Not the usual 9 to 5 (looking at the workstyles of creative people)

"Daily Routines" is an interesting little blog that examines the way creative people work.

Simone de Beauvoir
"I'm always in a hurry to get going, though in general I dislike starting the day. I first have tea and then, at about ten o'clock, I get under way and work until one. Then I see my friends and after that, at five o'clock, I go back to work and continue until nine. I have no difficulty in picking up the thread in the afternoon. Most often it's a pleasure to work." (She adds that she works every afternoon, hanging out at Sartre's place.)

Stephen King
“There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning. 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.”

C.S. Lewis
"At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies (and at Bookham I had none) there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven. But when is a man to write his letters? You forget that I am describing the happy life I led with Kirk or the ideal life I would live now if I could. And it is essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman's knock."

"Daily Routines" features a diverse selection of fascinating people from Obama and Churchill to John Grisham, Mr. Rogers, and Thomas Friedman, who sums up exactly the way I feel about the writing life: "Honestly, I still can't wait to get my pants on in the morning."

Check it out.

Mining Hard Stone

As I was reading Stephen King's Duma Key last night, I was blown away by King's depiction of the main character, Edgar Freemantle, survivor of a deadly pickup vs. crane accident on a construction worksite. Freemantle's severely injured, losing an arm, breaking ribs, his hip, and sustaining a brain injury that leaves him feeling that "behind my forehead it was alway midnight in the world's biggest clock shop."

Having suffered a viral infection that left me with several unbroken weeks' worth of the worst headache I've ever experienced, I shuddered at the description because it was so dead on. Which reminded me, of course, of the terrible accident that nearly killed Mr. King some years back and his painful, longterm recovery, which he chronicles in his excellent book, On Writing. (If you haven't read it, do. Whether or not you're a fan of King's fiction, it's extremely worthwhile for anyone interested in crafting novels.)

Getting back to my point, the kind of pain King suffered makes my three-week headache from hell seem like a gnat bite on the bumpus. But rather than doing all he can to forget it, King uses the experience to inform his fiction. He mines life's hardest stone to bring his characters alive.

Hard stone doesn't have to come in the form of physicial injury. A broken heart, profound embarrassment, soul-splitting grief and loneliness -- every pain we've ever suffered can be transmuted into writing gold, because no matter how different the factual details of any given story, human emotions are universals to which every reader can connect.

So as you go about your daily writing, ask yourself to recall a time when you've experienced a similar emotion to what your character may be feeling. Mine the hard stone of experience and see if there's a gem to be uncovered