Do Your Writing Routines Suffer from a Lack of Cardiofitness?

WHENEVER PEOPLE ASK me about writing, there is always a process question included, as in, “How do you actually do it?” By this, we’re talking about writing routines, and the questions can vary as to when to write (Morning? Noon? Night?) where to write (Sitting? Standing?) and with what (Pencil? Pen? Journal? Notebook? Apple? PC?) I love these questions, since they always remind me that if I am genuinely invested in helping other writers, I need to cover the practical as well as the more airy aspects of the work.

Writing Routines Vary Widely

These days, there seem to be an ever-growing number of combo platters on the where and how. Many do it on their phone while riding the subway. I recently read about Jane Friedman’s treadmill desk with no small amount of envy, thinking about how I might get a little more motion into the work.

A few months I wrote here about my morning, pre-writing routine. No, it’s not yoga, meditation or Pilates, and while many of you will be glad to hear that, others will not, and for that, well, them’s the breaks, as we say in my house. My approach to writing has never been terribly spiritual, and errs more on the side of the hard chair and the strong brew, but begins every day by reading thirty minutes worth of an author interview from the Paris Review, meaning that my writing routine has never been terribly aerobic, either. That is, until now.

How I Shook Up My Writing Routine

This morning I decided to shake it up and combine my morning Paris Review perusal with the stationary bike thinking that, well, anything might happen. And it did.

It’s from the newest edition of the 60-year-old magazine came an interview with Ursula Le Guin, in which she answers the important questions of what books do for us, when she says:

“A very good book tells me the news, tells me things I didn’t know, or didn’t know I knew, yet I recognize them – yes, I see, yes, this is how the world is. Fiction – and poetry and drama – cleanse the doors of perception.

All the arts do this. Music, painting, dance say for us what can’t be said in words. But the mystery of literature is that is does say it in words, often straightforward ones.”

Want to try my Paris Review morning mediation? You can. Go to the Paris Review website and get reading. Or, you can do as I do, and keep a copy of  the Paris Review Women Writers at Work collection at your elbow. It’s a good addiction.