I’m envious of every writer with a routine or a writing practice.
I have a friend who writes 500 words every hour for eight hours a day four times a week, and then doesn’t think about writing at all for the three days in between. Another drinks half a bottle of red wine on an empty stomach, ingests a substance I shan’t name, writes with a terrifying and manic focus until their fingers tremble, and then doesn’t look at what they’ve produced for another week, at which point they pluck out the genius and delete the rest. I see writers on social media talk about special software, restrictions, rewards, routines, results. I watch their word counts tot up not in fits and starts, but consistently and clearly. I’m happy for them. I want to kick their shins.
Interviewed in 2004, Haruki Murakami described his novel-writing routine as involving 4AM starts, five to six hour stints of work, running and swimming in the afternoon and 9AM lights out. “I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerise myself to reach a deeper state of mind.” I want to be mesmerised. I want that trance-like focus, for my body and my brain to align, to rise from bed without argument or tantrum and take myself to the keyboard to make work and mean it. I want to do that on the days when it is easy and on the days when it is not.
I’ve been in a bit of a funk with writing for the last year or so. For reasons of ‘not having any money’ I’ve taken on too much other work, which eats up a lot of time and focus and motivation. It’s hard to fit in those hours of swimming and running and free and purposeful writing alongside the hours that I’m “contractually” “obliged” to be “giving” to a “company”. (I’ve also been without my ADHD meds, after a processing error meant that my GP can’t prescribe them to me and the forms I’d need to fill in are genuinely beyond me at this time. I’m containing this within brackets because I intend to say more in a later piece and don’t want to forget.) Basically I’m a bit depressed, a bit lost, a bit dispirited, a bit-lot tired of my own excuses. As a result of the the funk, a lot of my writing this year has happened after babying or bullying or a delicate combination of both. Only if there’s a deadline nearing with terrifying speed can I enter a state of total concentration. I step into it, time passes, the keys on my laptop clack, my eyes stare straight at the screen until the work is complete and I can send it to my editor bang on time. But if there’s a distant/vague deadline or- and this is Hell on earth- no firm deadline at all, writing becomes something much stranger and tricksier, a shadowy sprite that I haven’t a clue how to catch. I sulk. I click from screen to screen. I daydream. I walk from desk to fridge and back again. I write a sentence here, delete a sentence there. I feel the day is wasted if I’ve not gotten into the groove by 11AM. I beg editors for tighter deadlines. I don’t write, and wonder why writing isn’t getting done.
Recently I’ve been feeling a little better. It’s spring and all things are easier without the thick scarf of depression wound tightly around everything. I’ve enjoyed writing for this newsletter very much, picking a topic out of the air and just seeing if I have anything useful or interesting to say about it (often I’m not convinced I do, but I write and send it anyway. Thank you for reading!).
When writing is happening it feels like the only thing on Earth I should be doing. I don’t kid myself that I’m the very best at it, not a once-in-a-generation talent or someone that my peers think of when they’re naming the best of the best. But it’s exciting and head-clearing and joyful and relaxing in a way that nothing else I can legally acquire is. It feels like solving a puzzle, clearing debris, cleaning a dirty window and seeing pure sunlight spill through it. Where so much else of my life is confusing or painful, writing is not. Writing is wonderful. Writing is for me.
Lately, though, I’ve wondered whether I’m for it. I’ve been trying to put together a sample for a publisher, and despite the 10,000 words I wrote with ease when the project was genuinely just for fun- I feel like I can’t send a single sentence. The days since we spoke are becoming weeks. The pressure to get this right is growing like an ulcer.