daily routines

I don't know why I hadn't blogged this weeks ago! It came up in conversation yesterday and reminded me.

Daily Routines are taken from magazines, websites, books and newspapers and depict how writers, artists and many other interesting people live their days with the little rituals that make each and every one of us that little bit different. 

The chronological blog entries allow you to compare different people from the same discipline; authors for example. 

Two of my favourite authors' daily routines are mentioned on the blog:

Stephen King

“There are certain things I do if I sit down to write,” he said. “I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning,” he explained. “I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon.

“It’s not any different than a bedtime routine,” he continued. “Do you go to bed a different way every night? Is there a certain side you sleep on? I mean I brush my teeth, I wash my hands. Why would anybody wash their hands before they go to bed? I don’t know. And the pillows are supposed to be pointed a certain way. The open side of the pillowcase is supposed to be pointed in toward the other side of the bed. I don’t know why.”

John Grisham

When he first started writing, Grisham says, he had "these little rituals that were silly and brutal but very important."

"The alarm clock would go off at 5, and I'd jump in the shower. My office was 5 minutes away. And I had to be at my desk, at my office, with the first cup of coffee, a legal pad and write the first word at 5:30, five days a week."

His goal: to write a page every day. Sometimes that would take 10 minutes, sometimes an hour; ofttimes he would write for two hours before he had to turn to his job as a lawyer, which he never especially enjoyed. In the Mississippi Legislature, there were "enormous amounts of wasted time" that would give him the opportunity to write.

"So I was very disciplined about it," he says, then quickly concedes he doesn't have such discipline now: "I don't have to."

I wouldn't have thought Grisham was so meticulous in his creative process, however considering he was a lawyer, this now seems reasoned. I also love the fact that King, writer of such beautifully horrifying stories, writes in such a pleasant, organised and warm environment. 

I think I might storyboard some of these!