The word 'routine' can have a negative connotation. Routine translates to mundane, ordinary, repetitive. "I don't wanna get into a routine," you say. "Our marriage has become too routine," you say. Dictionaries lean that way, too; routine is described as "a regular course of procedure or a habitual or mechanical performance of an established procedure.
But routines have a place, and I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks talking about them.
Since I spent most of my professional life covering athletes, I ran into the word "routine" quite often. Athletes love routines. Larry Bird loved showing up at Boston Garden a couple of hours early before a home game to jog around the upper balcony of the place, hopefully timing it so that the visiting team would come in and notice how hard he was working. Some athletes I knew got up at the exact same time, ate the exact same meal, left for the ballpark at the exact same time. I was good friends with Jim Boeheim, the Syracuse coach, and he never, ever did anything on game days; stayed in the house, watched television.
It's sometimes hard to separate routine from superstition. As far as Boeheim went, by the way, maybe he was just using it as an excuse to do nothing. But the player will tell you that maybe it's a physical thing — that he has to do it this was to perform to expectations. While others will admit that it's mental — I'm afraid things will mess up if I don't do it that way.
I've been asked from time to time if I had a certain routine for writing; certain time of day, etc. Many writers do. Hemingway said he wrote every morning, preferably at first light, which means he was sometimes writing directly after he arrived home from a night of drinking rum and arm wrestling bartenders. The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami says, "When I'm writing a novel, I get up at 4 AM, work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for 1,500 meters, or do both, then I read and listen to some music and go to bed at 9," to which I say, please shut up. I'm not comparing myself to Murakami, by the way, a brilliant fiction writer. But I A) am not going to get up at 4 AM, B) work for six hours straight, C) run a 10K, D) swim 1,500 meters, or E) go to bed at 9:00.
I'm more conformed to the E.B. White doctrine. Here's what he said about his writing routine: "I'm able to work well among ordinary distractions. My house has a living room that's at the core of everything that goes on. The members of my household never pay the slightest attention to me being a writer. They make all the noise and fuss they want to. If I get sick of it, I have places I can go. A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper."
I agree, but there's a reason for that. When you start out as a sports writer covering live events, you're usually writing in chaos — loud fans, arena crews trying to change over from basketball to hockey — so when I actually have time to write at home, I actually hunt down chaos. I have an office in my house, but over the last 40 years I've written in it for a total of maybe four hours. I write where there's life. It's the only way that works for me. I write where I'm comfortable, and where I'm comfortable is on the couch or on my bed, where I have what I call the "writing wedge" propped up on a pillow. That's my routine.
I'm not saying this works for everybody, and I do follow one routine as a writer that I would suggest: I never quit for the day without knowing where I'm going to pick up the next day. Even if you just write a couple words, know where you're going. Even if, and all writers know this, you get lost when you get there.
