SiteDo Your Own Thing
When you think of a professional writer, you probably envision someone who starts at the crack of dawn and guzzles coffee as he writes. So you force yourself to get up at 5 am because that’s what a “real writer” would do, and brew a pot of coffee even though you prefer hot cocoa or tea. Then you fall asleep in front of your computer as your untouched coffee grows cold, and when you wake up you feel like a failure.
Okay, that’s an extreme example. But you get the picture: Don’t do what you think a “real writer” should do…do what works for you.
Me, I get up late — or early, depending on when I went to bed — drink Earl Grey tea with milk and sugar, and do much of my work in the Borders café. A friend of mine writes only when her son is at school. Other writers start writing at 2 am while drinking V8 juice, smoking cloves, and listening to the Grease soundtrack.
The same goes for work style. Different writers have different ways of researching, scheduling, doing interviews, querying, and writing. Different writers use different equipment — PC or Mac, digital recorder or regular one, cell phone or landline. Some writers use letterhead, some don’t. Some call their editors, some don’t.
Do what you need to do to make your writing work, and don’t worry about what others are doing. You’re already a “real writer”! [lf]
5 Responses to “Do Your Own Thing”
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wordwych
Said this on March 17th, 2008 at 11:48am:Great post, Linda. It’s always nice to have “permission” to do your own thing. I’m a lifelong night owl. My family jokes that if it weren’t for my love of garlic, I’d have made a great vampire. Alternately, they joke that my body clock is on the West Coast while the rest of me is on the East Coast. I have found that I am at my best between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m., and have been known to write until dawn. The editors at the paper where most of my work is published have got used to the fact that my e-mailed articles and photos are sent out in the wee hours, and they know that while I will haul my rump out of bed to do an early morning interview, I do so only because I could not arrange a later time. I spent decades fighting my own body clock, all the way through school and through my various “regular” jobs. While I can write well during daylight hours, I find it’s a bit of a struggle. Yet at night, there’s hardly any struggle at all. I think my brain just works better in the dark. I learned long ago to keep a mini cassette recorder (now a digital recorder) beside my bed for those middle-of- the-night-genius thoughts that pop into my head as I’m trying to disengage my brain and go to sleep.
L Maloney
Said this on March 17th, 2008 at 2:28pm:Great blog and wiki.. I was glad to discover it, and have added you to my list at http://writerinfo.blogspot.com.
Alyson
Said this on March 18th, 2008 at 4:52am:Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou Linda. I know all of this intellectually but sometimes I just need to hear it from an external source. Your timing, as usual, is fabulous.
Bob Younce at the Writing Journey
Said this on March 21st, 2008 at 7:06am:I’m up and writing early out of necessity. My oldest gets up at 5:30 for school, and so I’m up anyways. Given my druthers, I’d be sleeping later.
It took about six months of doing it every morning, but I discovered that I’m a lot more productive between 5:30 and 7:30 AM than I am between 10 and noon. I spent a lot of mornings the way you describe - cold coffee grounds and all.
I will say this: there is a quiet to the morning that you can’t get later in the day. I think it is this lack of noise and even light that keeps me focussed.
I’m hoping that, once the kids are in High School, I can go back to sleeping in and working later. I definitely prefer it. I’ve had to start going to bed at 11 PM, which means no Letterman. But the morning thing is working all right for me now.
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