The Rituals of Work

I fancy myself as neither superstitious nor predictable, but this little ball of insight may suggest otherwise. I have odd little rituals which are somewhat vital to my personal work process. It's a little weird, and a little silly, but here are a few things that I would notice were missing if I somehow forgot. (I would likely, seriously, honestly never forget any of these things)

– An obvious disclaimer: What works for one person, in writing, communication, fishing, cooking, and pretty much everything, may not work for everyone. Everyone has weirdness, but it's 'weirdness' because it's individual. Individual is beautiful. Never be ashamed of being an individual or your weirdness.

1: Every project has it's own notebook, and in that notebook, everything is handwritten. I've tried to skip this step and just sit and let the words fly from my brain to the computer and listen, – No. There is something about the tempo of the hand-written word for me.

2: I talk to myself while writing. I talk to myself while writing a lot. By 'a lot' I mean I'm mumbling all the time. Several work sessions have ended with my being hoarse and utterly exhausted. Dialogue and description and the whole of it. I think it relates to the tempo again, but another aspect is that I can think of loads of times that I've revised on the fly because the dialogue is simply not how the characters would sound or the way a room was described was completely absurd.

3: I prefer to work at night and alone. I wait until everyone settles in for slumber-time and I close myself off in the location of choice to whip up the words. . . which leads us to #4:

4: More often than not, projects happen one-at-a-time, and each project has it's own little base of operation. Mimosa was written in a garage. The Asylum WIP (on hold) was 99% born at the desk in the office here at the house. A story about Auraria Georgia's gold rush was developed and tinkered with in the home office of the Covington house. And the upcoming NaNoWriMo 2013 project will likely be a thing of the barn or the quiet little solarium. Honestly, if it's mostly dark, why would it matter, right? No clue. I just treat my work arena like a little raven's nest. I like to keep trinkets around that keep me working. I like to perch. I've always been a nester.

5: The most driving ritual is that of scent. I always have a candle or oil burning while I write and the fragrance-per-project does not vary. The unreleased fantasy series of the early 2000s was bamboo/passion fruit combo, which makes little sense, but we had band rehearsal in the same room and everyone liked it, so why mess with a good thing? The Asylum WIP is Thieves Oil (which makes far more sense). Auraria was a very earthy sandalwood, and Mimosa was a spiced cocoa/hazelnut mix which made me think of firewood and really wasn't as sweet as it sounds.

(The candle I burned every time I worked on Mimosa and the completion date (11-25-12).) 

A 'ritual' type tip which really could apply to anyone interested in writing (or, you know, anything else) is committing to knowing and trusting yourself. Know when too-much is too-much. Know when a good thing is a good thing. Trust in your ability to do that which you've set yourself to do. Complete self-disclosure (which is kind of the point of a personal blog. So, that was redundant.): That Asylum WIP is on the back burner based on the fact that the manuscript had begun to eat my brain. I set a particular deadline to the work, and I stopped being able to separate the more melancholic aspects of the story from my daily life. I had to step away. My relationships were suffering. The story was suffering. My psychological and physical well-being had begun to suffer. I had to take a break. No problem, no shame. Know yourself.