Resisting Routine and Embracing the Writing Cycle
Writing can feel as natural as breathing on some days, and as pointless as rolling a boulder up a hill on others. It seems like the easiest activity to take up – put pen to paper or pick away at the keyboard into a word processor or app – then you quickly realize no matter how long you’ve been doing it, there’s no guarantee the writing will come out quite the way you wanted.
No wonder writers are always on the lookout for something that helps the process feel less uncertain. We seem to be as obsessed with others’ writing routines as we are about writing itself, as if there were some code or talisman there that would assure us of a finished and publishable book.
Emily Dickinson wrote in the deepest hours of the night. Maya Angelou started religiously at 6am. Novelist and Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal couldn’t write during the bitter winters as a student in Berlin. Ernest Hemingway could only write when the weather cooled. (His famous rant when he visited the Philippines in the 1941s: “I don’t know how anyone can write in this heat!” was later rewritten into the more broadsheet-friendly quote: “That you should write at all (and so well) in this intense heat makes your achievement truly marvelous. You should do all your important writing before six o’clock in the morning.”)
Intuitively, we know that there really is no foolproof writing routine that guarantees we’ll be more prolific or that we’ll be better at the craft. It turns out that even writers known for them, such as Ray Bradbury, hardly ever stick to them, anyway.
Resisting the Routine
When I was starting out as a writer and poet, I was convinced that I needed to do things exactly as my mentors and favorite writers. When none of these routines worked for me, I went through cycles of frustration and self-blame. After a while, writing, which used to bring me joy, made me feel stuck and unworthy.
It took years of not-writing and taking myself out of the literary bubble to make me realize how much I really needed and wanted to write and if I wanted to do it, no one would know how best to do it, but myself.
As writers, we have a choice about which lessons and guidance make sense for us. Just as a carpenter’s capabilities are expanded by tools and experience, we can use theories and standards to develop our personal voice and stories. They were always meant to sustain, not limit, creativity.
This lesson came hard for me because I’ve been raised to see compliance as the path to success. Which is why it was important for me as I went further in my inner work and quest to become a better writer that I abandoned the idea of having a writing routine.
Let me count my why’s:
It stalls the writing flow because it emphasizes compliance, which counters the intuitive and divergent thinking needed in creative writing.
Compliance doesn’t always mean consistency. In my experience, routine doesn’t encourage creative consistency. It teaches us to prioritize performativity or going through the motions instead of thinking and feeling more deeply.
Routines will always be tied to the concept of toxic productivity that distracts us with a barrage of questions like these:
Did we wake up early enough to write?
Did we write often enough?
Did we write well enough?
Did we get published enough times?
Did we keep networking and querying?
Did we keep applying to grants and award-giving bodies?
Have we been resourceful enough?
It’s designed to keep writers trapped in a loop that focuses on what we did “wrong.” But by refusing to buy into this vicious cycle, we learn to see our writing practice in a very real and important context:
What resources can we access?
What information and opportunities are being kept from us?
What are the things we’ve had to do just to keep writing and publishing?
Look back at the last three questions. Then go back and read the questions that come inherently whenever you embark ona writing routine.
Which questions make you reflect more deeply? Which questions make you feel like you’re chasing your own tail?
Breaking Free
Writing is a uniquely human ability and gift. Every story, poem, and book ever written was born of the writer’s body, mind, and spirit. It’s a cycle that begins and ends – never in a state of flux. Every time, we start putting down words for a piece or a manuscript, and we keep going until we know that we’ve reached the end.
Somewhere in history, we all became complicit to routines that perpetuated a cycle of writing that’s mechanical rather than natural; on-demand instead of in-flow.
Depleted and burned out, writers are told to embark on retreats and sabbaticals, or seek self-care, only to return to an unsustainable routine all over again.
Breaking free from this cycle starts with imagining and envisioning ourselves outside of routines. It starts with entrusting our body, mind, and spirit to lead us. It starts with writing according to what moves us instead of measuring ourselves against the standards of the time.
Discovering Your Writing Cycle
Looking to the natural world, we may discover a cycle that feels right for our writing disposition.
We might discover it in the cycle of the seasons. Some regions have four seasons while some revolve around wet and dry periods. Our writing and resting energies may change according to where we are at the moment.
We might follow the phases of the moon, our writing effort waxing and waning accordingly. On a related note, the writing cycle could also be charted with the ebb and flow of the ocean tides.
If we find affinity in the life stages of a chosen insect, animal, or plant, we might find it helpful to use them as reference as we plan our writing progress from development and drafting to crafting, revision, and of course, rest.
Our very own bodies, through our menstrual or ovulation cycles, for example, might also serve as a direct barometer for what kind of and how much writing we want to accomplish at any given stage.
Looking back at my years of writing, I noticed the dry season in my home country carried the call to write while the rainy months led me to reflect. The past four years, I’ve been exactly half a world away, learning to work with four seasons instead of two. Each time it comes, the East Coast winter reminds me of Jose Rizal’s miserable season in Berlin in 1886.
He was 26 years old, far from home, recuperating from illness in a boarding house with little heat. His novel Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) was at the printers. (It would finally come out in early spring 1887. Within a year, the satirical novel would spread like wildfire in Europe and the Philippines, and was promptly banned by the dominant Spanish empire.) The cold of winter for me has become, as it was for Rizal, my period of recovery and waiting.
However we arrive at it, the writing cycle that’s best for us is the one that makes writing feel fulfilling, even during times when we’re down to the wire or feeling unsure or uninspired – a cycle that sustains our joy in writing.
Publishing Notes and Further Reading:
The Daily Routines of 12 Famous Writers by James Clear for his blog jamesclear.com.
Travels with Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn. Published by Penguin (2001).
I Copied the Routines of Famous Writers and It Sucked by Nick Green for Vice.com.
Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction no. 203, an interview with Ray Bradbury by Sam Weller for The Paris Review.
The Daily Routines of Great Writers by Maria Popova for The Marginalian.
