Back when I was an undergraduate, and especially as a fresher, I convinced myself that academic creativity came best under intense pressure. What this meant in practice was staying up all hours the night before an essay was due, in a frenetic caffeine haze, pacing wildly, and occasionally plunging myself into a cold shower. When I eventually finished at about 5am, I would nip over to the all-night Spar, wide-eyed and staring at the other night-folk, as we acknowledged that there wasn't something quite right about what we were doing. Ashamedly, I'd buy a four-pack of strong ale - perhaps Old Speckled Hen or Marston's Old Empire - and let it nuzzle me to sleep as I desperate tried to forget essay words.
Furthermore....however...yet....although....paradoxically....hypothetically....pathetically....miserably...in conclusion...
Finally, about twenty minutes before submission, I would leg it across Victoria park, half-delirious, to drop it into the essay box, before collapsing in a crumpled pile. Though definitely damaging to mind and body this process was, it was a writing routine. I did it almost religiously - though arguably more like a naive follower who didn't know any better. Gradually the routine took place later and later, to the extent that the trip to Spar had to take place after, rather than before, submission. Eventually I came to think of it as stupid, and so I would start essays in advance, plan them properly, and finish at a reasonable hour - something I still try to maintain now.
Back in the present day, and I am struggling with writers block. The only real routine I have at the moment... is not having a routine. Sometimes I don't work in the mornings, instead watching BBC iPlayer, and then work into the night. I'll work on trains, and then play on the computer when I get to the office. Bit by bit, the work is getting done anyway. I was beginning to wonder then whether it was beneficial to have a writing routine at all. Then I stumbled across this website http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/ detailing some writing exploits which made my old routine look childish and wimpish.
"Perhaps the finest writer ever to use speed systematically, however, was W. H. Auden. He swallowed Benzedrine every morning for twenty years, from 1938 onward, balancing its effect with the barbiturate Seconal when he wanted to sleep. (He also kept a glass of vodka by the bed, to swig if he woke up during the night.) He took a pragmatic attitude toward amphetamines, regarding them as a "labor-saving device" in the "mental kitchen," with the important proviso that "these mechanisms are very crude, liable to injure the cook, and constantly breaking down."
John Lanchester, "High Style," The New Yorker, January 6, 2003"
Fantastic! Other writers had/have more mundane, though just as productive, routines. John Grisham used to rise at 5am every day, and wrote the first word at 530am. President Obama exercises in the morning, and doesn't begin working until 9am. Many highlight the importance of rituals: coffee, cigars, showering, dinner, walking. While I can only dream of being as successful as these people, one thing is clear - there is no such thing as the one routine that works for everyone.
Does anybody have any particularly interesting routines they follow?
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
I was looking through Anthony Trollope's autobiography recently and he has quite an interesting description of how he wrote:
ReplyDelete"All those I think who have lived as literary men,—working daily as literary labourers,—will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. But then he should so have trained himself that he shall be able to work continuously during those three hours,—so have tutored his mind that it shall not be necessary for him to sit nibbling his pen, and gazing at the wall before him, till he shall have found the words with which he wants to express his ideas. It had at this time become my custom,—and it still is my custom, though of late I have become a little lenient to myself,—to write with my watch before me, and to require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour. I have found that the 250 words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went. But my three hours were not devoted entirely to writing. I always began my task by reading the work of the day before, an operation which would take me half an hour, and which consisted chiefly in weighing with my ear the sound of the words and phrases. I would strongly recommend this practice to all tyros in writing. That their work should be read after it has been written is a matter of course,—that it should be read twice at least before it goes to the printers, I take to be a matter of course. But by reading what he has last written, just before he recommences his task, the writer will catch the tone and spirit of what he is then saying, and will avoid the fault of seeming to be unlike himself. This division of time allowed me to produce over ten pages of an ordinary novel volume a day, and if kept up through ten months, would have given as its results three novels of three volumes each in the year;—the precise amount which so greatly acerbated the publisher in Paternoster Row, and which must at any rate be felt to be quite as much as the novel-readers of the world can want from the hands of one man."
I read somewhere or other that if he finished a novel during those three hours, he would simply put it to one side and work on a new one until the time had elapsed.
Thanks, Matt. There is some fantastic advice in there as well. I seem to recall, as I think we have discussed, another academic believing something similar - though I think the figure was five hours. Of course, for historians I guess it is slightly different - work isn't just writing. Maybe it would be prudent to allocate the three hours a day writing, and then whatever tasks left - admin, emails, note-taking from articles, proof-reading - be done in the remaining hours?
ReplyDeleteI wrote 1700 words today. Not as good as Trollope's 3000, but it will do for me.
Yes, the problem with the Trollope method is that it implies that not achieving one's daily writing quota is some sort of terrible sin, whereas sometimes it's entirely justifiable to spend the whole day writing one paragraph, or just thinking about stuff. I guess the challenge of the PhD is finding a way to reconcile the need to produce text on an industrial scale with the need to think carefully about its content.
ReplyDeletePersonally I tend to write a huge amount in a very short amount of time, then spend a lot of time editing and redrafting, so that by the end of the process there isn't much of the original left. It's fairly depressing when only 10% of an 8000 word draft makes it into the thesis though.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete