Do you have a writing ritual? A recent article on habits of writers in Jurgen Wolff’s Time to Write blog led me to more research. Here’s a few, from sources listed at the bottom.
M
aya Angelou liked to write in hotel rooms, “a tiny, mean room with just a bed and sometimes, if I can find it, a face basin.”
Vladimir Nabokov liked to write in a parked car.
Steven Pressfield uses an ancient ritual of reciting Homer’s invocation of the Muse before he types a word.
Milton had someone read to him from the Bible for 30 minutes before composing his work.
Charles Dickens felt the need to move the ornaments on his desk into a specific order before starting to write
.
Isabel Allende lights “candles for the spirits and the muses,” surrounds herself with fresh flowers and incense, and meditates to open herself to her writing on a regular basis.
Wallace Stevens composed poetry on little slips of paper while walking.
Steinbeck always began his writing sessions with a dozen sharpened pencils on his desk. Hemingway’s magic number was 20 pencils.
Dumas used different colored papers for different types of writing.
V
ictor Hugo wrote nude.
Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Lewis Carroll, and others wrote standing up.
Rosanne Bane – creativity coach and author of Around the Writer’s Block: Using Brain Science to Solve Writer’s Resistance, admits to a ritual of dancing hippos (she didn’t explain, but I had to throw this in for my friend Diane, a Hippo collector).
For being such an individualist, Hemingway had lots of small rituals. He believed you should end your writing session in the middle of a sentence, so you’d have somewhere to start when you returned.
How about you? Do you have something that helps you start, or wind down from, your writing sessions?
Me? Mine’s simple. Turn on the computer!
Sources –
http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/56-FE4-WeirdWritingRituals.html
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/one-true-thing/201112/writing-rituals-spiritual-or-simply-habits
http://www.copyblogger.com/writing-rituals/
http://www.timetowrite.blogs.com/
Yup – that’s it. Actually, great minds and all that, because when I read ‘dancing hippos’ this was my first thought!
Love the hippo Gayle – that’s the hippo from Disney’s Fantasia – scary I know that, right? Great blog, as always. . .I write whenever/wherever I can. . .scraps of paper, in the car, anywhere. . .thanks for the hippo!!
I also journal first thing in the morning … well, third thing, the first two being bathroom and coffee. Of course I journal in longhand but I also do most of my fiction writing in longhand and type it later. Seems like the ideas have to start in my brain and wander down my right arm to my pen. I edit (a lot) as I type into the computer.
I start my day by reading some kind of devotional/inspirational material with a cup of coffee while sitting at my kitchen island. Then I do the “writing practice” Crescent Dragonwagon encourages, which is basically noting day number, the date and where you are before you write whatever comes to mind in a notebook dedicated to the practice. I’ve often used the results as a start to a blog or a new chapter in the book I’m working on, to get organized or work out a problem bothering me. It’s a good practice for me. This week, my priority is to figure out a fixed writing schedule, reread what I’ve written so far and map out the rest of Thomas’ story.