Spike Comp: The Daily Grind
July 08 2009
The other week, some of you may have had a good chuckle over this article in the LA Times by John Robert Lennon about how much time writers really spend writing (the answer, as we all know, is not much). If you haven’t read it, do – his real time diary on his morning ‘writing session’ is hilarious, including 38mins of ‘intense self-doubt’.
In this spirit, we’re running another Spike competition from today until the end of Wednesday July 15 – write up a short paragraph (around 100 words) on how you spend your day, whether writing or otherwise. The winner will receive a year-long subscription to Meanjin and eternal glory.
To get your fingers twitching, here are a few examples of daily literary routines, care of the good folk at the Rumpus who put us onto this great site, which compiles the habits and schedules of creative luminaries from new sources around the world. From what I can tell, everyone (except maybe Auden) is either lying or else too disciplined for words.
Simone de Beauvoir
I'm always in a hurry to get going, though in general I dislike starting the day. I first have tea and then, at about ten o'clock, I get under way and work until one. Then I see my friends and after that, at five o'clock, I go back to work and continue until nine. I have no difficulty in picking up the thread in the afternoon. When you leave, I'll read the paper or perhaps go shopping. Most often it's a pleasure to work.
The Paris Review, Spring-Summer 1965
J.M. Coetzee
‘Coetzee,’ says the writer Rian Malan, ‘is a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication. He does not drink, smoke or eat meat. He cycles vast distances to keep fit and spends at least an hour at his writing-desk each morning, seven days a week. A colleague who has worked with him for more than a decade claims to have seen him laugh just once. An acquaintance has attended several dinner parties where Coetzee has uttered not a single word.’
New Statesman, October 25, 1999
W. H. Auden
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
Will Self
Q: How do you write (do you have a daily routine?)
A: First drafts as early in the morning as possible, then second, then third (retyping, I work on a manual). Once the first draft is 80% completed I start on the second, so that there's a conveyor belt of drafts in progress: this helps me to grasp the totality of the book. I accelerate towards the end, usually because I'm on or past my deadline.
Q: In your line of work, you spend much of your time alone. How do you survive?
A: Rituals. Smoking--pipes, cigars, special brands, accessories, the whole bollocks. Coffee, tea, strange infusions--I have a stove on my desk. Fetishising typewriters, pens, etc. Overall, though, I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.
Guardian, May 9, 2007
Haruki Murakami
When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.
Paris Review, Summer 2004
Joyce Carol Oates
Q: What is your writing routine?
A: I try to write in the morning very intensely, from 8:30 to 1 p.m. When I'm traveling, I can work from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Alone, I don't sleep that well. I get a lot of work done in hotel rooms. The one solace for loneliness is work. I handwrite and then I type. I don't have a word processor. I write slowly.
JA
Comments
My Daily Grind entry below --
I am currently working full-time on my first contracted book, a non-fiction military history work. My weekday routine: 6am wake up, poke hubby in ribs to make sure he makes it to salaried job; 7am gym/swim/cycle/run (just started mini-triathlon training); 9am shower/internet/RedBubble/twitter; 11am eep! better write before lunch; 12.30pm food and Oprah time; 1.30pm back to computer, try very, very hard not to look at internet, spend hours agonising over the conflicting historical accounts; hubby home about 5.30pm, relief! someone to talk through problems with; then television and eating until 10pm; read for an hour; then enter sandman stage left.
Get up. Some mornings do yoga class. Check Twitter (2 accounts) Facebook (2 accounts ) mail (2 accounts). Feel sense of accomplishment. Eat muesli. Go to café and drink coffee. Come home. Laundry, dishes, anything but writing. Repeat twitter/facebook/email performance. Begin actual writing at noon. 1 pm - lunch! Episode of Buffy! Another episode of Buffy. Or read in the bath. Repeat - with cats. Throw in a nap. Then, just as the day is drawing to a close, at, say, 4.30 – sudden rush of brilliance and awesomeness until 6.30 pm when evening’s activities (social, cooking, eating etc)
Wake up. Smell coffee. Check email, Twitter, Google Reader, delicious. Contemplate This Compulsive Culture of Checking for Updates. Write extensively hyperlinked blogpost about it. Turn on news radio. News story about compulsive culture of checking!!1! Edit blogpost to include hyperlink to said story. Endure brief moral torture about new media and self-authorisation. Assuage torture by writing blogpost about This Culture of Self-Authorisation. Realise I forgot to check fourth email account!!1! What if I missed something? Log into said fourth email account and read auto-generated notices of past 6 hours. Take afternoon nap to recover from the exhaustion all this has brought on. Wake up. Admire sunset. Get out of bed. Whoops. Forgot to go to work today.
