Dumbo's Feather Revisited: Of Rituals and Writers

This is going to be a bit long. I apologize in advance.

I noticed recently that my coffee ritual has become rather sloppy of late. Rather than carefully monitoring the temperature of the water and the exactitude of my scoops of ground coffee, I've been sort of winging it -- phoning it in. Thankfully, the quality of your beans will save you to a point, but only just.

I've essentially perfected the mediocre cup of great coffee.

For those who think I might've sold out with that coffee cup logo, fear not. My favorite cafe has long since closed its doors and faded into local memory.

And whither goes the coffee shop, thither followed my writing ritual...

There just aren't enough writer-friendly coffee shops in the world any more. Speak not to me of the sundrenched sterility of the Starbucks lobby. I seek a dim place of creaky chairs and enthusiastically nerdy conversations. A place of fair-to-middlin' coffee and poor lighting. Lots of places to plug in a laptop are nice, but not required. Sketchy wifi is a plus because I get more done when Facebook's siren song is muted and unreliable.

How did I get so reliant on rituals? When did I teach myself that I can only fly while clutching a feather in my trunk? And why is there a mouse wearing a drum major getup in my hat anyway?

You'll note that this is one of those posts where I laboriously link back to previous posts where I told all of you not to do the very things I'm complaining about. That's because I call out hypocrisy wherever I find it, especially in myself. And I have to remind myself that I should practice as I preach.

And no, for the record, it doesn't help. Not one bit.

Why is my coffee so pathetically mediocre and why am I not writing regularly?

It would be easy to blame my current Big Crazy Project™ which is quite a bit more physical than my usual projects. I'm supposed to be making neat things and writing about them. I've made a lot of sawdust this year, and even knitted a stocking cap, but not much with knitting together the words. I don't really know why.

Speaking of big crazy, I just built a kitchen full of cabinets from scratch. My home is in a bit of an uproar as only a kitchen remodel can make it. Blame that!

It's not the kitchen's fault. It's not because I can't really get in there to make a decent cuppa; done right, all you really need is a clean sock, a kettle and some patience.

Yes, a sock. Not that I regularly use a sock, but you can. (And many aficionados swear by it.)  But you don't find me at the bathroom sink with my socks in the coffee pot any more than you find me at the computer studiously applying words to pages.

I could blame work.

In January, after a lengthy stint of under-employment, I began working full time at the writing center, taking on additional duties of marketing and graphic design atop my usual stints of database management and other jack-of-all-trades job duties.

It's taken some getting used to, this working full-time thing. But I can't really blame that. I work a solid 40 hours a week and then I'm required by union rules and state law to knock it off. I wrote three novels working 50+ hours a week (at all hours of day or night) for Borders.

The truth is, I just haven't felt like it.  It's a stupid and simple as that.

I haven't been feeling like putting that much effort into perfect coffee or perfect prose. Hell, even mediocre prose has been a bit out of reach of late. It's not writer's block -- as you know, I don't actually believe in writer's block.

So what is it? Depression? Lack of ambition? Stress? Too much sleep? Uninspired?

Sometimes in the dark watches of the night as I lay staring at the ceiling I seriously ask myself: Am I out of ideas?  Then I get up and jot ten or eleven ideas in the notebook I keep next to my bed just to prove to myself that I can and go back to sleep.

At the end of the day, I'm stuck with the uncomfortable truth: I've just gotten sloppy. With my coffee, with my writing process. Sloppy. I allowed myself to become over-reliant on a space and defined period of time set aside to do it. Too reliant on ritual and not enough on the simple steps of getting stories from brain to page.

I've long been an advocate of approaching writing from the standpoint that amateurs wait for inspiration while the professional puts their butt in the chair and puts words on the page.

So I'm flipping my advice on rituals on its head a bit. I'm going to have to accept at some point that there's a certain amount of ritual that I require in my life. It starts with coffee this morning. And from there, I opened this blog and actually typed out a blog post. Something I've been regretfully neglecting this year.

This afternoon, over a cold sandwich, I will update the Renaissance Artisan project on my progress in that project.

Later tonight, (after the counter tops are installed and I've put up a few dozen linear feet of bead board) I will sit down to my novel-in- progress and begin the first-half rewrite. Wifi disabled, I will write until my fingers seize up and I realize it's time for bed.

And let that be my new feather and my new mouse-in-a-silly hat.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Dumbo's Feather :: Writing even when your rituals fail you

If you know me at all, you've heard about my writing ritual and very likely discussed yours. And if you've been around this blog awhile you know that for the most part I think that writing rituals are a lot of malarky.

At the very least, they are only helpful until they become a crutch.  The only thing that matters should be getting the words going on the page. Nothing should help that process so much that it gets to a point where the writing stops if you're without it.
 

