The QUOTIDIAN writer: developing a daily writing practice

          A few months ago I attended a Poets & Writers Live event in Austin, Texas. The keynote speaker was Elizabeth McCracken, and she said, “Think about every bad price of writing advice and disagree so loudly you write a poem or fiction about it.” Her words served as a retort to the common writing advice, “write every day.” Directly following her keynote, Naomi Shihab Nye laughed that she chose to say this, when Nye would be teaching a workshop later in the day about exactly that: creating a daily writing practice. Two successful authors with two totally separate writing processes.
         Today I’d like to give homage to the practice of daily writing, or what I call “The Quotidian Writer.” About a year ago, I was lucky enough to quit my non-writing job and work a shitty part-time one for a while until I finally (read: seven years after my undergrad) landed a job “doing what I like.” During that time, which I like to call My Broken Pocketbook Years, I spent my free time fussing over landing a job in the writing community, whether I could be called a real writer with no publications to my name, and thankfully, writing. And that last has made all the difference.
          I started writing every day, as much as possible. Sometimes, this was fruitless (read: a lot.) When I managed to make it work, I astonished myself with what I could achieve. Now, as I juggle my career in writing with my career in the writing community, I am happy to report that I’ve established writing manners. I have things I hold onto about how I write. Writing as a habit transformed my life.
     I’d like to address this to you—yes you—new writer who’s still figuring out this whole writing thing. I get asked a lot, what is your process? I get questions along the lines of, how often do you write? How do you outline your work? Do you write from experience or imagination? etc. These are all questions that really mean, am I doing it right? The answer I give every time is, this is how I do it, but every writer is different.
          Subtext: Yes and no.
          There is no wrong way to write, but I do believe in living as a writer. Trying new things. Trying out methods to see what works for you. Learning, being willing to learn (those are two dissimilar postures). Pushing the physical world away as long as possible, or necessary. Making sacrifices for writing. Experimentation. Openness. Honesty. The readiness to let go of whatever prejudiced notions you have about yourself and see what the other—the “shadow self”—desires. The shadow self is the writer part of you wanting to write at 3am and should not be ignored. It is the part of you bursting with ideas that need writing down. It’s a bit of a creepy bloke/dame/Mz, but that’s okay.
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         So if you feel your shadow self might be a daily writer, here we go. Here are several exercises intended to foster a daily writing practice:  

1. Let’s start easy. Think about your day. What do you do every day? Write down a brief schedule of your daily goings-on. (Example: 8am: Get up. Make breakfast. 9am: Go to work. etc.) Is there time in there for writing? Where would it best fit? Maybe you do this by week, i.e. which day of the week might be best for writing, and start there. That’s okay too. The point is to think about writing as a part of your life and where it might fit into that life. Do you only have a few minutes where you can sit down? Maybe that will be enough. If not, and you’re a writer who needs more time, find a space of time that’s longer. This time may be outside of your “preferred” writing time, so you may have to make it work. It may be late at night, or early in the morning. Maybe it’s a few weeks away. That’s okay too. Just make sure you choose more than one time slot, say 2-3 to start. Go ahead and schedule a date with your writing using whatever method works best for you, iPhone reminders, planner, spousal reminders, parental reminders, post-its, whatever. Then: stick to that plan for a while, say a few days or a few weeks. Don’t let yourself stop. Try not to miss that time, because it’s a promise to yourself. At the end, put away what you wrote for a few days, then analyze it. If you like what you created, then you can start to make this a practice. If you don’t, you’ll need to figure out a different way. It’s my hope that you like what you wrote, but again, every writer is different.
2. So you’ve carved a scrap of time away from your day, you’ve locked your spouse/cat/dog/siblings/parents/friends in a closet so they won’t bug you, you’ve turned off your wifi and you’re sitting down at the paper/computer/typewriter to write. Where do you even start? Here’s a longer suggestion borrowed from Naomi Shihab Nye, who uses William Stafford’s writing process, which has four parts.
   1. Write the date, and the location if you are not at home at the top of the paper.
   2. Write any haphazard sensory details that have come to you over the last 24 hours, or since you last wrote. The way trees look. Something bizarre that happened at work. It’s like journaling.
   3. Write some wise sayings. Broad declarations about the world. Things you wish were true. The quote for your headstone.
   4. Go back through and circle the “glittery” parts as Nye calls them, the words/phrases/ideas that you like best. Then expand on maybe one of those ideas for a few minutes, writing whatever strikes you.
3. In addition to Stafford’s process above, Nye suggests adding a list of questions to yourself. They might be questions with no answer. They might be thoughts that are plaguing you. They might be irritations. Write those down too.
4. You can develop a book of daily writing prompts or exercises that work for you. I like lists of strange words, or weird places, or professions. Or you might fill in the blank, “Today I feel . . .” or “I am not . . .” or “I want to . . .” Collect these and refer to them like an “idea book.” They might be story scraps you return to later, or images you find intriguing, or postcards you find, or other found objects. Keep them in an accordion file so they don’t get lost, or a box, or a notebook with pockets, or a favorites folder on your computer, whatever works for you.
5. Consider writing at odd times of the day. Lunch breaks are convenient for this, especially if you are lucky to be able to go walk around during lunch. Take a walk and see the world. Explore a new side street, a new coffee shop. Observe and see what strikes you. Then, at lunch, write down those thoughts. This is how poet Frank O’ Hara worked (and then later published in Lunch Poems).
6. Another good time of day is the early morning. Right when you wake up, before anyone else is awake. Go straight to your desk/couch/patio/writing space, maybe with a coffee, maybe not, and write the first thing that pops into your head. Write for about ten minutes, then go eat breakfast. Come back and read what you’ve written. The idea with this is that your brain will still be in sleepy subconscious space—the dream space. I do this a lot. What’s uncanny is that once the habit is there, you’ll start to wake up thinking about ideas, instead of scrambling to write them down before bed. Your brain gets trained to write in the morning. The side effect is that my brain now wakes me up at 6am to write because it’s used to writing at that time. Oh well. You can sleep when you’re dead, right?
7. Driving is another time you can write. I know this is weird, but it is! How often does an idea pop into your head during your commute? I keep a little recorder in my car for this purpose, so I can press record without causing a car wreck (iPhone not endorsed unless you have Siri set up that way). I speak ideas and then return to them later. Little recorders are pretty cheap, and great to keep around for writing.
8. I’ve woken up out of sleep to write before. Once, I awoke at 3AM, unable to sleep. I dragged myself out of bed, and went to my computer. I then proceeded to write down one a story that became one of my best ideas. I typed about 2k words that night, while my husband slept. Weirdly, I didn’t even feel tired the next day.

 
          These are just a few exercises to use in your daily writing. The key here is mindfulness and commitment. Developing a habit is hard. Writing is hard. But finding a way to live writing is gratifying, if it’s what you love. If you feel committing is hard, try taking a workshop instead. Give yourself goals, either via word count or via time, or via conferences or writing workshops attended. See what works for you, then do it. 

Tell us in the comments: What's your writing process? What sticks? What doesn't?