There is something to this idea of ritual. Haruki Murakami said, “When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m.” I’m not doing that, but the idea of shaping my own ritual–giving temporal importance to the craft is meaningful and worthwhile.
I am strongly considering starting my day with the blog. Consider it a ten minute wake up call for the brain. As long time readers no doubt can tell, the evening blogs are terrible. I mean really low-brain output 8 out of 10 chances. That is because I am largely low brain by the time late night rolls around. The truth is, I spend too much time messing around early in the day and wind up with the day largely gone and the work largely undone.
Ritual matters. Making the time for craft truly matters. In the same article where I rediscovered the Murakami quote I found one from E.B. White that goes, “…the members of my household never pay the slightest attention to my being a writing man — they make all the noise and fuss they want to. If I get sick of it, I have places I can go. A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.“
Ideal conditions are sheer folly, as is the right time to right and the right conditions. Writing is about dedication–butt in chair and words on page. I can say this over and again, but my partner keeps waiting for the next story. Those two ideas cannot exist simultaneously, so I need to move closer to ritual and further away from doing it ‘when I can’
Some Thoughts:
- I keep having this dream about a house. It is a large house–maybe 4 stories. The middle two floors are always left untouched, with the last owners stuff still in all of the rooms. The dreams are usually about going into those rooms and cleaning them out. I don’t know what it means…