Part 2.1 Do it your way
30 mins
- Discover your own writing rituals
Finding Your Way
How do you write? What inspires you? Where do you like to write? Do you set aside a regular time to write?
We start with a short video, introducing the week, which is focused on writing habits, props, and rituals.
Then, Michèle Roberts, Monique Roffey and Alex Garland talk about their writing rituals, which include:
- writing loosely in notebook and diary which are not meant to be “finished” work – freeing up the unconscious and accessing the ideas
- Dorothea Brown’s idea of “morning pages”, using the unconscious first thoughts of the morning
- working late at night, when the house is quiet – a version of early morning – both are close to a dream state
Reflection
Personally, I do not find that either extreme of the day works well for me. I like it to be during daylight, when I am most awake, and “up”. I hate the feeling of writing in bed or in pyjamas. If possible, I will have a set idea or question that I want to tackle that day.
If I can’t write during this prime time, rather than fitting it in either side of a working day, I’ll leave it to the weekends or take holiday days to do it. I’m sure this makes me less productive than I could be, but I do feel better connected with my writing.
I don’t really like to write unless I know what I’m trying to achieve. I have written a whole novel before without planning it, and it felt like I needed to just go back to the start and work it all out again. Maybe that is the normal way to start a story — the “zero” draft method —but it feels like a waste of time. Most of my “writing” is actually story design and planning.
However, I recognise the importance of regular writing practice, even if it’s not acting on a fully formed idea. I’m still trying to think of ways for how I can incorporate actually scene creation and word practice into the day, even if I am currently in a planning stage.
Exercise
Imagine two writers at work, one in a place suited to you, the other not.
We are encouraged to post the paragraphs too, getting into the habit of sharing and critiquing work.
The dream:
The internet didn’t work that well. They said it was enough for streaming shows but he could barely load his email. But that was fine; the little he’d seen of his inbox showed that nothing urgent had arrived and his team was fielding the usual inquiries. In short, he didn’t need to have his attention anywhere but here.
The fire spat and cracked; the logs shifted and settled. He stared at it, transfixed, head soft. Not sleepy, but drifting into that dream state which suggested things. Solutions to complicated questions, unexpected character moves, seams of dialogue.
Time extended in places like this; what would have been a distracted hour of half-thoughts back in the city became a deep journey into the imaginary world, where answers appeared out of the mist, as if they had always been. All he needed to do was listen, watch, and repeat.
The nightmare:
The screen cursor blinked impatiently. What next? it demanded. He sat at his new laptop, thinking about all the great scripts he would write there. But there were no ideas; the arctic white of the empty page reflected a blinding, hostile light.
He knew that ambient noise was supposed to aid concentration. The babble of orders and comings and goings and other people’s gossip, the screech of the milk steamer, the negotiation between a mother and her pre-verbal offspring.
He was sharing a table, facing off against another coffee shop customer with a similar set-up: nice tech, expensive drink, designer notebook. Anyone walking behind him could see that he had opened script-writing software, that his presence here was purposeful.
He’d got himself to the starting line. So where were those ideas?
Reflection
I like that we are asked to imagine the writing environments which do and don’t work for us. It’s warming up imaginative and descriptive processes while keeping it to a topic about which most people probably have enough experience to write.
Writing rituals are an important part of the creative processes, and it’s good to bring them up to reassure writers about their differences. I think any programme which promises a magic routine to guarantee success is snake oil.
Give the course a spin yourself!
www.futurelearn.com/courses/start-writing-fiction