@meanjin - your plaintive little tweet inspired me.
A day in the life of an editor:
Good morning, starshine, the world says ... oh bloody hell it's time to get up and run around the park in the freezing dark in an attempt become 'fit'.
Hello, coffee, watcha knowin'? I've come to... seek sustenance for the long day of work ahead.
G'day, g'day and how you go-o-o-in? Whaddya know... this copyedit's taking a lot longer than I'd hoped.
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu. Adieu, adieu to ... all those irritating adverbs.
See you later, Alligator. Doo doo doo doo. After while... I will have finished this cover brief. Won't I?
Good night, sweetheart, well it's time to... go to bed because I got up at 5am to run around the bloody park!
Susannah is that a Simon and Garfunkel reference in there?
Every day different. I tell everyone I love this part of being a writer. Truth? It sucks.
Wake at anytime between 6am and 2pm (depending on the previous night's activities, so that I've clocked at least 6 hours sleep). Sometimes will wake up with pen in hand and black notebook page on chest. Sometimes room smells of cheap red. Sometimes not.
Coffee with Ramona Koval (if awake by 10am).
Make myself write something. Anything. Blog, email, copywriting, short story, shopping list. Can be on laptop, legal pad, leather journal, even the soft skin on the inside of the forearm.
Read. Always with the reading. Label it 'inspiration' or 'research' or 'self-investment'. Know it's really distraction/pleasure-seeking/head-in-sand.
Realise it's almost dusk and I haven't left the house. Feel gross. Go for walk to shops/library/front gate letterbox. Breathe in. Back inside.
Think about dinner. Pour something alcoholic and sit back in front of blank page. Sometimes (hallelujah!) words spew forth (huzzah!).
Capitulate to external socialising pressures, and go see friends/film/exhibition/underside of local taverna. Giggle with guilt.
Bed at anytime between 12am and 6am. Pick up pen and notebook.
Wake up from vivid dream. Try to force self back to sleep as is too cold to get up. Get up when it becomes patent body will not fall asleep. Brew tea. Forget it is brewing, return to find it cold. Drink it anyway whilst boiling the kettle for the next cup. Check emails, Twitter, website stats and Daily Mail.co.uk - spend the next two hours to-ing and fro-ing between these sites, hitting refresh constantly. Brew a tea. Open document my to-do list tells me I should be working on. Write a sentence. Refresh emails. Go and brew another tea. Contemplate headspace of character as stare at boiling kettle. Return to computer and write another sentence. Refresh emails/Twitter and Daily Mail. Break for lunch. Brew a tea. Get strange energy slump that means cannot move and can only stare at TV. Strange energy slump passes and get filled with inexplicable energy. Buzz around for a while, occasionally penning a sentence. Realise it's 6pm and pour a glass of wine. Sit down with serious intent to write at around 10pm. Become seized by genuine writing spell and produce a couple of pages of sheer brilliance. Go to sleep on a statisfied high. Awake the next morning to discover last night's efforts are dreadful, if not nonsensical. Brew a tea.
I’m awake no I’m not yes I am where’s the damn coffee and who moved the magazine I was half way through underlining something to twitter about or maybe it would be better as a blog post hmmm if it works can pitch to something but not before I read the opinion pieces in all the majors to make sure I haven’t missed something really important like my child’s birthday or is it tomorrow what’s today am I awake or have I had coffee not sure but look at the way the sun is shining on the only patch of carpet with a stain must write that down, metaphor for something no I am awake, creative as carpet, carpetly creative, carpetic? That’s not even a word yet.
Woken up early by church bells and rampaging twin babies yelling for milk- a half hour's happy baby wrangling in bed, coffee in the kitchen while we all get used to the day, listening to my neighbours call out to each other in the street as they venture out to the market. Check email compulsively on the way to and from changing nappies. Download The Book Show of the day, watch the girls jiggle in excitement to the opening music, and turn to me grinning as they recognize Ramona Kovall's voice. Be inspired. Wonder how I managed to waste so much time before the kids. Change nappies. Play on the floor, babies climbing all over me, listening to Radio National and feeling homesick, a world away.
