My writing routine
Do I even have one? And if I do, what’s it got to do with you?
The Saturday Brunch: a figurative flat white or fizzy to start your weekend
Last week, I talked about the way I write novels. A few people then asked me: ok then, what’s your daily writing routine?
Ok, so I have ideal routines and real ones. But maybe the ideal ones are just fantasy and not conducive to good writing anyway? I’m not sure. There are, of course, factors that can’t be controlled, like the limitations of time and energy, when my son decides to wake up, and the weather (cold rain making it less desirable to sit outside on a cafe terrace, if this was my plan).
I do think it’s important to have a routine if your goal is to achieve some writing project or if you simply enjoy the process of doing it. Sometimes my writing sessions are just for me and the words never become anything more than me working through an idea or enjoying noticing something.
These routines are very personal, so I would never say what works for me would work for someone else. There are loads of websites, articles, and books devoted to this topic. I get interested, too. I want to know what I do what I do. Or, occasionally, I like to tweak it.
Having these routines, although I don’t or can’t always stick to them, make the writing easier. It’s something you don’t have to think about. If every morning, I tried to think about what to eat and where to go and when to write…it would never happen. Maybe some people can work that way, but if I know a few things, I can be more creative within those structures.
I thought that rather than take you through a linear minute-by-minute typical writing day (which sounds a bit boring and honestly would look a lot different day-to-day), I’d show you the elements that go into my routines. Maybe you’ve got your own writing routine you’d like to compare it to. Maybe we can learn something from each other. Or maybe the routine has something to do with other types of routines in your life, whether working from home, balancing family, or simply staying effectively caffeinated. Let’s compare notes out of curiosity.
Time of day
There’s something I love about the quiet morning, before most people are awake. Even better when you are still enveloped in blackness outside. It’s as if you’re able to shape your world without interference. I think, for me, it’s also about getting something done, however small, that allows me to relax later in the day, knowing I have created something already.
It’s the quiet, too, but it’s also the strange morning sounds I love. Here in Switzerland, though we are technically in a city, we are surrounded by green, and therefore birds, squirrels, neighborhood cats, even the sound of the wind in the trees can audibly merge with my breath. Surprisingly in Hong Kong, too, where I lived in the middle of the concrete city, I could hear the frogs and birds just up the hill in the early morning hours. I could hear them then because there was little interference and the machines — besides home espresso machines and humming space heaters or air conditioners, depending on the season — were still asleep.
In the same way, there is little interference with my brain at that time. I try not to check messages or the news when I wake up and just be one with the day. Sometimes I am jealous of the days when you automatically woke this way; those days long ago when the newspaper would arrive at the house in an hour or two and anything urgent would have been called through to you on a house phone. I love my smartphone, and I know you can recreate this type of world, but it’s not the same just knowing it’s all waiting for you there.
In a beautiful book that is a conversation between Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa called Absolutely on Music (2011, translated to English from Japanese in 2016 by Jay Rubin), the novelist and conductor discuss their creative processes. The early morning is also important for them:
OZAWA: [I read scores] in the morning. Very early. I have to concentrate, and I can’t have a drop of alcohol in my system.
MURAKAMI: I’m not presuming to compare my work to yours, but I also work early in the morning. That’s when I can concentrate best. I always get up at four o’clock in the morning when I’m writing a novel. I prepare myself to get completely absorbed in the writing while everything is dark. (p. 104)
Maybe 4:00 is a bit early for me. I mean, it sounds great, but then I could never go out in the evening or even watch the films and detective shows I love or play Scrabble with my husband. Maybe these guys take naps or need little sleep? Sometimes in the middle of a project, I’ll wake up really, really early like this, thinking about it and need to get to my computer to write. However, on a typical day, I’ll start ideally at 5:00 but sometimes at 6:00. By 7:00 at the latest, I’m helping my son get ready for school and eating breakfast together. I’m happy when I’ve already been writing for an hour at this point, but I’ve also learned to let it go if I don’t. Sometimes I need more sleep or sometimes he’s up early. That’s just the way it goes.
