Writing Rituals
Observing the rituals of fellow writers in order to nurture our own.
Upcoming Workshops and Offerings
Next month, Book Club for Writers will discuss Daily Rituals: Women at Work. Paid subscribers are invited to attend book club meetings on Zoom. A recording will be available for those who can’t make it live. Scroll to the bottom of this email for more info.
My writing workshops will reconvene in the fall. Watch the newsletter for upcoming class announcements.
Why are other writers’ daily rituals so damn interesting to read about?
I think it’s because studying the routines of fellow writers can help us crack the code of our own routines. And goodness, routines sure are codes that require cracking.
The Book Club for Writers that I host is discussing Daily Rituals: Women at Work in July, so I’ve been re-reading—re-devouring, really—this marvelous collection of accounts of women artists’ routines. Mason Currey’s books on artists’ patterns and habits are like catnip for me for the exact reason I gave above: they’re chockablock full of possibility for my own writing life.
Other artists’ rituals feel like paths I can take to potentially strengthen my process.
For instance, if I spent a year or two thinking about a book before I started writing the way Alice Walker does, would I write better work?
If I got up at three or four in the morning to write the way Octavia Butler did during the quietest morning hours, would I access a new layer of my subconscious?
If I set a bolster pillow on its side on the couch while writing, would my family take that as a cue to leave me alone with my work the way Louisa May Alcott’s did?
(Actually, I have a ritual quite similar to Louisa’s: I turn on a hall light outside my office door to let my husband know when I’m writing and need some time to concentrate. I have, in the past, joked about installing one of those ON AIR signs.)
Perhaps the most envy-inducing routine I’ve come across is that of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her husband, an extremely wealthy Dutch coffee importer, would deal with their team of servants (!!!), see to it that the house was kept in order, and make sure meals were on the table. Millay said that she wanted her dining room to feel like a restaurant. “I have my work to do,” she said, “which is the writing of poetry.”
Perhaps the ritual we should all aspire to the level of self-permission-granting that Millay clearly achieved.
And then there are rituals that I don’t envy at all. If I wrote one thing then took 20 years off the way Elizabeth Bishop did after writing her poem “The Moose,” I don’t think I’d ever write another word.* And if I wrote from my bed until noon the way Emily Post did, I’d wind up with horrible lumbar pain.
*EDIT: I was missing some very important context about Elizabeth Bishop’s process! See Mercurio’s comment at the end of this issue for more info. (Thanks, Mercurio, for educating me.)
But that’s the thing about rituals: through trial and error, we learn what works for us and what doesn’t.
The writing rituals I’ve included here all come from Daily Rituals: Women at Work by Mason Currey. Get your paws on this fantastic book and come discuss routines with the Book Club for Writers on Zoom on July 30!
Find Your Own Daily Rituals
Perhaps you’re eager to establish a regular writing practice. Here are some steps I’ve taken that have worked for me.
1. Define expectations. Maybe a daily writing ritual isn’t realistic for you. It sure isn’t for me! The moment I try to make writing a daily thing, I get severely burnt out. Maybe you’re more like me and need writing to be a most days thing. Or maybe your schedule allows for weekly rituals.
2. Take a time inventory. Write out your entire week in 30-minute increments. All seven days. Fill in spaces for grocery shopping and laundry and yoga class and calling your grandma. To the best of your ability, include the time you spend with friends, your partner, your extended family, your Dungeons & Dragons crew. Be realistic—not aspirational!—about when you’ll actually go to bed as well as (this is the hard one for me) when you’ll actually wake up.
When you run out of things to inventory, look for gaps. Hopefully there will be at least one. Slide your writing time in there, even if it’s just 30 minutes.
If there aren’t gaps in your week, hunt for existing rituals that could be tacked on to writing time. For instance, I used to spend a good chunk of the morning staring at my phone while drinking for a coffee, and I realized that I could use that time to journal instead. A friend of mine who’s a mom told me that she used to spend her time waiting in her son’s school car line listening to podcasts but brings her laptop now and squeezes a reliable 20 minutes of writing time in.
3. Gather inspiration from other artists. Read Daily Rituals: Women at Work! Subscribe to Mason Currey’s amazing newsletter on artists’ rituals! Annnnd: join the Book Club for Writers to compare ritual notes with fellow writers!
In addition to discussing Mason’s book during our meeting on July 30, we’ll do exercises designed to help you find your own writing rituals and examine what is/isn’t working in your writing life.
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How you can participate in the next Book Club for Writers discussion:
Get the book via Bookshop, Amazon, or your local library.
Add the book club meeting to your calendar and read the book in July.
As you read, take notes on the artist routines that stand out to you. Hunt for patterns.
Join the discussion live on Zoom on Sunday, July 30 at 1PM EST. Paid subscribers will receive a Zoom link the day before our meeting.
Can’t make it live?* Our recorded discussion will be available on Zoom afterward.
I don't think you're being fair to Elizabeth Bishop. It's not that she took 20 years off writing after The Moose, but rather that The Moose took 20 years to write. And that's how it often goes with poetry. We can (and do) spend years on a single poem in order to get it where we need it to be. And it's not that she spent those 20 years working only on that single poem; poets tend to have multiple poems in different stages of completion or revision simultaneously.
And for poets, writing isn't just the time buckled into the chair and hammering away at things. So much of what ends up on our pages is drawn directly from the subconscious that we need to allow it space to breathe, which can look like not-writing to others.
Thank you for this lovely reflection on rituals, Hurley — strong agree on everything you've written here! So flattered to be a part of your book club. And I love the detail about your hallway light!!