On the struggle to show up and write

And how to get back on track.

Gratuitous photo of Paris

When I interviewed the novelist Curtis Sittenfeld for the In Writing podcast, she shared some practical advice. Here’s an edited excerpt.

I think so many things that help your writing, or my writing, they have to do with time management and organisation. It’s not stuff about crafting sentences.

It’s planning ahead mentally, and then also clearing off the desk, if you have a desk, or thinking about where will you sit and write. And also scheduling it and treating it like it’s an appointment with another person. Look at your calendar and decide ahead of time when your writing time will be. Write it in your calendar, and then when it is your writing time, sit in your writing place and don’t do anything else. It’s OK not to write, but don’t get online, don’t read a book, don’t start cleaning, just sit there. And if, because you’re having this quiet mode, you think, ‘Oh my god, I should have answered such and such email three weeks ago,’ – write it on a piece of paper next to you but don’t do it. Set yourself up to succeed in those moments.

The idea of treating an appointment with yourself like it’s an appointment with another person was revelatory to me at the time, and has stuck in my mind ever since. I can’t bear anyone thinking of me as unreliable, and I would never stand someone up or cancel at the last minute… unless that person was me, in which case I’d ditch me soon as look at me.

It’s also, for me at least, a matter of routine. Five years ago I met my now-friend, Karly, when she moved into my spare room as a lodger. I soon noticed that almost every time I saw her, she was wearing gym gear; she loves to work out and does it daily. I have a much, much less disciplined approach to exercise, which is why as I type this, I can’t remember the last time I did any.

‘If you want to stick with it, you have to make it part of your routine,’ Karly told me. ‘You have to put your gym kit on in the morning and make it so that it’s not even a question of whether you’re going to work out – it’s just what time and how.’

I never became a daily worker-outer, but I did get to the point where I was exercising three or four times a week, and I did that via Karly’s method – I treated it as a given, and I went to the gym often enough that I stopped having an argument with myself before every single visit. (It continued to work well until the pandemic happened, the gym closed, and I lost all my good habits.) Anyway, I find that the same is necessary for writing: if I don’t do it often, I don’t do it at all, which is the situation I’ve found myself in recently.

On Monday, I arrived in Paris. I’ve rented out my London flat and I’m flat-sitting for friends here for a while. Part of my excuse for this was that coming here would help me to focus on my MA dissertation, which really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but nevertheless here I am, sitting in front of my laptop at a friend’s dining table in Paris, pretending that being here is crucial to the process.

Since I got ill I’ve been unproductive and uninspired, so my new plan is that for the rest of the summer, I’ll have a daily writing appointment with myself, and I’ll try to treat it like an uncancellable appointment with another person. I might even have to put it in my diary.

What about you? Do you have a creative routine – and if so, do you treat it like a commitment to someone else? Or do you work ad hoc, when the mood strikes or when you can fit it in around other responsibilities?

For new subscribers (hello! THANK YOU), here’s a post I wrote in early June containing three more get-writing tricks that I’ve found helpful:

3 ways to break out of feeling stuck

The third one is about getting together with others to write – and if you’re a paid subscriber and you like that idea, you can join me and the In Writing community for an hour of writing on Sunday 7 August.

Unfortunately the latest twist in my never-ending post-Covid saga is that I have laryngitis and my voice has disappeared, so there’s no audio version of this newsletter today – I’m sorry. I’ll be back next Thursday, and hopefully I’ll have bulked up my word count and sorted out my vocal cords by then. Good luck with your writing this week.