I’ve stuck to a pretty strict schedule for the last few months. Wake up, put on a pot of coffee, meditate, write a blog post, then onto the fiction work. If you look back at the journal I use to keep track of my days, almost every day for the last few years begins this way. As Annie Dillard says, “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.”
That said, sometimes we need to blow things up. It pays to break things when being creative, and sometimes that means breaking your schedule.
I listened to a great interview with John Cleese yesterday, in which mentioned that if you’re interrupted while working, it takes twenty minutes for your mind to get back to where it was. “People need to realize how incredibly destructive interruptions are if you’re trying to be creative,” he said.
I’ve enjoyed blogging every day, but it’s often distracting. I’ll need to do research, find images or links, and often find myself roaming the internet to help kick-start my ideas. While not necessarily bad, doing so robs me of the post-sleep dreaminess that give my fiction work a sharper edge.
I think perhaps it’s time to consider tinkering with my routine.
joshua chamberlain 