Wake up. Feel edges of self. Good self? Not great self? Baby wakes. Bring baby back to bed. Wake up again. Good self... Breakfast. Dress. Send 4yo to mailbox. No submissions feedback? Submission Rejection? Launch into day at breakneck speed! Send 4yearold to paint - promise trip to park. Furiously rehash rejected submission. Furiously stalk 'submission guidelines' pages online. Choose journal/magazine. Write nice cover letter. Packet with re-hashed submission. Drive to post office. Let 4yearold post by lifting up to Big Red Box while holding onto baby - highlight of day for 4 yearold that. Enter park. Play.
Write in journal about what I should be writing. Meditate. Make porridge. Scoop ants out of honey before adding to porridge. Turn on computer. Pull assorted weeds out of garden. Log onto facebook, twitter & email. Open up word processor. Look at what I've written before. Comment on various social networking sites about procrastination. Make tea. Walk in a circle. Get a glass of water. Tie self to chair and write 500 words. Sigh with relief. Go and spend the rest of the day relaxing to celebrate.
If society was more accomodating towards us "owls" I believe I would do my best work between about 10pm and two in the morning. As it is I deny the new day for as long as possible before rushing to work. When I get home I put off doing anything meaningful until about five minutes before I should really be going to bed, because I am scared of it being crap.
I absolutely love writing, and usually my job as a primary school teaching job steals me away from 8-4 but on holidays, as I am now, I get to completely induldge. It's the greatest and I make the most of it, every weekday. My average day of writing, when I get one. Wake at 5am with the mobile phone alarm ringing. Hit snooze but then know I will only do it another 14 times so I repeat in my head, "This is me exerting willpower." Successfully shame myself out of bed at about 5:07am and walk to the house's central heating console while putting on my robe and slippers. Initiate warming sequence and turn on computer. Fill my drink bottle with water and pop a mint, the computer will only be a moment longer. From 5-7am it's a mixture of writing staccato a sentence at a pop while Alt-Tabbing into Firefox to Tweet, FB chat, email from Hotmail, check random pages in Wikipedia or simply check out news, be it related to the wide world, science or the comic medium. Many random Twitter links are always explored. I would say I can get carried away, but usually set myself time limits to work in until I can check the net again. These mini-goals seem to work really well. I get some writing done. Around 7am I wake my darling fiancee with warm breakfast in bed and we eat and talk. 7:15am (ha) sends me back to the computer to repeat my morning's actions from that time until about 12noon, and at some stage my lady leaves for work with a kiss. I exercise for 36 minutes while listening to a podcast, SModcast, Fanboy Radio, or other film/book intellectualised fanboy-speak. Eggs are then prepared for lunch, many eggs. A shower and toothbrushing settles me back into work at about 1:15pm until 6pm. Dinner prep and eating with the lady leads to relaxed time to let her unwind from a long day of surgery and botox. She head to bed between 8-9pm, I stay up to write until 11pm. Repeat. Is it successful, you betcha. Most days I meet my quota of one thousand words. Today, I got to five and a half thousand. In the end, each little bit adds up, so I know I'll get there one day. Maybe tomorrow, or the next :)
Although I always set the alarm with plenty of time to get up I never rise when it goes off. My son will join me and I'll linger and listen to the radio until the time is critical then fly around the house feeding kid and animals and end up running out the door with wet hair. At work I distill press releases and government speak into plain English. This requires clear thought and accurate prose, for which I prepare with long periods on the internet and short bursts on twitter and facebook. Work usually ends with a furious output of dry plain words, that I tell myself have been gestating all day. Then it is dark and I leave to grab the boy and do dinner, bath and bed. Only when he sleeps can I play with my own words, although by then my capabilities are limited by tiredness, the amount of wine consumed and what's on telly. I write all week, but there are just two occasions when, with no child in the house, I become fractious. Then, and only then, do I have the chance to catch the words that have floated about my life during the week and fix them on the page.
I wake around 7.30 pretending its still too dark and early for rising although I can see the encroaching light behind the window blinds. I wait until its almost too late at 7.50 and force my legs to move off my bed and into my slippers. The routine speeds up with 2 minute shower, avocado and berries on toast, a slurp of cranberry juice, a bathroom visit, electric toothbrushing then I dress, pull on the boots, slap on the face cream, throw on the coat and am out door just making the 8.35 Batman train to Flagstaff. The journey to work sees familiar mostly silent faces and I put mine into whatever book which lately was Mirka Mora's "Wicked but Virtuous" then reluctantly I must put the book away at my destination 20 minutes later. After an exciting escalator ride from the underground and fun ticket validation I am on William Street at The Metropolitan Hotel for my daily 2 min chat (movies/current events/anything) with the barista who concocts a magic soy cap without which I would forget where I'm due next. Ah yes, 259 William, that old greystone liftless building where I greet the receptionist and trudge up two flights of stairs before I remove my coat, collapse at my desk, turn on PC, sip restorative coffee, check email and disappear into the confidential work 9ish to 5ish. At workday's end I feel kindly unleashed to gentle pleasant rewards like art openings, the cinema, a swim, restaurant/theatre date, book group meeting, supermarket and such other leisurely diarised titbits of life before I go home to my TV cat etc. Then it all begins again tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after the day after tomorrow and the day after the day after the day after tomorrow ....
