The Unusualness of Usual

 As part of my ongoing campaign to jump up and down and wave in various corners of the internet in the hope that someone, somewhere out there might want to read my book, I recently completed a series of author interviews for a variety of book websites. Many were fairly standard questions – indeed several of them, I openly admit, had copy-pasted answers from one to the next! – but one in particular caught my attention. And it was this:

Do you have any unusual writing habits?

And my immediate reaction was – well, what’s a usual writing habit?

Because, to me, writing is such an individual thing. It’s not a group activity - the vast majority of writers do so alone. If there are people out there that like to stand on their heads and write upside down or type the keyboard with their nose or hold their pen between their toes and write on the walls while humming the Carmina Burana – I would understand that that could be classed as a little out of the ordinary. But in terms of just sitting down to write – surely that’s just whatever suits the person? Everyone does it their own way.

Perhaps it’s just me. I’m probably a bit sheltered. I’m not someone who likes to go out and read books and websites that tell me ways and techniques to write. I don’t watch seminars on the subject or listen to advisory talks. I just busk it. I always have, I’ve always just written, in my own way and in my own style and I do it however works for me. I’ve no idea what most other people do, out their beyond my acquaintance. It may be that there is a usual that is preached to the writing masses that I am completely unaware of. So I’ve no clue what I do is usual or not. It’s just me.

For example – I can only write first thing in the morning. I have to wake up with the urge and immediately go and do it. If I wait, I’ll get distracted. I’ll start thinking about other things, doing other things and before I know it, my brain has slipped off in another direction and the urge is gone. And without the urge, I can’t write. If the urge is gone, whatever I write is painful, forced out tosh and I can’t bear to write tosh. And it has to be the morning. I absolutely cannot write in the evenings, my brain just won’t play. Afternoons are pushing it. Ideally, I like to start as soon as I wake and then work until lunchtime and then I’m done for the day. And I like to get things as right as possible first time. I will go over and go over a scene until I feel it is right before moving on. I hate editing and I hate having to go back over something after I’ve left it behind. Once it’s done, I like it to be done. Sadly, it very rarely is, but that’s what I’d like.

But I know others feel differently. A good friend of mine is virtually the opposite of me. She can’t write in the mornings, only afternoons and at night. She forces herself to write even when she doesn’t want to as she doesn’t mind if it isn’t right first time as she enjoys editing a story more that writing it fresh. She just wants to get some basics down so she can edit it later and play until it's right. And beyond that, I’ve been hanging around on Goodreads of late and have been looking at various groups where people talk about how they plan, how and when they write, what they like to do and what they don’t. And almost nobody ever says – oh yes, I’m like that too! Because almost everyone’s ways of why and how and when are different. Everyone has their own usual.

And I suppose that’s why I didn’t really like that question. It implies there is some standard we writing folk should all be adhering to. There isn’t. And the best I can say in response to that is a copy-paste of what I said in the interview:

Are there any usual writing habits? Everyone has their own ways and means of writing, their own ideas and techniques for what suits them. I’m a strong believer that people shouldn’t try and follow other people’s rules of writing – they should find what works for them and go with that.

Because at the end of the day, that’s probably all that needs to be said.