Of course if you've been around that much you also know that I am a coffee drinker with a writing problem. (Apologies to the ghost of Brendan Behan.)  It's an intrinsic part of my writing life. The first amazing sip that runs through my brain in the morning, turning the lights on and starting the machinery, the warmth of the ceramic cup in my hands (I hate cardboard cups), the heady aroma of Coffea Arabica wafting through my sinuses as I sit and contemplate the next sentence, the next index card, the next plot point...

Despite all my warnings, all my deep contemplations about the ways in which habit becomes ritual, becomes crutch, becomes problem, I've allowed coffee to slip under the radar.  I've even formed an attachment to the pauses occasioned by the need to go to the counter for a fresh cup or to the kitchen to make a fresh pot.

I've even been known to refer to it as "a cup of clever."
So what happens when I don't have that?

I'm about to find out.

Two weeks ago I had a conversation with a chalk drawing and at the end of the day was told that the medicines keeping the chalk drawings away didn't mix well with coffee. I'd sipped my last cup for at least four weeks.

At first I shrugged and said "oh well".  The headaches only lasted a day or two.  But before I knew it, two weeks had passed and I hadn't had a thought that I felt was clever enough to be worth writing down.

Now there is a blank page and a blinking cursor and the deep dread of having nothing to fill the space. Because I've had to give up my morning cup of clever and nothing I've come up with has yet been worth blemishing that perfect white space.

Frailty, thou art writer.

So all of you who have heard me rant at you about how you "can't write" until you've just the right moleskine, a special pen, a particular chair, a specific song, an old typewriter, a specific computer program, or whatever... now is your chance to gloat.  

Go ahead, I earned it.

But you only get to gloat until I sort out how to get focused and get the words on the page anyway. Because this is the world of "Writer heal thyself". There are only so many hours in the day and I refuse to spend any more of them feeling sorry for myself.

"Awake" is overrated anyway. 

Muses are annoying prima donnas.  You have to be able to write without them. And you have to be able to write without all the rest too. The comfy chairs, the ideal table in the perfect cafe, the pen that fits your hand just so... they will all slip in when we least expect them to. And when they fail, we have to keep writing anyway. 

Every day. Without fail. Do the work.

I know that, no matter what the mouse in my hat tells me, the feather's not magic.  I could darn well fly all along. These are the days when discipline and practice pay off.  My butt goes in the chair, my words go on the page. With a borrowed pen on the arm of a patient bystander if necessary.

Whatever you do, whatever happens to you... Just. Keep. Writing.

Please excuse me. I just thought of something to fill that blank page that's been mocking me from the other window.

Implementation :: The Tools Are Not the Trade

Flashback Friday - This post first appeared 23 January 2010, revisiting a long-running discussion I've been having with myself on how ritualized my writing experience has become.  What if I had to give up coffee tomorrow?  The mind boggles. . .

---

Acknowledging that I'm at risk of painting with too broad a brush here I feel that I can say with assurance that on the whole, writers love rituals. Every writer's book and blog I've read talks about their ritual at some point, the ingrained habits that get them "into the zone". My writing certainly gains some sort of psychological homefield advantage when I'm writing in my "nest" or at a table in my favorite cafe.

I don't want to make it sound more metaphysical than it is, but there does seem to be some energy in those two places that agrees with me. At the very least, the effort seems greater if I write anywhere else. 


A lot is made of the implements that a writer uses and I'm no saint in this respect. I chortle periodically over some bit of trivia (like Wallace Stegner's typewriter) because it reinforces some portion of my own writing ritual. It's certainly easy to see how this can go from force of habit to becoming as superstitious about our rituals as any NHL Goalie, and slip from harmless habits into the realm of compulsive need. But I'm here to tell you that the tools are irrelevant. 


There's a tendency to get too precious about the creative act and obsess overmuch about the tools at the expense of the creation. Writer's blogs (like this one) abound with lengthy introspection on the mystique of writing, obsessing about the meditative stroke of the golden nib across a page or the percussive "ka-CHUNK" of the typewriter hammer striking the page. 


Ultimately, it's all baloney. At least insomuch as it's purely psychological, the writerly equivalent of Dumbo's feather. And I've found that as much as this psychological trick helps, it also it sets us up for writer's block. Ask yourself what happens when you lose the feather? Misplace your nice fountain pen or run out of ink for your funky old typewriter? Or (paying it back) if you can't get to your favorite writing spot? How do you keep writing on the road if your cafe table or easy chair or desk are a thousand miles away?

The only way to create and sustain a writing output is to make your writing a movable feast. Revel in your materials and your environment all you want, but always keep in mind that the pen isn't doing the writing, you are. Because in the end, writing is about sitting your butt in a chair in front of a computer, day after day and week after week, putting words on a page. 

No matter what we want to believe, it remains work, not a mystical act. I mentioned handing out Moleskine notebooks and pens at Christmas to those in my immediate vicinity who had mentioned to me the desire to write without actually writing anything. But with all due respect to my friends at Chronicle Books (the moleskine makers), a Mead spiral notebook would do just as well -- my current novel began on the back of a coffeestained napkin for heaven's sake. 


