I have never voluntarily done anything every single day for weeks on end.
Eons ago, I skipped (with fake illnesses) every school Monday for so many weeks running that the principal called my mother and told her, “If she misses any more, she won’t graduate.”
Since high school, I’ve gravitated toward activities and jobs that don’t require my butt in a seat for some allotted hours every day. I taught at universities for decades where my teaching schedule—both class assignments and meeting times and days—changed every term. A brief stint in the dean’s office almost killed me with its fixed daily hours and its constant deluge of interminable, senseless meetings. I loved (and continue to love) emails that allow asynchronous “meeting” and forego the endless “catching up” chitchat I find mind numbing.
I have never been able to heed the constant advice to me, as a writer, that I should, no I must, write every single day. It is unthinkable that I should dedicate a sacrosanct time to writing and that I would, or even could, write something each time I plunk myself down for that time.
None of that works for me. It works no better than the flood of warnings that if I really want to be a Writer, I must write longhand. Or that I must make an outline first, or write with a particular instrument (see fountain pens or particular pencils) on some extraordinary paper or in a precise kind of journal.
I get it. I do.
These sages understand that writing is a physical activity. Like sports, your tools matter, as do your space and place. You only develop real skill, finesse, nuance across time and practice. You only up your game if you activate those muscles every damn day.
I’m sure that works for a lot of folks. Or some. But not so much for me.
I think there’s as much to be said for personal rhythms as for routines. My predilections argue for something random, haphazard even, though until recently I felt certain I needed quiet and a clean house. The “noise” of clutter disrupted my thinking.
But I just returned from Italy, where I landed in what can only generously be described as absolute chaos (more on that elsewhere). Surrounded by disruption and dirt and interruption, I wrote most days, and I wrote well for most of the thirty-five days of my sojourn.
After those five weeks, I returned to the solitude of my often-silent home. And I did not write. Day after day after day, week upon week, I wrote nothing. I woke thinking, “Today I’ll write.” But it simply did not happen.
This morning, exactly five weeks after my return, I woke and plunked myself down, and I began to write. And to write well.
Today marked my thirty-fifth day home.
You may think that’s a coincidence. I don’t. I see it as a natural rhythm. It took time for my body to awaken, to recover memories, to await the call of my muse. For me, it is only in the absence of force that I can find the magic of serendipity, the beauty of creative flow.
My muse, it seems, also does not believe in routines. She certainly doesn’t visit daily. Sometimes, she’s silent for what seems an eternity. But if I am patient, she will come.
When she arrives, I will be ready.
