Getting Ready to Write: Rituals vs. Distractions

March 6, 2005 by John Hewitt

By Janis Butler Holm

You tend to circle your work before actually beginning it–you clean up your work space, organize the papers on your desk, back up your hard drive, and so on. Though you’ve tried not to do these things before writing, you can’t seem to focus until you’ve completed your routine. And you’re wondering: Is this behavior normal?

It’s probably normal for you. Though some writers can work anywhere, anytime, under any conditions, most are not so lucky. Most of us move more slowly into a creative frame of mind, and some of us mark that movement with clear, discrete steps. We always pay bills, or listen to music, or make the bed, or read for half an hour before sitting down to write. We put on the shabby terry cloth robe or the favorite plaid shirt. We pour the cup of coffee, the swig of orange juice, the shot of bourbon. We position ourselves in this chair and not that one. We must have lined paper or unlined, the blue pen or the black.

When we establish a distinct pattern of transition from one mode to another, we create a kind of structure, a routine that can serve as mental and physical preparation. Repeating a particular series of acts before writing can be a way of invoking the creative spirit–just as, in many cultures, religious rituals can prepare believers for communion with their gods. In more mundane terms, pre-writing rituals provide a kind of mindless activity that allows us to detach and to refocus. As the mind and body go through the motions, we begin to channel our energies toward the work ahead.

However peculiar our pre-writing behavior may seem to ourselves or to others, it is healthy so long as it serves its function: to prepare us for our task. When our routine takes us where it is supposed to, there is no need to change it. But if what we do before writing is actually a way of avoiding writing, or if it takes up too much of our working time, or if it becomes an end in itself, change is a necessity. When writing rituals become an elaborate form of procrastination, some behavior modification is in order.

If you feel that your pre-writing activities are really hurting, not helping, your efforts to be productive, take a look at Jane Burka and Lenora Yuen’s PROCRASTINATION: WHY YOU DO IT, WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1990 [reprint]; ISBN 0-201-55089-X). Burka and Yuen offer a sensitive and intelligent account of why human beings develop delaying behaviors and, even better, outline a program for managing procrastination. Based on both personal and clinical experience, the book is full of practical techniques for circumventing the fears and anxieties that keep procrastinators from achieving their goals.

If your pre-writing activities are generally helpful but you sometimes use them to avoid work, try altering your routine slightly, to make avoidance less feasible. Consider Dorothea Brande’s advice to writers who put off everything until they’ve had their morning coffee: “[B]uy a thermos bottle and fill it at night. This will thwart your wily unconscious in the neatest fashion. You will have no excuse to postpone work while you wait for your stimulant” (BECOMING A WRITER [Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1981 (reprint); ISBN 0-87477-164-1], p. 174). Similarly, you might try cleaning your work space and backing up that hard drive a few days before you’re actually scheduled to begin a writing project. As Brande suggests, planning ahead can make it harder to justify useless delay.

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