In an interview for the Paris Review, Ernest Hemingway also discussed his love of morning writing: “When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.”
It’s the morning light. The sounds. The absence of what might occur that day — in my life, in the world. It’s also the coolness of the morning that Hemingway describes. That colder air that wakes me up, but with the promise of relative warmth later on. It is the moment to cocoon in one’s imagination.
I write later in the morning as well. After an hour of breakfast, getting ready for the day, and school drop-off, I settle in to write more, for one to three hours, depending on how much I’ve accomplished in the early hours. Usually the writing part of my brain is spent by lunchtime. During afternoons, I can finish something off or do research, but actual writing in the afternoon is a mistake for me. I get burnt out or question what I’m doing. I know that from lunch until dinner is usually off limits.
Something happens though at night, in a similar way, if my husband is out for the evening or I’m on a trip by myself. Often words come to me again with the darkness and the quiet. It’s a different kind of writing, less energetic. A slower pace of language that generally goes into my notebook instead of my computer. It’s a making sense of things or it’s an idea that has emerged from the day, perhaps aided by dinner, bedtime stories, or a glass of wine.
Sustenance
Although a little wine is nice in the evenings, I like to drink espresso and sparkling water while I write. I want to be totally alert.
There was a time when I gave up coffee for a while. I think I slept the best then and woke up most clear headed. But I still missed the coffee! I guess I see the energy from my coffee like borrowed energy – it probably makes me more lethargic later in the day, but for me it’s worth it. I have two or three espressos in the morning and savor them slowly. I can sip a small espresso for an hour or so, which might gross some people out. It helps me get things flowing in my writing and maybe it’s also the flavor and smell that are part of a ritual I like.
I make coffee with a little Nespresso machine and try not to wake our son up while I do it. Usually, my husband is out running already. We are an early family, but we are ideally early to bed as well.
I make espresso and poor a large glass of water. Fizzy if we have it. The bubbles help wake me up, both by drinking them and listening to them explode softly in my glass.
I always have breakfast – yogurt with nuts or bread, usually, sometimes a croissant if I’m out, and often some chocolate or fruit for a mid-morning snack. Without morning food, I cannot function.
Structure
A lot of routine is also about fitting the writing into your daily life, whatever that might be. For me, that daily life has changed a lot over the years, from full time jobs to taking care of a baby to researching for other degrees to my commitment to other family/social/sport. We all have these things and the commitments we decide may come in ebbs and flows, sometimes out of our control. But I also like to commit myself to downtime—even if only a short time or as part of a commute, which in some ways, for me is part of the writing process as well. If I don’t have this head space, it’s hard to feel balanced; therefore, it’s hard to write.
I do really well with structure. So, even when I’m self employed, like now, or when I was a full time student, I felt better, got more done, and had more carefree time with structure. There are always various pulls and demands in our lives, some in our control and some not.
I needed to create more structure now that I’m self employed. There’s a rough weekly schedule with exterior things to the work I do. I try to map out my writing weeks within this, then my days the night before, but allow for some flexibility based on how I feel or what might come up. This is also the privilege one has when one is self employed, so I don’t want to make things too rigid. I want to be able to take advantage of flexible time: to pick up my son early from school, to catch a museum show, to take a nap, to go on a spontaneous run, to meet a friend for coffee. Some of these things I might plan on a weekly or daily level anyway, but I also take the time if I’ve finished some work early or I realize the writing is just not flowing.
I tend to write in little chunks of about an hour. I use a buzzer method of setting the timer on my phone, with the device kept out of reach. This buzzer method saved me in grad school; so much so, that I wrote about it here. I’m not quite as strict as I was then. I think that once you do it long enough, you stop needing to start and stop the buzzer every time you get up for a snack or the toilet. Instead, I tell myself I’ll work for an hour, then assess where I’m at or go for a walk or do some laundry or even just get up to make another coffee in between. But the chunked time allows me to forget about time. Sure, it’s there up at the right corner of my computer if I want it, but I tend not to look knowing I’ll be reminded by the buzzer that I need to take a few minutes off or move onto something else in my day.
