To routine or not to routine

Another name for muse might be routine

Since resolutions are on people’s minds these days, I thought it was worth thinking about the less sexy side of writing that is so, so important to get anything done, such as developing a writing routine.

It’s always easy to find better things to do than write. “I hate writing. I like having written,” Dorothy Parker famously said.

She nailed it for many writers. There’s been many a time, especially on a labored day of writing, when I’ve looked out the window on a nice sunny day and wondered why I don’t take a hike with friends, go to a matinee, or just sit and pass the day with a good book.

“I’m an adult,” I tell myself. “I can do anything I want with my free time. Why am I sitting here and forcing myself to write when I could be indulging in practically any pleasurable activity I want?”

Writing can be daunting, frustrating, and even frightening—yet then, somehow, magically fulfilling. That’s why having a writing routine is so important. If there’s a single defining trait among most successful writers, it’s that they all show up to write regularly. Whether they write at midnight, dawn, or after a two-martini lunch, they have a routine.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish,” said Antoine Saint Exupéry. And a routine is a plan. A plan of dedication. A routine helps obliterate any obstacle hindering you from writing, whether it’s a psychological block or a tantalizing party invitation.

Routine as mesmerism

But it’s even more than that. When you write during a certain time each day, and in an environment designated solely for rumination, you experience creative benefits. The regularity of time and place serves as an invitation for your mind to walk through the doorways of your imagination and fully concentrate on your story.

Routines help to trigger cognitive cues that are associated with your story, cloaking you in the ideas, images, feelings, and sentences that are swirling in your subconscious.

If you anoint a specific time and place for writing, make it sacred and regular, it’s easier to transcend the intrusive fretfulness of life and rise above its cacophony. Regularity and repetition are like guides who lead you deeper into the realm of your imagination.

In fact, another name for muse might be routine. When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly. That’s because you’re carried forward by the reassuring momentum of your progress, absorbed in a type of mesmerism. Creativity arises from a constant churn of ideas. If you don’t have a routine, if you show up sporadically, it takes longer to warm up and remember your story.

Stephen King is perhaps the perfect case study of such a writer. He compares his writing room to his bedroom, a private place of dreams.

“Your schedule—in at about the same time every day, out when your thousand words are on paper or disk—exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go.”

But, wait, aren’t artists supposed to be freewheeling, undisciplined creatures more inclined to follow the fancies of their imagination than the rigid regularities of a schedule? Doesn’t routine subvert and suffocate creativity? Quite the opposite. A routine provides a safe and stable place for your imagination to roam, dance, do somersaults, and jump off cliffs.

“Over time, as the daily routines become second nature, discipline morphs into habit,” said Twyla Tharp.

Habit is one word for it. Invitation is another. But maybe path is the best. A routine opens a path to your writing.

“Getting to my desk every day feels like a long emergency,” said Barbara Kingsolver. “It’s a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can’t begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.”

Think about how you can structure your days to include an invitation to write. And, remember, your routine doesn’t have to be ambitious. Perhaps it’s only 10 minutes a day. The important thing is to do it, and do it regularly.

This is an excerpt from my book, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Actions and Insights to Boost Your Creative Mojo.

Because a quote

“Eventually I realized that I was clearer-headed, more confident and generally more intelligent in the morning. The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down … I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come …

“And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular … Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.”

— Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, best known for The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved

The rundown

Reading: The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez, who might very well be my favorite living writer.

Listening to: NPR Music’s Best Songs of 2023.

Lusting for: Meandering through a day without a to-do list.

Inspiration: The Ace of Pentacles (an invitation of abundance).

Goal: A mind that can settle into deep and gentle reading.

Random question: How do we know what a normal level of anxiety is?

Photo prompt: I stopped to eat here once. It’s in Northern California, near the Oregon border. It is a place of many stories, as if built on top of an underground spring of stories. If you’re hurting for one, write a story that takes place here.

Because here’s a way to write your novel in 2024

My course on novel writing recently launched with Domestika!

One student said, “Grant Faulkner imparts great knowledge here—inspiring in me the belief that I can write the novel I want to write. I have enjoyed the way he relates to other authors and how he uses examples from his own writing (and life) to illuminate the writing path.” See more reviews.

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