“…a writer works alone, indoors, in a room, on a chair, with the door shut.  Any young person who wonders what his or her chances are of becoming a writer ought to assess their ability to deal with solitude and, figuratively speaking, an entire working life thrashing around in inspissated darkness.  It has been said that writing is a rat race in which you never get to meet the other rats.”
Paul Theroux, Fresh Air Fiend

I’ve been re-reading Paul Theroux’s “Fresh Air Fiend”, an essay he wrote which was included in a collection of the same name.  The quote above is from the first paragraph of that essay, and it struck me as an accurate observation about the act of writing.

I do work alone, indoors, in a room, on a chair.  If my office had a door, I’d shut it.  For now, I settle for closing my curtain dividers.  Some writers take this to the extreme.  John Cheever worked in a windowless basement room.  Raymond Carver preferred to work inside his car.  (source)

Doing creative work alone, especially during the first stages, has its advantages.

• Concentration. In his book “On Writing”, Stephen King talked about writing your first draft with the door shut.  First of all, you won’t be open to the random whims of the world around you, whether it’s your family, the household pet, or your outgoing friends.  Shutting your door gives you the time and space to do your work without distractions.
• Purity. Working alone often means that the voice you will hear the loudest is your own.  Giving volume to your own voice gives your work purity and uniqueness, untainted by what you think others might prefer to hear.  This makes the act of shutting one’s door symbolic as well.  You don’t just shut a physical door, but you temporarily close your mind off to potential criticism and praise of your work.  Right now, it’s the work itself that matters.
• Seriousness. The fact that you are giving your work its own closed space shows that you take it seriously.  You are not to be disturbed, just like the big shot CEO who won’t take phone calls during certain hours of the day.

Sometimes, however, too much solitude can be detrimental to the work.  As writers or artists, we often need fresh perspectives and insights.  We can’t get these if we’re in a room by ourselves most of the time.

Also, we need other random and unexpected things to stimulate creativity.  Unless we go about redecorating and rearranging our work rooms every week, our work space becomes an all too familiar habit and we start overlooking the details.  Even then, I doubt that most of us have the time and energy to devote to redecorating regularly.

So how do we do our work well without suffocating ourselves indoors?  Where do we get the stimuli that will help us generate new ideas? The obvious answer, of course, is to head outside.

This is why it comes no surprise that in his essay, Theroux talks about how kayaking is necessary activity for him as a writer. Near the end of the essay, he writes “If passion implies escape …then passion is the right word for how I feel about setting off in a small boat…. I give thanks for this little craft, because without it, a career of writing would be like a life sentence in solitary confinement.  So it was writing that forced me to become a fresh air fiend, and that madness, that passion, has enlightened me, as the greatest passions ought to.”

While I can’t exactly set off in a small boat whenever I want, I have my own activities that balance out the quiet solitude of writing indoors.  One of my favorite of these activities is carpentry, which I’ve already discussed in a previous blog post.  I also take long walks after work, and if so inclined, I do a bit of gardening.  These activities give me the much needed mental rest and fresh air that allow me to come back to my work with a different - and hopefully wiser - perspective.

Do you work better alone?  Do you have any outdoor activities that balance this out?  How do these activities affect your work?

Image by Joe Zlomek from sxc.hu

I recently wrote an article entitiled “Making Time for Your Pre-work Rituals” over at Web Worker Daily.  If you’re the type of person who goes through several routine tasks before you get down to work, such as cleaning your office or writing to your friends, the article might be of interest to you.  Here are some of the highlights:

Whether you clean your office or have a more elaborate routine, pre-work rituals are an essential part of your workday. Here are some ways in which they help:

• Builds your mindset. You might not be aware of it, but pre-work rituals can help you establish your work rhythms for the rest of the day.
• Keeps you energized. Before you start work, whether your workday has just begun or you’re returning from a short break, it’s important to have rituals that will energize you and allow you to regroup after grueling mental gymnastics.
• Shifts your perspective. This is especially true for the things you do during breaks.  For me, I find that walking my dog or working on a carpentry project for a brief period allows me to stop my train of thought and focus on something else.  After I’m done with that, I go back to my work with a fresh perspective and approach it in unexpected ways.

If you can identify with these ideas, feel free to read the article.

Personally, my pre-work rituals include making tea, eating breakfast, and typing up whatever novel I happen to be reading at the time.  After a few minutes of typing, I get caught up in the rhythm of pounding the keyboard and start work on my own stuff.

Do you have any pre-work rituals?

Your peak hours are the times of the day when you are most creative and focused.  During these hours, you get more work done compared to the rest of the day.  Many writers recognize their own need to work during these hours, implementing a schedule that works around them.

I recently read an article on James Bond author Ian Fleming, with the following picturesque description of his writing schedule:

“Rising early for a swim in the aquamarine waters in the cove below his idyllic Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye, Fleming tapped away at his Remington portable typewriter with six fingers for three hours in the morning and an hour in the afternoon — 2,000 words a day, a completed novel in two months…”
Source: “Remembering Fleming, Ian Fleming” by John F. Burns, from The New York Times

Victorian Novelist Anthony Trollope had a more rigorous writing schedule of “250 words per quarter of an hour between 5:30 and 8:30 in the morning” (source here).  Other notable morning writers were Tolstoy ad Rousseau.  Sylvia Plath, who was a mother, would write from 4:00 to 8:00 in the morning - before her children would wake up.  Dostoevsky, on the other hand, wrote from around 11:00 in the evening to 6:00 the following morning (source here, and here).

As for me, I prefer starting my work at 3:00 am, and I stop at around 3 to 5 hours later.  Getting up early allows me to get more done in less time.

There could be several reasons why this is so.  In the early morning, the air is still cool and I avoid the sticky, uncomfortable tropical noon temperature.  Also, during this time, both the pets and the people in my house are still asleep, giving me less distractions to deal with. If I don’t get up early enough to work during my peak hours, it’s likely that I’ll have to spend the entire day working on something that would’ve taken only 3 hours to do if I woke up on time.

This brings me to the next point - you must guard your peak hours with your life.  This means closing instant messaging programs, shutting the door at your office, and turning off the ringer of your phone.  Even “minor” work tasks should be prohibited, such as checking email, going through your feed reader,  sending out invoices, or playing around with Facebook.  This is your time to create, and this time is precious.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should only work during your peak hours, but it might help to start on time for them.  Your ability to meet these hours can be the difference between productivity and idleness, or doing creative work and procrastination.

What are your peak working hours?  How does missing those hours affect your productivity?

Image by Luis Alves from sxc.hu