Rituals are a good signal to your
unconscious that it is time to kick in.—Anne Lamott, BIRD BY BIRD
Rituals help us change modes. When I enter a Catholic church, I dip my finger in the holy water font and make the sign of the cross on my forehead. It helps me transition to a more spiritual place. Jews light candles on Friday when the sun goes down, signaling the beginning of the Sabbath. Parents shop for clothes with kids at the end of August to get them into school mode. Baking treats puts us in the holiday spirit.
For writers, rituals counteract inertia and trigger the desire to write. When I'm having trouble shifting into writing mode, I make tea or put on instrumental music—Ravi Shankar, Mozart, Debussy, John Coltrane. Music helps me change my frame of mind or transition from busy work, errands, social occasions, or even working on articles to focusing on more creative work. Sometimes I sit somewhere else in the house or go down to Café Zinc to write.
There's no end to what you can do to create your own rituals.
When she needs fresh ideas, mystery writer Barbara Seranella goes for a brisk walk or a swim, or she goes for a drive with rock and roll blasting. She says this works for her because she does it so infrequently.
Chris Bohjalian says he begins by rewriting the last paragraph or two, or even an entire page, from his work the day before. "Hemingway recommended it and I think it's wonderful," says Bohjalian. "You immediately get reacquainted with the story. You are editing and the more you edit, the better the book is going to be. It works as a runway: You literally ramp up to speed to get going.
"And while I don't know precisely what's going to happen in that scene—I don't know what my characters are going to do—before I fall asleep every night, I think about what I'm going to write the next day."
Preparing your work space for the next day is a sort of ritual, too. If your writing space is messy, it's likely you won't be as inspired as you would be if you leave it tidy and neat. If you leave the mess for the next day, you might end up using your entire fifteen minutes of writing time just cleaning up.
Bohjalian, a self-proclaimed obsessive-compulsive, adds: "I do have to have a perfectly feng shui-ordered library; I have to have everything in its place when I start working—there can't be papers on this wonderful 150-year-old pumpkin pine table on which I write."
And for some, a ritual can become a pragmatic reality, as simple and necessary as keeping track of how much writing gets done each day. Tom Paine, author of The Pearl of Kuwait, says, "I used to be a person who stumbled around, fiddling with this or that. Then the book became overdue. My editor said, 'You've got to show us something.' So my ritual became checking off the calendar every day. That I wrote five pages that day made me ecstatic."
And for others, there are props. Freelance writer and author Kelly James-Enger says she wears a hat to change mind-sets from nonfiction (which helps her earn the bulk of her living) to fiction. She credits a blue canvas hat with grommets for ventilation ("I've found that writing sex scenes can make you sweaty," says James-Enger) with making it possible for her to finish and sell two novels. "It's goofy, but then again I only wear it to write fiction. With the hat, I don't check e-mail. I don't answer the phone. I don't think of new article ideas. I don't work on current assignments. I simply work on my novel. My hat tells my brain, and my itchy, distractible self, one thing—it's fiction time, baby. If my husband asks me something, I yell, 'I'm wearing my hat!' If I have to stop for some reason, to answer the phone or get the door, off comes the hat. When I'm finished with my fiction quota for the day, I take my hat off, where it will be waiting tomorrow."
In India, when you enter an ashram, you slip out of your shoes and leave them, along with the world and all its worries, at the door. While you don't necessarily have to remove your shoes—or wear a hat—to get in the writing mood, you might consider doing something symbolic. Whatever your ritual, in effect you're saying you've taken all your worries about what people will think, all your fears of rejection, all that garbage about how you thought you could never be a writer—you've taken all that useless stuff and you've left it outside your door. The ritual can be your entryway into your writing time.
Try different rituals before you begin writing to see what works for you. Slip out of your shoes and leave them at the door. Change your clothes or dress up, even. If you're writing fiction, dress in the clothing that your main character would wear. Stay in your jammies and write in bed, or dress as if you are going to a job and go out to a café or restaurant to write. Or write naked (just don't leave the house!).
Put on music, make tea, meditate. Perform a ritual as a way of saying, "This is my show, starting ... right ... now!" And for fifteen minutes, stay glued to the page.