People sometimes ask if I write every day. They're incredulous when I answer that I write five days a week, Monday through Friday, and keep as close to banker's hours as I can manage. They tell me that they can't imagine it. They'd get lonely. Or distracted. Or bored. They need more stimulation. The track of this particular conversation often ends up with the person telling me that they'll write a book when they retire, or hire someone to ghostwrite their life story.
You must be so disciplined, they say.
And I stand there with a smile frozen in place, not wanting to be rude, but not knowing how to respond.
It's my job, I want to say. It has nothing to do with discipline.
But where do you find the inspiration? they'll ask.
I sit down every day at around the same time and put myself in the path of inspiration, I sometimes say, if the person seems genuinely interested. If I don't sit down, if I'm not there working, then inspiration will pass right by me, like the right guy in a romantic comedy who's on the other side of the party but the girl never sees because she's focused on her total loser of a date.
It's hard to overestimate the importance of habit. Of routine. I've had students who have full-time jobs-one who comes to mind is a psychologist and AIDS researcher and the mother of two young children, who wrote her first novel in the predawn hours. Another student, a book editor, worked on her first novel for precisely one uninterrupted hour before heading to her office job each day. So much can be accomplished in one focused hour, especially when that hour is part of a routine, a sacred rhythm that becomes part of your daily life.
In the yoga and meditation practices that have become integral to my writing day, I rarely feel like unrolling my mat. There's always something more pressing to do. Searching online for that perfect black leather jacket on sale, for instance. But I know that if I just begin the motions, the ritual, of setting up my practice, I will probably overcome the pull of high fashion, or whatever the day's distraction happens to be. If I light a fire in the fireplace, then the lavender-scented candle; if I get my music set up and unroll my mat; if I put the crystals on the floor that have become part of my routine, then the next thing I know, I'm in a sun salutation, and an hour goes by. I'm in lotus position, counting my breath. I haven't waited to be in the mood. I've just gone ahead and done it anyway, because that's what I've been doing for years now.
It's the same with writing, which is a practice like any other. If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it. A runner suits up, stretches, begins to run. An inventor trudges down to his workroom, closing the door behind him. A writer sits in her writing space, setting aside the time to be alone with her work. Is she inspired doing it? Very possibly not. Is she distracted, bored, lonely, in need of stimulation? Oh, absolutely, without a doubt it's hard to sit there. Who wants to sit there? Something nags at the edges of her mind. Should she make soup for dinner tonight? She's on the verge of jumping up from her chair-in which case all will be lost-but wait. Suddenly she remembers: this is her hour (or two, or three). This is her habit, her job, her discipline. Think of a ballet dancer at the barre. Plié, elevé, battement tendu. She is practicing, because she knows that there is no difference between practice and art. The practice is the art.
