Organizing Your Writing Life: Practice versus Perfect
With creative work, it’s all about the practice. Showing up each day or each working session. Engagement with whatever the work brings to you and you bring to it. The surprise, delight, and discovery, as well as the persistence and determination, required.
No mention of perfection here. A great relief to me (maybe you too). Practice is the opposite of perfect. It’s the process, not as much the result.
I spent many years figuring out my ideal writing practice. Everyone’s approach to their creative life is so individual, as it should be. So how you do your practice is totally up to you. The only questions I ended up considering, as my practice grew and became a solid part of my writing life were the two below. I revisit them all the time, making adjustments as needed. Because life changes happen.
Is it sustainable?
Does it bring me (mostly) joy and satisfaction?
I wanted a good writing practice. To me, that meant it answered yes to the questions above. It was sustainable—it fit the rest of my life, it didn’t take away from my other responsibilities of work, childcare, eldercare, family, friends, health, and fun. It brought me satisfaction and joy because writing is what I’m called to do. It makes the world make sense to me.
A good writing practice ended up having five aspects that I had to work with. Tweak as needed. If one got neglected, the practice began to not be sustainable or satisfying.
Five aspects to build your practice
Like anything else we practice, it takes time and trial to find what works for us. These five aspects were “make or break” for me. As my non-writing life changed or new responsibilities crept in, these five had to adjust. Sometimes it took negotiation with my family. Sometimes it took a total reworking.
Permission and privacy
Where to write
When to write
Inspiration and rituals
How to begin and end
Some of these will be no-brainers for you—you’ve already got them covered. Others might be new ideas, worth considering. When I’m not writing regularly, when something is “off” about my practice, I look back on these five to see what’s not being supported.
The goal with a sustainable practice is making it a routine. You don’t question or resist it. You just do it. An exercise program that works is one that happens almost automatically. Anything that you want to make a regular part of your life must have some automatic element. It’s not negotiable.
For instance, if you have to clear off the dining room table (full of kids’ projects, bill paying, paperwork) each time you want to write, the second aspect (where to write) is under constant reworking—it’s always being negotiated. That doesn’t work to make a sustainable practice. Or if your teenage daughter shares your computer, you don’t have the first aspect (permission and privacy) in place.
These were two examples from my past students who struggled to make a sustainable writing practice. I cringed at both. But they were real, and they explained why the writing wasn’t happening.
Taking care of these five does not take away the creativity, not at all. It makes it happen.
Permission and privacy
Making your writing practice legit is a struggle for many of us. We have lives that demand our attention. What’s more important, the kid’s birthday party or the short story you’re in the middle of, when it comes down to the wire? Or your boss’s demand that you work overtime to complete a project when you had planned to leave work and go right to the coffee shop to write for two hours before dinner?
Nobody can give us permission to make our writing practice legit, except ourselves. So the first thing is to ask yourself, Where does writing fall in my life priorities? Can I stand up for what it will take from other responsibilities? Can I give myself permission to write regularly?
I find this takes negotiation. First, with self. Some writers block out times on their calendars each week to start, just to begin to feel what it’s like to have dedicated writing time. Second, with family. Having a family meeting where you let everyone know the importance of your writing, to you, and your wish to make room in the family schedule for dedicated time can be both scary and exhilarating. We are empty nesters now, but I still sit down with my spouse, also a creative artist, and talk about my writing wishes, what I need to keep my practice going in the face of scheduling demands.
I do find that when I begin to stand up for my writing, other parts of my life suddenly get busier, as if to test my resolve. It’s uncanny. So I’ve learned to expect that and pursue my dream anyway.
Privacy is another negotiation. Do you have space where you can be undisturbed to write? Perhaps, if the answer is no, you can do what one of my students did and take back a grown child’s bedroom or even build a writing room in a walk-in closet. Both these writers found huge relief in the privacy they suddenly had. Not all of us can have perfect studios, but we can have portable writing lives and a local coffee shop where we sit and write among strangers, often the best kind of privacy.
What might work for you?
Where to write
Finding your ideal place to write is a work-in-progress for many writers. I toggle between laptop in the living room, coffee shop in the next town, and my studio. To my surprise, I found it easy to write among strangers (coffee shop) or even in a common room with my family if everyone was occupied. But quite often I need to be completely alone, with the door closed, not even my dogs present, to really dive deep into it.
Distractions come in all flavors. I used to set up in my garden, which is very private and beautiful, but my gardener self would interrupt—I’ll just pull that weed over there, this plant looks like it needs water. Writing outdoors, for me, doesn’t work as well. Even looking out a window is not ideal. I need to be contained in the small world of my laptop or notebook.