By having a structure, it allows me to really be ‘off’ when I’m off. During these times, sometimes writing comes to me – an idea or a phrase or a single word. I note them somewhere, on my phone or a notebook, or my computer if it’s handy, but I don’t usually sit down to write spontaneously at that point. I find it wears me out. The exception would be if I’m on a kind of self-created writing retreat where time is more fluid and I’m all by myself. Then I might just decide to have an extra spontaneous session. And it happens occasionally in my normal life. But I find that if I don’t cut myself off from writing around lunchtime on a typical day (unless, say, I’ve taken a break earlier for a coffee with a friend or a run), then I burn out. I start to question what I’m doing and feel like some kind of screen zombie if I’m on a computer. I might still conduct research or do something related to the writing, just not the actual words on the page.
This is also when I read. That’s part of the writing, too, whether directly or indirectly. It’s when I spend time with our son. It’s when we might go for a walk. It’s time for a rest, especially if I’ve gotten up really early. It’s when I hope to start cooking from scratch again. I mean I’m doing it a little, but something about cooking recipes from Julia Child or Yotam Ottolenghi makes me feel so refreshed. I guess it’s all the sensory experience and the presence of it while creating something.
It can be hard when you’re self employed to guard your time. Why can’t you do xyz if you don’t have to be somewhere at a certain time? I love that, too. I love that I can change things around to see a friend or have a walk-chat with a friend in a different time zone. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to say no when it’s ‘just writing’ that’s in the way.
It’s also easy to get overly ambitious. I want to work on my German and practice my French. I want to go to more yoga classes in person. I want to take my son on random day trips before he’s in mandatory school next year. Just like the cooking, I can’t always do these things if I want to write.
Movement
I find I write best after moving. At university, I wrote at a very different time of day – evenings. This was also after track practice (and dinner). My body was exhausted but my mind was awake and ready to go.
Now, in the early morning, I like to move before I get started. Sometimes this is just a fifteen minute yoga session. Other times it’s a run. It sort of depends how dark it is and what time I actually wake up. Other times, I run just after dropping my son at school and write after that. It doesn’t have to be a lot though, even a quick walk around the block can both activate my brain and allow my body to rest. It makes me more comfortable sitting still for a while. Even the act of walking to a café can be enough to both energize and relax me.
Other times, I use movement to cleanse me after an intense writing session. I can feel really drained or like there are too many ideas swirling inside my head. I throw on my running shoes or grab my swim bag and go. Moving replaces thinking and my mind rests. It’s also really useful if I’ve accidentally over-caffeinated myself!
Sound
At home, I write in silence – rather, I write with the sounds of the natural surroundings. Sometimes, though, a little noise helps me along. This is when I am out at a café writing. I find the background noises of music or people push me along. Ideally these sounds are in something other than English. If I hear English near me in conversation, it’s hard not to listen and have it interfere with the writing on the page. Here, there is a lot of German, which is great because I’m still just getting started with it. Often I hear English or French at other tables, though. Even though I’m quite comfortable in French, the otherness and perhaps dance-like quality of the language itself also help me along.
Music in a café is different from music at home. I guess it blends with the sounds of the street, espresso machines, and other people. Plus I cannot control it. It is not something I can move over to and focus on other than the writing.
So at home it is quiet and out it is…whatever it is.
Space
At home, I write on our long wooden table, sitting on a wooden bench, usually cross-legged. It remind me of those I’ve seen in ski chalets. I’ve even placed faux-fur seat cushions on it. Ahead of me is a large window, looking out onto either darkness in winter or the beginning of day in the summer. Different types of leaves obscure the view of the apartments about 30 meters away. Often, there are one or two lights on of other early risers. I witness them getting breakfast or occasionally reading in an arm chair. They look peaceful, and they accompany me on my journey. We have no curtains, nor do they. Only blackout shades left open on this side of the house, ready to welcome in anyone sharing this early morning with me.
