Coffee Novelist

 Writing practice

 

I spent several hours yesterday morning actually writing. Sitting on my chair at my laptop grinding away on some plot points on my follow up to The Trier. For the record the working title is The Trier goes to London. It is set in 1675, or thereabouts, because that was the year Charles II of England issued a proclamation that ordered the closing of all of London’s coffee houses. Why, you ask??

 

You’ll have to read the book when it comes out.

 

Later in the day I went to my local gym to do the editing on the work I did earlier and write more.  The writing I did on the cross trainer, on my yoga mat, in the sauna, and on my meditation, pillow will show up later today when I work again on TGL. And again, the next day, and again next week.

This is my writing practice. The source line for this post from Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act, is “good habits create good art (his word, not mine)”.  My choice is writing. And I would even leave out the good. Why complicate all of this?

Or practice writing

I cannot make it to the local gym every day. If I make it twice a week, I’m having a good (not to complicate it) week. The other days, I do a five- or eight-minute yoga/meditation practice before work. I feel like this all adds up to keeping my mind in that wonderful state mentioned in the earlier post.

 

I’ve been doing this for years now. I know it works for me. It has to because I, like most of us, have limited time to actually sit down and write. It doesn’t pay the bills, and I have no one pounding on my front door demanding I get to work on the next novel.

 

So, in a few minutes when I click on to Trier goes to London, the work yesterday will look different, will tell me what to do, and give me today’s – not sure what to call it- not content, not word count- today’s opportunity to move on. Don’t like opportunity here either though.

 

Not to worry because I’m going to yoga class tomorrow.