Libraries are great. I spent many late afternoons at our local library, seated at one of the reference tables, completely absorbed in my writing. People came and went around me, but I felt isolated and private.
Being out of the house was a good step when my books were on deadline. I needed to have completely uninterrupted time. Of course, I turned off the ringer on my phone and quite often the wi-fi on my laptop, just to keep me from toggling to check email.
Where do you like to write?
When to write
I’m an early morning person. I love being up before everyone else. When my son was a teenager, I worked it out with my spouse who would take morning childcare (getting him fed and off to school, with homework in backpack), and I got to closet myself in my studio. I didn’t even change out of my pajamas, some mornings—the time was too precious. If I got up early (by 6 or so), I could get one to two hours of glorious writing time.
After my writing session, I rejoined the family and re-entered the day, which included work, household stuff, errands, email, and the like.
I tried, if I could manage it, to get a second writing session either in late afternoon or after dinner. Depended on my energy, though, and whether I felt the need to be with the family in the evening. But the morning time was sacrosanct.
A colleague once talked about an exercise to determine the best time of day to write. If you’re still working this out, you might try making a list of how you spend 24 hours. See what you tend to do at what time of day or night. When you feel most productive and creative. When your energy slumps and you can’t do much. Then choose your writing time, if possible, in one of the creative time slots.
When is your favorite time to write?
Inspiration and rituals
This next aspect of a satisfying, sustainable writing practice was one I came across after years of calling myself a writer. I’ve written about the need for inspiration many times in this newsletter, and I’ve touched on the need for rituals too, but I’ll give an overview/recap here.
Inspiration is what keeps us going. It feeds the creative person. Artists, like myself as a painter, get inspiration before a studio session by looking at other art or an inspiring scene, like a landscape or the way light hits the side of an object or a person’s face. Or perhaps inspiration comes from something that has happened, politically or culturally, that demands a response. Writers get inspiration from other writers’ work—I read poetry, often, before beginning to write. They also respond to feelings about what’s happening in the world, in their lives. A loss or a change, a trauma, needs to be elucidated on paper, so the writing is inspired by our history too.
Keeping a fund of inspiration handy is part of my sustainable writing practice. I have many poetry books in my studio. I read other novelists or short story writers when I am working on fiction. Essayists when I am working on nonfiction.
Some writers listen to music—some even make soundtracks of their books to inspire them.
Rituals are the foundation of practice, and if you think this is too woo for you, consider the small steps you do, almost unconsciously, to prepare to write. What’s the lighting like? Do you have a favorite pen or notebook? Do you listen to music or prefer silence? Do you have to have a certain chair? A certain table or desk? Do you have a favorite beverage or snack that “tells” you it’s time to settle in and write?
Because rituals do that—they tell us, subconsciously, that we have permission. We can begin.
I love the Observation Deck by Naomi Epel, Roger Von Oech’s Creative Whack Pack, and magnetic poetry as rituals to start. They give inspiration, but regular use also creates a positive ritual.
Again, this is just a tool—nothing magical about it—to trigger the creative self to start the dreamy space that writing is all about.
What rituals and inspiration do you use?
How to begin and end
I also didn’t pay much attention to this part of writing practice until many books and years had passed, then I realized I had a certain way to begin my writing session and end it that made it more satisfying.
The goal of a satisfying beginning is eagerness to start—no horror of the blank page.
The goal of a great ending is acknowledgment of what you’ve created, kind of celebrating the fact that one more writing session has taken place, and setting up the next session.
They work together. The ending actually fortifies the beginning, so let’s start with some ideas for that.
When I end a writing session, I try to plan in five minutes to do these things:
save and back up my file
make note of what I might do next with the scene or chapter
write down a few questions as prompts for the next writing time
send the new file to my gmail so I can read it on my phone later that evening, if I want
When I begin a writing session, I do whatever ritual I enjoy, such as reading a poem or a section from a craft book. But if I’ve ended the last session well, I already have many ways/ideas to begin this new one. I can read over what I wrote (either on the phone via gmail or on my laptop). I can begin working with one of the questions or prompts. I can look at my notes.
Rarely do I face a blank page with trepidation. There’s too much eagerness, which is my sign of a good session ahead.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
All of these elements are ideal, and you may not have all of them in place yet. Spend time this week thinking about your current writing practice and your hope for a better, more sustainable and satisfying one.
I suggest freewriting about both. First, take the temperature of your current practice: spend 10 minutes describing how you write now, going through these five aspects. Rate your satisfaction with each on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being very satisfying and 1 very low.
Then make a wish list of what’s missing, where you’d like to strengthen. How can you take one step this week to bring in something new?
What did you learn?