Write Every Day

Exorcise the demon of choice

By Ian Ellard 19 November 2014

Have you ever woken up early, before your alarm? Have you ever sat there, totally unable to move, and watched your god-given added hour of life skitter away in frantic inaction?

If you haven’t, and that all sounds crazy, here’s how to get a glimpse of people in the same rapture of despair:

Of an evening, go into a supermarket in a large town, and have a look in the soup section. You will invariably find some poor soul, stripped of their reason & their motor function, so beset are they on all sides by the demons of choice. Watch them as they compare prices per 100g; calorie, sugar and salt content; see them heft the soup in their hands, desperately searching for a reason to choose.

You cannot help them, so do not try. A soul so abandoned can only help itself.

I know, because that used to be me. I’ve cried in the cold meats section of a well-known supermarket. I’ve sat in bed and listened as perfectly good writing time fizzes and dissolves like an Alka Seltzer.

Now, I eat the same thing every day. Literally.

Every weekday morning I buy the same delicious breakfast pot from the same branch of a well-known coffee chain. I order the same drink. I use the same set of words.

Every weekday lunchtime, I go to the same branch of the same well-known supermarket and I fill a medium-sized salad bowl with one spoonsworth each of the same three salad items. Then, every time, I push a boiled egg into the mush.

I collect one apple and one 10-pence bag of well-known German sweeties. I eat the salad, then the apple, then the tiny bag of sweeties.

Every day.

It makes me very happy indeed.

And I write every day, too.

I get up, I drink a coffee, I sit down – same chair, same writing software, same playlist, same wordcount aim.

Because I do not want to have to think about it. I do not want to have to choose.

I like eating, I like what I eat, but I do not want to have to think about it every time.

I like writing, I like what I write (sometimes), but I do not want to have to think about it every time.

It is very easy to ignore people who say “write every day”. It seems too obvious, too trite – fetishistic, even.

“No, no, no, no, no,” you want to tell those people. “I am tight with the Muse. She calls, and I come. She’s erratic but I love her. I’d have it no other way. Thank you, sir, but goodbye.”

And maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re the kind of person who can engage your decision-making apparatus with lubricated ease.

But if you, like me, have ever broken down trying to choose a cheese, try making a habit — you might save yourself a lot of bother.

One excellent way of forming such a habit would be to do a creative writing course. What about Write Better: Intermediate Fiction?

Ian Ellard is Head of Faber Academy

Originally published at www.faberacademy.co.uk.