The New York Times on self-publishing, and a website on routine

Just after finishing that last blog on Updike, I went back to reading the Times and found a long article on the rise in self-publishing. Fascinating, not only the article itself, but the raft of comments afterwards. Recommended. Today's Times.

I'd also like to mention a website - dailyroutines.typepad.com. It lists the routines of artists - painters, writers, composers - and is fun and informative. I used to think that doing the same thing at the same time every day would be the end of creativity; now I believe the opposite, that an automatic routine frees you to get on with your work. Freelance writers, writers in general, need the rigidity of routine because otherwise - who cares? Who is waiting for what we produce? No one. We can convince ourselves that what we do matters if we regularly do it a certain way, at a certain time, just like normal people who have to produce in order to earn a paycheque.

I confess, incidentally, that I'm still working out my own routine. It's - Go to the office after a bowl of porridge and first cup of coffee and get to work. But "work" can be interpreted a number of ways, and often email, editing, arranging the day and the week take precedence over new creative work. Which they shouldn't.  But they do, because new work is SO MUCH HARDER. As a student said this week, "I like having written. Writing is difficult."

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." Robert Collier

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." Aristotle.

What is your daily routine?