Illustration/comics/unemployed (sigh): Wake up at 6am to let cat out, again at 6.30 to let cat in. Sleep until 10am. Shower. 10.30-11.30 Internet, news, tea, coffee etc. 11.30 draw panels in pencil on page. Decide I need to write a script for a multipage comic. Ignore. Pencil furiously for an hour. Complain that I don’t have a script for comic. 1pm Internet. 2pm ink boxes around panels. 2.15 Internet. 2.15 to 3pm Walk to shops to check mail, may take longer if I get lost in grape vines coming back. 3pm-6pm Ink, play on Internet while waiting for ink to dry. Hours may vary, if on a good run I will work on a page all day. Bad day, may take two or three.
Jolt awake to radio alarm at ungodly pre-noon hour for day job attendance.
Proceed to hit snooze alarm at ten minute intervals until getting up seems inevitable rather than merely obnoxious.
Get dressed in shortest amount of time possible.
Cycle to work, muttering imprecations about the oblivious jaywalkers and lane-eating buses on Swanston Street.
Spend better part of day in government data-entry fog.
Cycle home again. Repeat step 4, but with flashing lights.
Remove cat from top of barbeque and enter house. Play Final Fantasy XII for two hours.
Dine with logician-spouse while watching Spooks, pointedly ignoring large whiteboard spouse holds across his lap while simultaneously working on set theory.
Commandeer lounge after spouse retires to bed.
Write on laptop until 1:25AM, realise what time it is, feel guilt over being up so late prior to impending work day.
Lie awake in bed for two hours, conscious that good writing-or-sleeping time is being pointlessly wasted by insomnia.
Fall into fitful sleep, punctuated by scrunched, repetitive dreams of willing wargens in Final Fantasy XII.
Jolt awake again at radio alarm.
Repeat until published.
Um. That should be killing wargens. Whoops. Also, the items were numbered. But there you go.
7.45 am ALARM – tea – ritualistic hair brushing of autistic child’s hair 8 am - 12 am: Medley-mash: reading, online tutoring, Journal editing, twitters, FB, reviewing CDs, PhD writing & researching, writing lecture, writing conference paper, committees, doodle silly thoughts, working as musician, mother etc., Ah! A poem! All work no play makes copy & paste copy & paste copy & paste copy & paste copy & paste. Avoid articles condemning multi-tasking Avoid articles condemning multi-tasking Avoid articles condemning multi-tasking Avoid articles condemning multi-tasking Avoid articles condemning multi-tasking Avoid articles condemning multi-tasking Avoid articles condemning multi-tasking 100/100 words stuck to brief
I will write something of real worth today. I will write something of real worth. I will WRITE something. I will write SOMETHING of real worth today. I will write something OF real worth today. I will something. Will I write something? Will something of worth. I write of worth. I will something of worth. Something real write worth. Write something of REAL worth, write something of real WORTH. Something of real worth I will. I worth something real. Write something worth of I today, write of real I. Some real writething. I of realsome worth today. Will to write worth. Will to write some day. Will write real thing someday. Today worth some real.
6:15 am Begin day wishing it were the end of the day. Snooze thrice. Hot tea. Cold shower. Pull on anything at hand including mismatched socks closest to bed. Try to negotiate shoelaces while keeping an eye on minute hand heading irrevocably towards 7:30. Put on coat while rummaging for keys under scornful gaze of cats. Out the door and break into run. Feel cold air rush up nose like cocaine and mist eyes. Step on freshly laid dog pellets on pavement. Feel their slight resistance underfoot as they are pressed open to reveal their crimson hearts. Arrive openmouthed and panting noisily at the bus stop. Try to gain composure during the last few steps. Ride on bus making mental notes on the internal lives of fellow travellers. Would make real notes but can’t find pen in chaotic backpack.
