Of course you know that you are not the first person on the planet to pursue writing, but have you thought about learning some of the habits of successful writers who came before you? Myriam Gurba, the author of the memoir Mean, became interested in writing as a vocation when she was a teen. In an interview with The Writer magazine, she described researching the lives of respected authors:

“I researched specifically what their process was. How did these writers come to be writers? I took notes on practices they engaged in that I could replicate at home. I couldn’t replicate all the practices, but I could replicate some of them. So, for example, I would learn about what Sylvia Plath’s writing schedule was and what her practice was. I would go home and replicate it as a teenage kid. I taught myself to write through choosing literary ancestors and mimicking them.”

Each writer develops a writing process. Do you realize that you have a writing process? Often, the process includes a period experienced as procrastination. When it’s time to write, you first wash the dishes, go through the mail, and maybe even clean out the refrigerator. Do you find that sometimes you go to great lengths to avoid sitting down to write? When you recognize that this anxious avoidance is part of your process, you can stop berating yourself for procrastinating and, at the same time, rein in this resistance. Try making a deal with yourself that you will spend a limited amount of time preparing to sit down and write. Give yourself fifteen minutes, or however long you decide, to put in the laundry, reschedule your dental appointment, and fix your cup of tea. Understand that this avoidance/preparation time is part of your process.

Many experienced writers, who understand their writing process, replace random avoidance with some type of ritual that addresses their anxiety and lets their mind know that it’s time to write. Author Steven Pressfield describes his ritual in the introduction to his book The War of Art:

“I get up, take a shower, have breakfast. I read the paper, brush my teeth. If I have phone calls to make, I make them. I’ve got my coffee now. I put on my lucky work boots and stitch up the lucky laces that my niece Meredith gave me. I head back to my office and crank up the computer. My lucky hooded sweatshirt is draped over the chair, with the lucky charm I got from a gypsy in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer for only eight bucks in francs, and my lucky LARGO nametag that came from a dream I once had. I put it on. On my thesaurus is my lucky cannon that my friend Bob Versandi gave me from Morro Castle, Cuba. I point it toward my chair, so it can fire inspiration into me. I say my prayer, which is the Invocation of the Muse from Homer’s Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, which my dear mate Paul Rink gave me and which sits near my shelf with the cufflinks that belonged to my father and my lucky acorn from the battlefield at Thermopylae. It’s about 10:30 now. I sit down and plunge in.”

Prolific author Isabelle Allende starts a new book every year on January 8th. When asked what she does if she doesn’t know what to write about, she said she waits. She sits quietly and waits for an idea to come. Sometimes it comes right away, sometimes it takes months, but she understands that that’s part of her process and that an idea will come.

There are conditions that support your writing process. One of these conditions is some amount of solitude. Sandra Cisneros, the author of The House on Mango Street, says,

“Solitude, which most of our society sees as something negative, is sacred. That is the time for you to develop you. And I can’t repeat that enough, especially to women, because we tend to love in ways that give away all of ourselves and leave nothing for us.”

When Maya Angelou started writing a book, she famously rented a hotel room to get her needed solitude. She instructed the housekeepers not to touch anything, not to change sheets on the bed (because she never slept in it), and to remove all the pictures on the walls and any other distractions. She showed up every morning at the same time, lay down on the bed and propped her head up with one hand, and wrote in longhand, day after day:

“I have kept a hotel room in every town I’ve ever lived in. I rent a hotel room for a few months, leave my home at six, and try to be at work by six-thirty.”

Alice Walker, who has successfully published in a variety of genres, describes her process:

“I wrote every morning, or I made the space. Because part of writing is not so much that you’re going to actually write something every day, but what you should have, or need to have, is the possibility, which means the space and the time set aside—as if you were going to have someone come to tea. If you are expecting someone to come to tea, but you’re not going to be there, they may not come, and if I were them, I wouldn’t come. So, it’s about receptivity and being home when your guest is expected, or even when you hope that they will come.”

Some writers write at the same time daily. Some write a certain number of pages every day. Other writers write for a set amount of time. Some writers find that working in the same space helps, while others seek variety in their workplaces. Notice what works for you and develop your process. Then trust that you will make progress if you follow through with your process.

There is a certain mystical aspect to the art of writing; from nothing, you create something significant. Carl Sagan, a famous astrophysicist and author, honors the magic of books:

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it, and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time—proof that humans can work magic.”

If you are in the middle of a writing project and you feel lost or discouraged, trust that your writing process is sound and that it will hold you in good stead. Or perhaps you need to shore up your writing process; consider what would help you make steady progress. All the while, understand that confusion and even despair are often part of the writing process. 

If you are a writer, you are engaged in holy work. Be aware that you have a process and make sure that your process works for you. When you run into problems, that doesn’t mean that you’re a lousy writer; it just means that writing is challenging. Trust your writing process.

THE END

Talk to the Practitioner: Myriam Gurba – The Writer. https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/myriam-gurba/

Writing Wednesday: 10 Strange Superstitions of Your Favourite Writers. http://blog.paperblanks.com/2013/10/writing-wednesday-10-strange-superstitions-of-your-favourite-writers/

Reading Pressfield’s The War of Art (pt. 3: Invoking the Muse). https://christinepennylegion.com/2017/09/21/reading-pressfields-the-war-of-art-pt-3-invoking-the-muse/

Alice Walker Offers Advice on Writing – Writer’s Digest. https://www.writersdigest.com/improve-my-writing/alice-walker-uncut

The Legends of the Nittany Valley – Mount Nittany. https://nittany.org/press/the-legends-of-the-nittany-valley/