Routine saves you from giving up

…I’ve never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think that the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. So, I try to be a regular sort of fellow—much like a dentist drilling his teeth every morning—except Sunday, I don’t work on Sunday, and there are of course some holidays I take.

He told another interviewer that he was careful to give at least three hours a day to the writing project at hand; otherwise, he said, there was a risk he might forget what it’s about. A solid routine, he added, “saves you from giving up.”

I do like the fact that he acknowledged that writing is/can be a hard slog. Writing is like “a dentist drilling his teeth”?

At the moment I have so much to do that there are days it’s as though I have found the eye of the storm and am standing in it.

I find that in times like this writing helps a lot. Lists. More detailed lists – I call them “plots” in my head – I plot out what I need to do. Ideas. Snippets of things I’ve read. Thoughts. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m thinking until I’ve written it down.

Not much of it bears reading by anyone other than me, of course.

The other thing that helps is routine. I get slightly thrown if my routine is thrown. I realise it definitely helps me cope. Must be the certainty of knowing that I can predict some things, even when the rest of the day can be quite unknown.

Exercise is also good. I’ve been walking a bit most days. Probably at least about an hour each weekday. I’m glad that a big part of my daily routine is a 30-minute walk every morning with M. Sometimes we chat, other times we just walk. Either way, walking, and walking together is the thing.