{"id":471,"date":"2017-10-31T22:12:54","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T22:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/?p=471"},"modified":"2017-10-31T22:12:54","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T22:12:54","slug":"pre-writing-rituals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/pre-writing-rituals\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Started With the Pre-Writing Rituals of These Seven Top-Notch Talents"},"content":{"rendered":"

The novelist and short story writer Louis L\u2019Amour had the famous line: \u201cStart writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.\u201d It\u2019s why we spend a lot of time at Writing Routines asking authors about how they get going, how they summon the muse in the morning (or evening), how they get those first words down. Most authors describe that first moment of turning the wheel as excruciating: they come to the page cold, and the warm-up isn\u2019t easy. But once they get going, the faucet starts to flow and the words start coming out of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

So with that visual in mind, here\u2019s what seven writers do to turn the knob:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

1.<\/strong> Songwriter Young and Sick<\/a> has been called a \u201cdual threat\u201d in music and art, and he gets his work going in one of two ways: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201c<\/span>If I can, I get on my bicycle and ride to the beach and back while listening to a podcast or audiobook. If I can\u2019t do that, then I usually walk to 7-Eleven and buy a Kombucha and a protein bar.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

2.<\/strong> Coffee is the mainstay for Liana Maeby<\/a>, a novelist and author of South on Highland<\/a><\/em>. But her coffee has one other companion: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAfter my 500th\u00a0cup of coffee, I\u2019m usually ready to go. And I like to settle in with my dog either at my side or, as he prefers, around my shoulders like a 35-pound scarf. He\u2019s a good boy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

3.<\/strong> For Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen<\/a>, he took inspiration for his novel The Sympathizer<\/a><\/em> by only starting his writing after<\/i> reading a few pages of the book he admired,The Land at the End of the World<\/i><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/i>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI was reading a novel called\u00a0<\/i>The Land at the End of the World<\/i><\/span><\/a>\u00a0by the Portuguese writer Ant\u00f3nio Lobo Antunes and it came to me at a very fortuitous time because it had been reissued in a new translation right when I was starting\u00a0The Sympathizer\u00a0and struggling to find a beginning and when I read that book it really blew the doors open for me. I fell in love with the rhythm and the voice and I wanted some of that for my own book. So what I did was I would read two or three pages of that novel every morning until I was so affected, so seized by Lobo Antunes\u2019s prose, that I just had to write myself.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

4.<\/strong> NBA basketball player turned author Paul Shirley<\/a> cops to the feeling that many of us get before we start: \u2018existential dread.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

He says of his writing days:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI try to start my days the same way: get up, eat breakfast, stretch\/exercise, meditate, get to the place I\u2019m going to write. Once I\u2019m there, I\u2019ll usually put on a \u201cfun\u201d song\u2014something that energizes me, right before digging in. I\u2019ve found that by keeping this routine the same (or nearly so), the \u201cwork\u201d of getting into the writing has largely been taken care of. I still feel a small, nagging sense of existential dread (\u201cwhat if today\u2019s the day I forget how?!\u201d) but I\u2019ve made writing so much a part of my days that it feels like I don\u2019t really have a choice in the matter.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

5.<\/strong> Former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser<\/a> uses other poet\u2019s work as his spur to action: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI very often read the poems of someone whose work I admire. Just now I\u2019m rereading all of the poems of Nancy Willard, who died recently. She has been one of my favorite writers for many years. I find that if I read a poem I am moved by I often feel like I\u2019d like to strike up a kind of conversation with the poet, and my response may be an attempt at a poem of my own.<\/i><\/span>\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

6.<\/strong> Andrea Wulf<\/a> is the bestselling and award-winning author of The Invention of Nature<\/i><\/span><\/a>. For her, writing doesn\u2019t begin until the coffee is brewed. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201c<\/i>I can\u2019t start without a proper coffee made on my magnificent Italian coffee machine.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

7<\/strong>. Dr. Barbara Oakley<\/a>\u2014MOOC legend, former Army Captain, and author of, among others, A Mind for Numbers<\/a>\u2014<\/i>has a disciplined and detailed pre-writing ritual:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhen I first sit down to write, I often do a bit of intellectual squirming. Writing is usually not easy for me until I get into it.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

My ritual is that I get out one of my quadrille ruled engineering pads and a sharpened Palomino Blackwing pencil (I keep a Staedtler manual pencil sharpener beside me), and I set out three short tasks. One of them is doing a Pomodoro (25 minutes) on whatever I\u2019m writing.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The funny thing is, once I get started on the writing, I usually get into the flow and go for at least several hours. Then I do the other two little tasks. Then it\u2019s out for a walk (if it\u2019s not snowing) and back to make a list of three more things to work on. I start early in the day, around 6:00 or 7:00 am, so I try to quit around 4:00 pm and watch a television show with my hubby.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The novelist and short story writer Louis L\u2019Amour had the famous line: \u201cStart writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.\u201d It\u2019s why we spend a lot of time at Writing Routines asking authors about how they get going, how they summon the muse in the morning (or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGet Started With the Pre-Writing Rituals of These Seven Top-Notch Talents - Writing Routines<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/pre-writing-rituals\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Get Started With the Pre-Writing Rituals of These Seven Top-Notch Talents - Writing Routines\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The novelist and short story writer Louis L\u2019Amour had the famous line: \u201cStart writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.\u201d It\u2019s why we spend a lot of time at Writing Routines asking authors about how they get going, how they summon the muse in the morning (or […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/pre-writing-rituals\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Writing Routines\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/writingroutines\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-10-31T22:12:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/faucet.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"704\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kevin Currie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@writingroutines\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@writingroutines\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kevin Currie\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/pre-writing-rituals\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/pre-writing-rituals\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Kevin Currie\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/#\/schema\/person\/a2da8a719a4aa9d1696b8bd8759fe175\"},\"headline\":\"Get Started With the Pre-Writing Rituals of These Seven Top-Notch Talents\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-10-31T22:12:54+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-10-31T22:12:54+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/pre-writing-rituals\/\"},\"wordCount\":885,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/pre-writing-rituals\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/faucet.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Articles\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/pre-writing-rituals\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/pre-writing-rituals\/\",\"name\":\"Get Started With the Pre-Writing Rituals of These Seven Top-Notch Talents - 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