is great, the execution, not so much. I'm more of the thinking that you learn from the poem, and that takes more or less time. Poetry is an act of discovery, and that's unpredictable. Thank god

I'll add to my note, since I neglected something. I don't write everyday, but I read poetry everyday. And a lot of it. There's not better teacher, there's no better muse. And every book of poetry I'm enjoying is strewn with the scraps of verse that may become something more complete, but often go back to my library.

Justin, if you're still following the thread, I don't mean to be patronizing, but nothing is better than finding contemporary (or, in some ways, better, poets from the 1970s and 1980s) that you enjoy. They can inspire and provoke you to new expressions. That's not to say you should forget your Dowsons, necessarily. But if you think there are no good poets then or now, it's because you haven't looked very hard.

Reading it the mother of writing.

I don’t think they are mutually exclusive. Someone – I think it was Frost or Yeats or Auden – said something to the effect that the Muse will only come to take tea with us if we set a place for her. In other words, if you don’t sit down to write, you’ll never write anything inspired.

'Magic' is a rough word. But the really great metaphor, the unique rhyme, the keen insight, the intuition – where do they come from? I don’t think we know. Thus we call it ‘the Muse’.

Slightly OT, but I recently read Philip Glass’s delightful autobiography Word Without Music. He opens the book asking himself the question ‘Where does music come from?’ He never answers it.

Michael F. -- 'Magic' is a rough word. But the really great metaphor, the unique rhyme, the keen insight, the intuition – where do they come from? I don’t think we know.

From the imagination, which I believe is where the muse resides, wherever that is. I think it's more alchemy than magic. In fact, it's magic only in the respect that we don't know for certain how it happens. But there is no trickery. You can feel it arriving out of thin air on a slight breeze.
x
It makes me wonder... if we were to examine our writing behavior would we find that we all have writing habits and that what appears to be undisciplined/random writing activity is actually more predictable than it seems. It so often seems to come down to early morning and late at night. The gray hours.

But then again, it's all the time....
x

Hmmm, that is nicely said, Jim.

This is a habit I would like to develop. I usually work on one poem at a time over a period of at least a week, with the exception of lyrical spurts which usually get done in a session or two. I like to edit as go along writing (my philosophy behind this is that one cannot continue building a tower with a shoddy base). However, as evidenced by the feedback I have received here, the disadvantage of this is myopia. Its more difficult to distance yourself from poems when you nurse them like children. I'd like to be more like Horace, who I think remarked, put each of his poems aside for a year (I wouldn't do that long, though).

I have read a few of Richard Moore's (the formalist) poems which I have very much enjoyed, especially a stunning sonnet sequence of his I read recently. I also like the Australian Stephen Edgar, though I have only read one or two of his poems. Any you recommend?

Justin,
I see you have mentioned Stephen Edgar. His early work was OK but his last three books are outstanding. I believe there are only perhaps a handful of living formalists as talented.

As for the question posed by the thread, I don't have a specific time of day to write, but I do need total peace and quiet. I never thought I'd come to this, but I've given up my paper and purple gel pens and now write and revise (and I do a LOT of revising ) directly on my laptop. As for "output" -- it seems to be either feast or famine. I simply cannot wrap my head around the concept of a poem-a-day! Not even for National Poetry Month! I cannot work on more than one poem at a time except if one is mine and another is a translation.
I could not complete a poem to my satisfaction without my thesaurus, etymological dictionary and rhyming dictionary.

Poetry routines are something that’s been on my mind lately since I’d been concentrating so much on other kinds of writing for a while—creative nonfiction, I guess you could call it—that it was only every other week or so I found time for poetry. And it’s always a bit of a zero-sum game since I do my best work in coffee shops no matter what I’m writing, and I haven’t actually found a way to live in one yet.

I start by writing in my journal or reading poetry or some combination thereof and then move on to poetry. I might stay for two or three hours in all, and I make sure that I’m giving it my time and attention while I'm there even if nothing comes out of it. If I think I’m onto something good and it’s getting late, I might move on to a bar.

In general, though, I’d say that having a specific place to write with the sort of atmosphere that helps you focus is helpful. You get all the advantages of a routine without actually having to set one. I’m still searching for the perfect place in my current area, though. I had one in a city where I used to live that was perfect—I had a chance to visit it again last year, and I swear it was like the ideas for poems were already there waiting for me. Guess I've just got to keep on looking.

Some say they write because they have to. I write because I don’t have to. No one has told me I have to write, and as such it becomes an exercise in freedom. I might at times joke about being a slave of the Muse, being summoned out of bed at ungodly hours, but the truth is I have volunteered, and I heed her call gladly.

Duncan

My best muse hates me, and my next best muse thinks I was the worst thing that ever happened. Gack.

Sorry for being The Bad Cop, Erik, but our own poems aren't allowed on GT threads.

Jayne

It is just as well. I understand. Coppers must enforce the letter of the law, or who else will? Someone has to, so I do not blame you.
Best,
Erik

P.S. I was going to say what if the thing has no line breaks? and what constitutes a poem? But I leave that can of worms to the realm of Sophistry.