Quo Vadis blogger Leah Hoffman wrote about Time Management recently, and in my to read file I finally got to "The Psychology of Writing and the Cognitive Science of the Perfect Daily Routine" at BrainPickings.
Routine is one of the key words in the title because it seems, for me at least, without a routine, I don't write enough or on the subject(s) I want to explore.
Distraction is another factor to seriously explore in my non-routine.
And here James Elroy, with 19 hand written novels under his belt, talks about how he doesn't permit distraction.
When I wrote each morning, not leaving my seat until one thousand words were manufactured, I had few distractions--no internet, no email, no phone calls permitted, no garden to attend, a large wonderful writing surface and the ease of an adjacent carafe of coffee.
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| Writing Hat, gift Shirley Valentine (alias) ~ 1990 |
And my hat.
With my hat in view, and a major change in plans because of the abrupt change of season cold, I also explored discardia, the art of not saving stuff you don't use, and decided it was time to let go of my dancing shoes. They were not aiding my energy level, I wasn't dancing around the studio and they wouldn't help me write.
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| Leather skin dancing shoes, gift RS 1994 |
They, like the writing hat, were a gift from a friend. I don't recall the circumstances surrounding the gift. But RS, an artist, lived in a terrific loft near the Italian District on Atwells and permitted her friends to use the space. During my sabbatical year, and before I went off to see the US in the Spring of '92, I went over to the loft once or twice a week, used her big screen Mac and spread out work I was working on. It was this friend with whom I did Morning Pages where I fleshed out some tough stuff.
I won't miss the shoes. I do miss RS. Sometimes I miss Shirley Valentine, now in Birmingham (England) but I still have my hat.
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