20 minutes yoga.
20 minutes meditation.
Breakfast and
animal-feeding, farewells and cleaning-up.
And then around 9 am the
day’s work begins. I try really hard to limit admin to an hour, but this rarely
happens. As a freelancer, much of my time is spent answering emails, pursuing
work, taking care of issues connected with the work I have, and of course
all the other stuff of daily life.
Ideally, I then turn off the
internet at the wall. It depends if anyone else is in the house and needs it
on. Usually, they are. So then I have to exert massive will-power to avoid the
Procrastinator’s Joy: jumping online at the least provocation - to check emails,
check tomorrow’s weather, find out what those twins from kindy are doing these
days.
To combat this, I try to set
myself a goal of what I need to do, writing-wise, that day. I work fuelled by a constant stream of tea (and thus, many trips to the bathroom). Depending on the
particular project, and also what stage of development it’s at, I’ll work
differently. If it’s verse or lyrics, I write longhand. I like to be able to
see my crossings-out, and make lists of rhymes down the side of the page. Same
with notes on a new idea – something about the looseness and physicality and
intimacy of writing longhand feels right. If I’m ready to write a draft, and if
I’m doing rewrites, it’s generally straight to the computer.
Often, I’ll be working on
more than one project simultaneously, so I’ll divide the time, giving a couple
of hours to each. And throughout the day, I’ll pause to do bits of housework
like hanging up laundry... I used to think this was avoidance, but now I
believe it’s a useful part of the process. I remember Verity once called these
‘smoothing actions’, which makes me think of a cat clawing its blanket as it
turns in circles before finally settling down.
I need to get out of the
house at some point and move. If I need to clear my head, I jump on my bicycle
and do errands. If I’m still working, I like to walk. I can think better like
that, plus it’s easy to stop and write things down. Quiet residential streets,
back lanes – no shops, too distracting.
I stop around 3 pm, when the
kids get home. Later on, I might do more work in the evening if it needs to be
done, or if I’m feeling inspired.
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