How do we write?
Supposedly Benjamin Franklin, after depriving himself of sleep, would sit with metal balls in his hands, his arms dangling at his sides. He would fall asleep, the balls would hit the floor: Ben would wake, snatch up a pen, and begin writing whatever rushing thought filled his head that somnolent moment. Very differently, Balzac would slug down something like thirty cups of coffee, masturbate until he was about to orgasm, halt, write, and repeat. For these writers, the method was to write at the precipice of some strained psychological or physical state (deprivation).
And writers these days? Less strained, at least according to responses to What’s your ritual? posted on Big Other. Emma Straub probably writes like most of us: anywhere, as long as it’s quiet, comfortable (pillows seem to be a favorite), and there’s a laptop at her fingertips. Here she describes her years through the ‘writing room,’ from a cramped New York loft to a dark bedroom in Wisconsin to a Malibu Peach-painted office in her new house. She spends most of her time writing in bed (like, noted in her post, Edith Wharton), which seems a whole lot more enjoyable than scratching out a thought deep into the (probably frigid New England) night, lumbago setting in, the sound of metal balls rolling across the floor.
So, what’s your writing ritual?
Note: More writing methods detailed in Rivka Galchen’s, “From the Pencil Zone: Robert Walser’s Masterworklets” in Harper’s Magazine.
Related: Daniel Alarcon just came out with a book entitled The Secret Miracle: A Novelist’s Handbook, in which he probes the methods writers use to start, push through, and finish their novels.
4 responses
I’ve been researching Ben Franklin’s life for the past seven years, and that story is not true. I’ve heard the same story about a famous inventor, whose name escapes me right now (I hate getting old), but supposedly he stole his best ideas from his Negro servant.
My writing ritual is to set aside some time to write, then read something vaguely related to my topic, in order to finally stop procrastinating and actually write something. I finally finished my second draft of my book about the slaves affected by Franklin, so my methods are slow, but they work . . . eventually.
Now if I could just find a way to re-grow my frontal lobes, I’d be in good shape.
THOMAS EDISON.
I have no ritual. I write as much as I can. On the bus, waiting for the bus, at work. Actually you could probably call my ritual Jamming The Writing In and the Art of Time Theft.
I’ve just started developing a ritual, although my output is still pretty low.
I go to a coffee shop with wi-fi (preferably with outside tables where I can smoke, and the fewer teens gabbing about bad sex the better).
I write for about an hour, then break for reading. I repeat this two or three times, depending on the day.
Iced coffee, black, in case you were wondering.
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