This Ritual Called Writing

from Jacqueline

I’ve just walked my friend’s dog, and now I’m about ready to start writing. Of course, I have my own faithful canine companion, my own furry muse, but I’m in northern California for a few days without my Sally, so I borrowed Samba. Samba belongs to my friend, Kas, who’s away at a sales conference, and seeing as the dog walker only goes around the block with Samba on a leash, he doesn’t get that off-leash freedom blast in the hills – which is where I come in. And I need that blast as well.

I was walking Sally on the open space close to our home one day, when along came a group of morning walkers. One of them knew I was a writer and had read all my books, so introduced me as a “local author.” By this time Sal was looking at me as if to say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, heard it all before – now can we get on with the walk?” But as I was about to squirm on my way, one of the women asked me if I found the wonderful countryside inspiring for my writing, or if I lit a candle and did a little ritual before I wrote. So, I told her – no candles, I have to write where I am, but I do like a walk to think about things before I get going. We tried to get on our way, Sal and I – I had a desk to get back to and Sal was thinking of breakfast – but this lady was most insistent to know about my “rituals.”



I know many people do have rituals – meditation, yoga, breakfast – but it always fascinates me, that non-writers often have this idea that writers wander like lost souls waiting for the muse to turn up, at which point we hide in a garret to put our inspired words onto the page. The fact is that most professional writers – whether novelists or journalists, full-time writers or got-a-day-job-too writers, are on some kind of deadline, which means that, come what may, you turn up at the page and you write, and if you are lucky some of what you write is worth reading back to yourself.



I used to fall to my writing first thing in the morning, thinking that if I didn’t get it done then, I would fail to write anything that day. I didn’t trust myself to leave it until the afternoon. Then I had to change my perspective. I was so busy with non-writing author responsibilities (touring and such like) that I had to write most of my third novel, PARDONABLE LIES, from hotel rooms on the road. Whenever I had an hour or two to myself, I would sit down and write, forcing myself into that zone where I could create the next few scenes in the story. Stephen King, in his book “On Writing,” says that if you write 1200 words per day, you can get the first draft of a novel down in three months. That has been my goal ever since, and some days I cruise right past the 1200 words, other days I limp towards them – but I can now sit down at any time of day and write my 1200 words, and almost anywhere. But at some point before I write, I have to walk, get my body moving while I think about what I’m going to write. I can’t do that sitting down – unless it’s on my horse, my other furry muse.




Going back to this idea of the perfect place to write, I think that even writers have an idea of what sort of place they would write in if they had their druthers, rather than any space not already taken in the house. But it’s interesting how that doesn’t always work out. J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter in a coffee shop, and later moved on to be able to write in any room in any one of her several very large homes – but by all accounts, she missed that coffee shop and has been seen lurking in coffee shops in Edinburgh again, probably trying to get to grips with that crime novel she's writing. I remember reading a story about Richard Russo, the author of EMPIRE FALLS, who also wrote in coffee shops. He had this dream of one day having enough money to build an extension on his house so that he could have an office just the way he wanted it – his very own place to write. Of course, he made the money, had the extension build, bought the furniture he’d lusted after, sat down to write and ... couldn’t. It was too quiet. He needed the background noise he’d become used to. Back to the coffee shop.

Following his dreadful accident some years ago, Stephen King wrote (in ON WRITING) of the months he spent in a sort of daze of pain in his home. He wasn’t writing, he wasn’t doing much at al except trying to get through each day. Then one day he told his wife that he felt like writing again, so she set up a desk for him under the stairs. Apparently, when he first began writing, under the stairs was the only place in the house for him to write, and he was starting all over again.

Nostalgia almost led me to buy an old schoolroom-type ledger desk at a garage sale last weekend. I didn’t buy it, because I had no idea where I would put it, but my first ever desk, given to me by the shopkeeper at the end of our road when his daughter left home, was an oak school desk from the previous century. I loved that desk and would sit at it for hours writing away. I have no idea what happened to it, but I think about it often.



So, to wrap up these musings about how and when we write and why, I am going to pack you off to another blog: http://writingtime.typepad.com/writing_time/2007/09/your-own-black-.html (sorry, have forgotten how to embed the url into the text of my post). In her post today, Barbara Abercrombie, writer and amazing teacher, quotes Paul McCartney (Our Macca): “He said he sits down and looks into this black hole in space and asks, ‘I wonder if there’s a song in there.’ Then he tries to craft whatever he sees as a song.”



That’s Paul, circa 1967. Wonder what he'd just seen in the black hole.

Well I’ve been for a walk, and I know there’s at least one scene in my black hole today, so I had better get on and write it. In the meantime, what about you? Do you need “rituals?” Or do you just sit down and write, come what may? Do you write at home? In your dedicated office? Or are you a coffee shop writer? (Hmmmm, sounds a bit like a Paul McCartney song – “Coffee shop writer, coffee shop writer .... oooooo, ooooo, ooooo.”

Have a lovely weekend.