When the Routine breaks (Bite Sized Method)
Sorry.
I’m a day late on this post because I’ve spent the last week in various degrees of jet lagged haze.
Eight days ago, I was enjoying the late sunsets of the New Zealand time zone which is thirteen hours (and about twenty degrees Celsius) removed from where I’m currently sitting. First I flew to Sydney and enjoyed a fairly tame adjustment to that time zone across three days; treating myself to a bit of sunburn, briefly spiking the old cortisol levels with some last minute visa panic (solved by a very dodgy lead found on a reddit thread) but the fun didn’t truly begin until it came time to leave.
My real trip kicked off with a grounded plane and a nice two hour delay on the runway due to thunderstorms before I embarked on a ten hour flight to Ho Chi Minh City, this was followed by a three hour domestic flight (which came with a bonus three hour layover because our delay meant we missed our original collecting flight) before entering what felt like a different era let alone time zone in Hanoi where I stayed for a day and a half, followed by a four hour trip over to India where I eeked out one night in a Mumbai transit hotel and paid an extortionate $44 for two bottled beers, got on a nine hour flight back to the UK, navigated some mandatory train cancellations which tacked on an extra forty five minutes to the airport commute, and now I’m back in London.1
Which is a convoluted way of saying, I’m out of my usual writing routine.
And yes, after two days in Vietnam I’m well positioned to appreciate this is a first world complaint:
“Oh you just visited four countries and lost a bit of sleep along the way? I feel so sorry for you.”
I get it.
But that doesn’t stop the pangs of guilt telling me I haven’t logged a decent writing session for the best part of a week.
When you spending so much time on planes you’d think that would be the perfect time to knuckle down and write. But it’s not. It’s weird. People are looking over your shoulders, you’re getting thrown off by announcements and interruptions by the air staff. Perhaps the type of writer who enjoys a bustling coffee shop to hone in their focus might embrace a long flight, but not me.
In saying that, I don’t view this as wasted time.
During periods like this where extended bouts of deep thought aren’t possible, I settle into the writing without writing approach.
Observing the odd particularities of human nature around me, jotting down turns of phrase here and there, letting the cogs of the brain make connections that it might not have had space to delve into on an ordinary day, thinking about extracts of my work in progress in a looser way—big picture, rather than on the micro level.
This all probably comes across as very obvious, but the tug in my belly tells me something different, so it’s worth putting it down in print for myself if not someone else.
As far as I can tell, these periods of broken routine seem to be a net good rather than a negative.
Don’t get me wrong, routine as a default position is definitely the best way to get work done across a long time scale—something essential for novel writing— but it does come with the danger of stagnation. I’ve been revising my novel for the last eight weeks which means no significant new writing. That’s necessary for my immediate goals, but it’s not good for my progress broadly.
Right now I can’t logically justify a week long break, but when the environment enforces it?
Fine.
I can embrace that. It’s got me into a state of needing to catch up, to make up for lost time and made me consider, perhaps I was lagging a bit. Perhaps I was dragging out a deadline for longer than I needed to.
Guilt or no guilt, as long as you don’t let it derail you completely you will probably reap the benefits of these broken periods.
At least that’s my observation.
Don’t do the math on how that all adds up to eight days, just trust me.