If the ideal tool or writerly setting frees your creativity in some fashion, go for it, but I'm here to tell you that the tools are irrelevant to the process and to get too wrapped up in them is to invite writers block at a crucial moment sometime in the future. 


Whether you're using a quill pen or a laptop, it's about getting from the first word to the last as effectively as possible. When the obsession with writing in a particularly "writerly" fashion becomes an obstacle to writing. Get used to writing in different places, at different times, with different instruments. The ideal time to write is when the ideas are fresh, with whatever comes to hand, whether it's a typewriter, a laptop or the pen you stole from the waitress.

But don't steal a pen from your waitress, it's not nice.

Fountain Pens, Paper and Stamps

In honor of Labor Day I'm going to try to entice you to do something laborious, something you've long since given up in favor of something easier, quicker and infinitely less beautiful than what you gave up.

I want you to write a letter.

Oh alright, this has nothing to do with Labor Day other than the fact that I'm spending the day home and it's raining so I can't go out and putter in the garden or have a barbecue or any of the traditional American 3-day-weekend pastimes  Which takes me to the woolly wilds of the worldwide web and an echo of something I wrote back in December.

The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword was a counterattack against the notion that hand writing something is somehow outmoded or a bad idea.  I think otherwise.  I propose the wild and woolly notion that to say that the advance of digital communication is no more an excuse for giving up handwriting than the advent of Adobe Illustrator meant we had to stop teaching artists to use a real paintbrush.

Which brings us to the undeniable brilliance of a blog called the Letter Writers Alliance that reawakened my love of the written word.  The handwritten word.  It's no secret that I'm a big fan of paper and ink and these guys have taken it to a wondrously obsessive level.

So yes, I implore you to write a letter.  You don't even have to lick the stamp anymore (though you might have to lick an envelope).


It's time to write something before we forget how.  Get a ballpoint, a fountain pen, a crayon or a piece of chalk, it's all the same to me.  I just want to illustrate how untrue is the subtitle of the New York Times article that "Handwriting is dying because it’s a slow and inefficient way of getting our thoughts out — a hindrance to thinking, given the alternatives..."

Baloney.

Implementation

Acknowledging that I'm at risk of painting with too broad a brush here I feel that I can say with assurance that on the whole, writers love rituals. Every writer's blog I've read talks about their ritual at some point, the ingrained habits that get them "into the zone". My writing is certainly some sort of psychological homefield advantage when I'm writing in my "nest" or at a table in my favorite cafe. I don't want to make it sound more metaphysical than it is, but there does seem to be some energy in those two places that agrees with me. At the very least, the effort seems greater if I write anywhere else. A lot is made of the implements that a writer uses and I'm no saint in this respect. I chortle periodically over some bit of trivia (like Wallace Stegner's typewriter) because it reinforces some portion of my own writing ritual. It's certainly easy to see how this can go from force of habit to becoming as superstitious about our rituals as any NHL Goalie, and slip from harmless habits into the realm of compulsive need. But I'm here to tell you that the tools are irrelevant. But there's a tendency to get too precious about the creative act and obsess overmuch about the tools at the expense of the creation. Writer's blogs (like this one) abound with lengthy introspection on the mystique of writing, obsessing about the meditative stroke of the golden nib across a page or the percussive "ka-chunk" of the typewriter hammer striking the page. Ultimately, it's all baloney. At least insomuch as it's purely psychological, the writerly equivalent of Dumbo's feather. And I've found that as much as this psychological trick helps, it also it sets us up for writer's block. Ask yourself what happens when you lose the feather? Misplace your nice fountain pen or run out of ink for your funky old typewriter? Or (paying in back) if you can't get to your favorite writing spot? How do you keep writing on the road if your cafe table or easy chair or desk are a thousand miles away? The only way to create and sustain a writing output is to make your writing a movable feast. Revel in your materials and your environment all you want, but always keep in mind that the pen isn't doing the writing, you are. Because in the end, writing is about sitting your butt in a chair in front of a computer, day after day and week after week, putting words on a page. No matter what we want to believe it's work, not a mystical act. I mentioned handing out Moleskine notebooks and pens this Christmas to those in my immediate vicinity who had mentioned to me the desire to write without actually writing anything. But with all due respect to my friends at Chronicle Books (the moleskine makers), a Mead spiral notebook would do just as well. My current novel began on the back of a coffeestained napkin for heaven's sake. If the ideal tool or writerly setting frees your creativity in some fashion, go for it, but I'm here to tell you that the tools are irrelevant to the process and to get too wrapped up in them is to invite writers block at a crucial moment sometime in the future. Whether you're using a quill pen or a laptop, it's about getting from the first word to the last as effectively as possible. When the obsession with writing in a particularly "writerly" fashion becomes an obstacle to writing. Get used to writing in different places, at different times, with different instruments. The ideal time to write is when the ideas are fresh, with whatever comes to hand - whether it's a typewriter, a laptop or the pen you stole from the waitress.