From The Creative Independent:
Do you have a structured daily writing routine?
I have an unstructured daily writing routine. On a writing day, I do a lot of things that might seem kind of psychotic taken together. I basically wake up around noon. I have a nocturnal writing schedule, and I spend all day just trying to soak up information, trying to fill myself up so I have something to work from. Then about 12 o’clock when my partner goes to sleep, I sit down and I start writing. I think it’s kind of an unhealthy ritual. It’s an all day ritual. In some sense, it’s totally unformed, but in another sense it takes up the entire day without breaks. I’m always just worrying and trying to wind myself up and work myself into the problem that I’m going to write about.
How often do you journal for yourself?
I always have a journal with me. The journals kind of filter or restrain what I see. I try to only put things in there that exist in the world of the project the journal is intended for. When I’m writing down fiction, I have a separate journal for that, and I try to keep myself from mixing other things in there. When you go and read over it or when you’re stuck and writing a non-fiction piece, and you hit a piece of information that doesn’t belong at all, it can be really jarring for me. So the journals are there for extemporaneous thought, but they’re also narrower than an all-purpose journal. Maybe I need an all-purpose journal, too.
You and your partner, your husband Alex Gilvarry, are both authors. What are some ways you make time for each other’s creative practices?
I had never been with someone who was a writer, too, and I wouldn’t say it’s something I have to have in a relationship, but it’s been really different and really great to be with someone who’s always got part of their mind in their book project, too. It means that you have a person who understands when you’re not wholly present because you have some weird idiosyncratic problem that you created for yourself worrying you in the back of your mind. It means that I don’t feel guilty when I talk about this non-existent, self-created problem over dinner or whatever because it’s really bothering me. It’s not that we always have the right solutions for each other’s problems, but it’s a total freedom to share problems. You don’t worry that your problem won’t make sense to someone else.
. . . .
My parents both write. My dad used to teach me how to write my high school papers standing behind me and watching every sentence I wrote and if it was wrong, he’d say, “It shouldn’t read that way. Go back, delete it, rewrite it.” It was so incredibly frustrating and I don’t think it was a good way to teach, but it definitely got me prepared for a high-level of frustration in writing and that has a lot to do with my process. I get very worked up when I write. I’m a very slow writer. Half of what I write, I delete right away. Another half of what’s left, I delete the next day. It’s a lot of moving backwards and forwards and feeling stuck, but eventually it all accumulates.
. . . .
I think writing was a kind of universal way of processing things that happened. I think some people process visually and they can work out a lot of feelings and a lot of thoughts that they have through drawing or sculpting or arranging images. For me, something exists more once I write it down.
Link to the rest at The Creative Independent