8:30 am
BLUR
4:15pm
Ride home on bus
5:00 pm Walk home from bus stop envisioning various calamities that could have befallen empty home and home alone cats. Walk up driveway imagining door busted open, cats in the oven. Open intact door and greeted by admonishing but alive cats. Drink tea and fantasize about hot dinner. End up eating tuna and Weetbix.
8:00 pm Spend time on laptop. Steal neighbour’s wireless internet and compulsively check mail and hit Refresh. Open word document. Pretend to write. Save empty word document with promising name.
10:00 pm Spend time in front of mirror checking for spots on face. Clean teeth. Vary routine by not cleaning teeth on some nights.
10:15 pm Lie still in bed listening for intruders trying the door or the windows. Eventually drift off.
REPEAT UNTIL WEEKEND
Aparna, your daily grind entry is so funny, thanks for making me smile today.
Very interesting, hmm. As a person running multiple jobs:
10am rise (possibly lying in bed until 11). Forced breakfast to jumpstart metabolism. Work on computer for 7-8 hours. If at home, drink tea, cook lunch, go to the toilet 10 times per hour (tea). Strictly no dish-washing (waste of time!, creates unproductivity!). If in the office: work for 7-8 hours, have bad teabag tea, to go the toilet 10 times per hour (tea), buy boxed lunch/sandwich and feel miserable all day.
6-7pm. Return home. Housemate waits in ambush to Talk About Cleaning. Promise to clean the bathroom/kitchen/lounge; promise generously and convincingly, with all my heart. Scavenge for dinner (preferably housemate's).
8pm Theatre.
11pm Return home from the theatre. Smoke with housemate, who casually mentions house cleaning again. Write theatre reviews, or sketches thereof, until no later than 1am.
1am Creative Writing Time! Play loud music in the lounge and type furiously until 4am, 6am, however-much-am. If it's a particularly furious writing session, smoke a lot, and scavenge the kitchen for food scraps (bits of cake; fruit). Whenever the delirium ends, have an extremely hot shower and fall into bed.
11am The later I go to sleep, the later I wake up. Among my mail, there is a carefully worded email from housemate mentioning house cleaning. I reply in enthusiastic agreement.
May I say that a recurring, ahem, theme, in this thread, is the hitting of the snooze button. Jess and I will make a decision about the winner tomorrow and let you know. Then I will consider deleting entire post before Andrew Bolt, or a funding body, gets hold of it.
Awaken with fright as wailing toddler hovers over my buried head, shouting he can’t find his red Bakugan dragon, Drago. I murmured that I slayed the bugger last night and turn over the other side. Hit the toilet and story idea strikes me, I lean over for a nearby lipstick and scrawl some notes on sturdy scented toilet paper.School drop off.Home.Laundry.Dishes.Make bed.Check five email accounts.Write.Phone rings.Write.Neighbour’s cat meows at door.Write.Lunch.TV.School pick up.Snack and playtime.Dinner with seated Drago staring at me.Must remember to hide Drago again.Cleaning.Hubby making orchestra of snores.Should I contribute to musical snores or write? Lights out.
Late as usual I thunder down the stairs. Missing the last two I make a mental note to either: a) pay more attention tomorrow, or b) not run late tomorrow (both, however, are just as unlikely as each other to happen). Riding to work I hope that: a) it doesn’t rain; b) the bridge doesn’t raise for a boat for the third day in a row; and c) that I don’t encounter an escapee from the Blijdorp Zoo (admittedly any of these would be an amusement, but I don’t think my project manager would appreciate the novelty). My office hours are heavily punctuated by compulsive refreshing of emails, cups of tea, subsequent toilet breaks and trips to the kitchen to refill tea/chat to office chef, and making the most of any opportunity to chat to colleagues. Lunch is a welcome respite. Later, I draw some lines and call it a ‘design’. I return home later than I should. In the kitchen I throw some things found in the bottom of the fridge into a pot, stir it a bit and then taste. I am pleasantly surprised by the flavour that has resulted. Inspired by my chance success I pull out my sketchbook and draw a few lines. A smile forms on my face as I decide that I like what I see. I scribble madly for a several hours and then as the ideas in my head become less and less tangible I realise that sleep is imminent. Satisfied with my day, I retire to my futon to prepare for tomorrow.
Oops, there are actually three paragraphs in the above text but it didn't format correctly when I loaded it. Paragraph two begins: "My office hours..." and three: "I return home..." Thanks!
I take it since I wasn't emailed that I didn't win? did I miss the announcement though?
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