Writing as a daily necessity
Some writers write in the morning, first thing after rising. The writer I mentioned yesterday, Robert Olen Butler, even recommends writing before you talk to anyone, or make coffee. He believes in harvesting the time that is closest to the dream state for writing.
Hemingway wrote in the morning; Anthony Burgess preferred the drowsy time of afternoon.
But writers have other lives and relationships than the ones of the characters in their heads. If they hid in solitary garrets scribbling, they'd eventually run out of things to write about. And real life has ways of getting you off track.
People need to be flexible, and writers have figured out ways. While writing Of Love and Shadows, Isabel Allende managed to block out the noisy life going on around her while she sat at her dining room table banging away on an old typewriter.
Toni Morrison changed her writing schedule as her kids grew up. Diana Gabaldon goes to bed at night and then wakes and writes while the household sleeps. In view of her astonishing productivity, this has clearly worked well for her. Elizabeth George likes to do her daily exercise each morning before she begins to write.
What these people have in common is the one thread: they couldn't get through the day without writing. Like eating, drinking and sleeping, for better or for worse, writing has to be worked into the daily schedule of those of us who have been called to it, and have chosen to answer.
Hemingway wrote in the morning; Anthony Burgess preferred the drowsy time of afternoon.
But writers have other lives and relationships than the ones of the characters in their heads. If they hid in solitary garrets scribbling, they'd eventually run out of things to write about. And real life has ways of getting you off track.
People need to be flexible, and writers have figured out ways. While writing Of Love and Shadows, Isabel Allende managed to block out the noisy life going on around her while she sat at her dining room table banging away on an old typewriter.
Toni Morrison changed her writing schedule as her kids grew up. Diana Gabaldon goes to bed at night and then wakes and writes while the household sleeps. In view of her astonishing productivity, this has clearly worked well for her. Elizabeth George likes to do her daily exercise each morning before she begins to write.
What these people have in common is the one thread: they couldn't get through the day without writing. Like eating, drinking and sleeping, for better or for worse, writing has to be worked into the daily schedule of those of us who have been called to it, and have chosen to answer.