Writing Habits

Responding to my post about writing habits, blog reader Lora Mitchell sent me hers:

1. I write at my desk or comfortable recliner.
2. I also do my best writing at night - often until dawn. (a benefit of being retired).
3. I often take time to read something before I sit down to write.
4. I like this, Will work on it.
5. Great idea. Which vocabulary books do you suggest?
6. Lucky you. No caffeine for me. Doc's orders.
7. I take walks during the day to get exercise and fresh air.
8. I often write 5-6 hours straight or until the bum gets sore.
9. I catch up on my reading while taking long bubble baths.
10. A notepad is always at my bedside table. First thing in the morning, still in the lazy, dreamy state, I often get a solution to a current project ~ or struck by a fresh idea for a story A few weeks. ago, I had such an unusual, vivid dream, I quickly jotted down a synopsis, got to my laptop after a quickie breakfast and gave birth to a lovely short story.

Check out Lora's journal at:

http://triplemoonstar.blogspot.com/
Click here

What are YOUR writing habits?

My Writing Habits in 10 Parts

My Writing Habits in 10 Parts
By Michael P. Geffner

1) I love writing outside. Can't stand being shackled to my desk. Write mostly at 24-hour cafes in downtown Manhattan.

2) I love writing after midnight. My best work has mostly come between 2-4 am. Who knows what it is that stirs me those hours. And frankly, who cares? The fact, is, I know this about myself and it works for me.

3) I love reading something great - sections of books or long magazine articles - before sititing down to write. My favorite for this exercise is Gay Talese's Fame and Obscurity. Awesome and timeless. Really gets my creative juices flowing.

4) I love having my lead paragraphs fully polished and ready to go before writing any other parts of the story. Without those first four, five graphs to guide me, I'm completely lost. So I often kill myself to get this done.

5) I love reading vocabulary books before I write. By doing this, I almost always discover a great word that perfectly fits my story.

6) I love having my cup of French Roast coffee, piping hot and luscious smelling, right there at my left hand. My drug of choice. My friend. My security blanket. Without it, I can't function.

7) I love taking breaks, even take a short walk, when I'm stuck for the next graph. This is far better than hitting my head with a hammer or suffering a nervous breakdown.

8) I love writing three hours a days, but that's it. It's not within my DNA to go longer. I'm incredibly jealous of those that can write all day.

9) I love thinking about my stories in the shower. Some of my best work has come that way. Sometimes, I'll lose track of time doing this, to where the bathtub nearly flows over.

10) I love waking up in the middle of the night, struck by an idea for my story. Sometimes, I'm disciplined enough to write the idea down on a piece of paper; sometimes, I'm not. Sometimes, I remember the idea; sometimes I don't. Sometimes, the idea is pure genius; sometimes, sadly, it's utter crap.

Writers At Work: Thomas Friedman

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman

“Honestly, I still can't wait to get my pants on in the morning," Friedman said. He wakes early, then exercises on a stationary bike, and if he has a column in the paper that day he'll read it through online two or three times, asking himself, "Did I get it right?" On weekdays, he'll head into D.C. for a seven-thirty breakfast meeting, which is sometimes followed by an eight-thirty breakfast meeting. The Times has a floor and a half of a building a few blocks north of the White House, and three of the four Op-Ed columnists who are based in Washington—Friedman, David Brooks, and Maureen Dowd, whom Friedman calls his closest friend on the paper—have offices at one end of an open-plan news floor. "I see him every few weeks or months, passing through on his way to Fez," Dowd recently said. Friedman's large corner office has windows that are oddly small and high, leaving wide areas of wall space. He has hung a poster of a three-masted sailing ship tipping off the edge of a flat world, which he bought long before he wrote “The World Is Flat”—attracted, in part, by the title, which is "I Told You So."

From The New Yorker, November 10, 2008

Writers' Habits: Anthony Trollope

Every day for years, Anthony Trollope reported in his “Autobiography,” he woke in darkness and wrote from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., with his watch in front of him. He required of himself two hundred and fifty words every quarter of an hour. If he finished one novel before eight-thirty, he took out a fresh piece of paper and started the next. The writing session was followed, for a long stretch of time, by a day job with the postal service. Plus, he said, he always hunted at least twice a week. Under this regimen, he produced forty-nine novels in thirty-five years. Having prospered so well, he urged his method on all writers: “Let their work be to them as is his common work to the common laborer. No gigantic efforts will then be necessary. He need tie no wet towels round his brow, nor sit for thirty hours at his desk without moving, as men have sat, or said that they have sat.”

The New Yorker, June 14, 2004