2. The writer’s environment and habits

On your journey from kindergarten to university, you have probably had to produce dozens of stories, book reports, and themes on a wide variety of subjects. But if you are like many student writers, you may not feel as if you have learned much from this experience. The assignments were so divergent, the writing experiences so inconsistent, and the results so unpredictable that you may still feel like a beginner. Indeed, most be­ginning writers are so preoccupied with completing an assignment that they rarely think about how they did it, the process they used to produce it. If you were asked to describe the characteristic features of your writ­ing process, you would probably begin by identifying your writing habits — those conditions and tools you believe you must have whenever you write.

Some of these writing habits are formed by chance. If you produced a paper you were proud of by secluding yourself in a quiet room, inscrib­ing neatly shaped words in a spiral notebook with a soft-lead pencil, then you may be convinced that you need isolation, silence, and primitive tools to perform successfully. But chance could have ordained that you produced that same paper seated at the kitchen table, surrounded by family conversation, banging out your sentences on a portable type­writer. If so, you might believe that to write effectively you will always require a comfortable environment, reassuring noises, and efficient ma­chinery. Indeed, after a time some writers look upon their writing habits as rituals, procedures to be followed faithfully and regularly each time they write. They wear the same flannel shirt, or choose the same back­ground music, or sharpen an entire box of pencils before they begin.

Although many writing habits are formed by coincidental patterns of cause and effect and are sometimes perpetuated by ritual, most are chosen, almost unconsciously, to conform to a writer's other personal habits.

Exercise 1. Most people have developed special habits or idiosyncrasies when they write. Using the following questions as a guide, compile a list of your writing habits.

1. What particular experiences or people helped you form your writing habits?

1. Do your writing habits resemble your other work habits? Do you see any relationship between the way you write and the way you might make a piece of furniture, cook a large meal, or practice your favorite sport? Make a list of similarities and differences.

2. What kind of physical environment do you need in order to write effec­tively? Do you need the silence and solitude of your own isolated study or the sounds and activity of a more communal space such as the kitchen or the library? What happens to you when you are forced to write in a "hostile" environment?

3. What kind of tools do you prefer? Do you prefer composing with a special kind of pencil or pen, or do you prefer composing at a typewriter or word processor? What happens to you when you are forced to use an "alien" writing implement? What other special tools do you require — paper, pencil sharpener, eraser, correction fluid, scissors, tape, dictionaries, thesaurus?

4. When do you write best — early in the morning or late in the evening? How long can you write at one sitting? What kind of reasons do you give yourself to stop working? What kind of rewards do you give yourself for finishing a piece of writing or a specific portion of it? How long does it take you to recover your train of thought once you have been away from a writing project for several hours or days? How do you re-establish contact with what you were thinking?