what writing routine? At the recent frustration of my latest ability to make a writing schedule for myself, to have an “office,” to have a “desk,” to have set hours of the day in which to write, as everyone says you ought… I have decided to give up. I have never, ever been able to establish a routine, and every time I do, I end up disrupting it. It must be the case that my routine is to not have a routine. For example, right now, there is a half-ironed shirt on the board, and a half-read poem in a book. And this…thing. And also there’s a line of a poem that I’m going to write down really soon.

I did once have a writing routine. First semester, freshman year, I laid on my bed with my head and arms hanging off the mattress, laptop on a chair just below mattress level, and typed. I did this every night, I wrote an enormous many-legged piece of rhymed freshmanalia in that position. It was probably not good for my neck, or my eyes. But it got the job done. After finishing that piece, I decided it was not good to allow myself to write in that position any more. Since then, however – no writing routine. None.

Oh, there was also the “routine” where I could only finish writing projects by staying up all night. Once I discovered that staying up all night existed, I wrote every single creative assignment and paper in that format, for three and a half years of college, until I realized that wasn’t going to work for a thesis.

I don’t remember what the line of the poem was. It had seven syllables and ended with something like “but not to me” and had the verb “to say” in it.

Maybe one day I will be the kind of writer who wakes up every day and runs five sonnets before breakfast. Until then, though, I’m going to enjoy being the kind of writer who writes for too many hours one day and none for the next three. You can’t tell me it’s not more fun this way.