The Work of the Writer is a Brain Stretch and Never Truly Finished
The Work of the Writer is a Brain Stretch and Never Truly Finished Pain and gain — two sides of the same coin for a novelist The alarm goes off at 3:50 AM, and I’m up and heading for the coffee maker. While that’s heating and brewing, I’m doing a full set of yoga stretches. Without fail, this routine is followed every morning and has for the last three years. By 4:20 AM The pen is in hand, and what is now the fifteenth notebook is getting some kind of writing. Sometimes stream of consciousness, sometimes a scene for whatever book I’m working on. The learned discipline is to write. It’s an easy shift to the computer keyboard to type a more finished version of the handwritten pages. Somewhere in this process, a Journal page is started and that will collect material throughout the day. I owe this process and discipline to Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way (25th Anniversary). That usually gets me to about 9 and more coffee and breakfast. After that short break, I’m back with more revi