I haven’t always had such wonderful spaces to write at home, but I always find a place that works. The key is that it’s the place I always write, so I’m used to it. I’ve find a way to adapt. This time, I designed the space and chose the furniture with the writing in mind (as well as other things). Because we live in an apartment, it’s multipurpose. But I like this element as well. I can’t just leave a million things around. I take out books or notebooks and calendars as needed. Computer or pens. They go away when it’s done for the day. It’s a process of considering where I’m at and not leaving things in the middle.
If it’s not too cold (or hot), I leave the balcony door open. I like a lot of fresh air. I’ve never understood closing off air in cars or interiors: oxygen makes me feel free. It also lets in more sounds of the day – a bird or a lawnmower – and the occasional squirrel or unusual bird sighting (I won’t pretend to be a real twitcher and know what they are, besides the crows and the robins).
The space is also so wonderful because there’s enough room to get up and do a few asanas in between work. If I’m stuck for a moment, I get up and simply stretch or do a handstand. Whatever gets the blood flowing and perhaps changes my perspective.
I keep my phone far away. I would turn it completely off, but with a child, I don’t dare do that (although I do go on runs without my phone, part of the reason they are my sacred time).
I also like to go to cafes, especially if I’m working offline. I get to move on the way there and have a loose time limit to my work. I like to go to the same cafes to write. With friends or a book, I’ll go anywhere and try new things. But for writing, I like the space to be familiar as well as the tables and the coffee and the baristas. It’s nice to see a friendly person and exchange a few words when you work by yourself. Sometimes I get to know other writers working there as well. Other times, there are people I see repeatedly who simply smile or say good morning. The familiarity allows me to focus on what I want to say rather than the novelty of the place. And the kindness makes me feel like I am part of something, though I may be working alone.
It’s funny how with writing, I crave solitude but want to reach something through my writing that connects us. Finding the balance can be tricky. But just the right amount of nature or friendly faces can be enough to feel connected to the world without an office to go to or a work team to belong to. If I start to feel isolated, I know it’s time to do a little less writing, to just step away and re-join community in some way. The writing is still there when I come back. It’s now infused with life again.
If you want to check out other writing routines, there’s an entire website devoted to it and another devoted only to famous ones. There are a bunch of others, too. Interestingly, a common theme seems to be devoting oneself to free or refreshing time away from the writing in order to do it. It can be hard to explain to non-writers why that is still a part of your process. The other commonality I find is the consistency. Some may say writing as a spontaneous and lofty profession, but discipline, however enjoyable, seems to be more universal than the writer who frolics under trees and makes notes on napkins. I mean, we can do that as well, but probably for most of us, it wouldn’t get very far.
What do you need to write? How do you make it happen? When do you need to step away?
Having read so much of your writing, I've often wondered about your writing routine (as I do with "famous" authors). I especially wonder this about authors with children. Being a teacher, as you once were, I have found it difficult to find the time or creativity which teaching suck out of me. Now I'm thinking this might be an excuse and I need to weave time for this into my routine. I am an early riser too, and this might be the best time for me to connect to my writing voice. Thank you for sharing this - it actually has a lot to do with me!
Thank you for this valuable insight into your writing routine! It's great to hear the "real life" reality for a self-employed writer and mother. My favoured routines are very similar to yours, and though my preferred space at home is at the kitchen table of my apartment, by the window, this is mostly for researching and editing. I much prefer to do new writing in a coffee shop. I wrote most of my recent dissertation there. This is because of the sounds of a cafe and the background music, (like you, it has to be silence if I am at home). I also prefer a cafe because of the distractions at home; jobs around the house and the internet mostly. I like to walk before starting to write as well as walking afterwards, which helps me to process what I have written. I am much more productive with new writing in the mornings, though not too early; I prefer to go and write after breakfast, when everyone has gone to their respective schools and jobs. Because I work mornings, this isn't often possible, so I try to write after lunch for about an hour when I return home, though am looking into reducing work hours to allow for one day per week to work on my writing.