It’s a performance. You must never forget that. However much thinking and research come beforehand, however much editing and correction afterwards, the actual writing is performance. There is a moment when you have to do it. You have to put down the rhythms of the voice you’re searching for, you have to find the right succession of detail and event, description and dialogue. Get it wrong and no amount of fiddling will salvage the situation.

So your problem, as you plan your writing day is, how can I get myself “in the zone”; how can I arrive, for however short a time, at my peak performance? An athlete has her training schedule, the date of the event stamped in her mind, the excitement of the crowded stadium to trigger her best. An actor has his script, his rehearsals and, when it matters, the glare of the lighted stage. The writer has nothing. Hence all the mad little rituals we hear about, having to use a 4H pencil, a Moleskine notebook, having to be in a particular spot, in a certain room, at exactly this time of day, drinking this kind of tea, smoking this brand of cigarette. All desperate attempts to propitiate inspiration, to have ordinariness and originality somehow intersect.

In the early days, the 1980s, the problem was absolute emptiness. My wife set off to work at 8am. She would be back at 6:30. This was Willesden, north-west London. Heating was expensive. I wrapped myself in a blanket, hot water bottle at my feet, wrote and pronounced what I had written awful, wrote again, by hand, went out to do a little shopping, maybe to the swimming pool, then felt guilty about taking time out when my wife was working. They would never publish me anyway. Yet one hangs on. If only out of a need to be hard on oneself. There was definitely a thread of an idea, definitely something I was after. Until, finally, perhaps only half an hour before my wife’s return, suddenly it was happening. Stuff was coming out that was not quite what I planned, but interesting, possible. Then I scribbled feverishly. It is extraordinary how much can be written in half an hour when you’re in the groove.

Later, there was the opposite problem: too much interference, too much going on. Children to be sorted (and loved). Requests for articles. Requests for translations. The phone, the fax, and finally, most devastating of all, emails and internet. Now the instrument of writing is also the supreme instrument of distraction. It dings and beeps. Warning lights flash. It plays music and videos. We know Jane Austen worked in a busy drawing room amid the chatter of family and friends, but she didn’t have a notebook that could show yesterday’s best goals.

I wrote and pronounced what I had written awful, wrote again, by hand, went out to do a little shopping, maybe to the swimming pool, then felt guilty about taking time out when my wife was working.

Here, then, is the routine, or simply — because it’s more flexible than a routine — the approach I have devised for arriving at a productive streak, if not every day, then often.

Write by hand. But … begin each day by typing up what you did the day before. That allows you to settle, while admitting a little computer-generated distraction on the way. You don’t have to feel you are punishing yourself. You’re not an ascetic or a saint. You’re a guy doing a job. Across the table from you, your girlfriend is working on a translation. There’s a cheerful tippity-tap. You’re not suffering.

Sometimes this process will take all the time you have. Some days you have to break off to go and teach, so nothing new is written. But hopefully, by 11am or so, that’s done. Now, you abandon your computer, abandon your girlfriend, take your coffee to the desk in the spare room where an exercise book is waiting, a fountain pen is ready. You are sitting in front of a blank page, but with the momentum of having already plunged into the rhythms of your world. With luck you can just take it from there. The scratch of the pen is propitious. The forward slant and flow of the calligraphy is a constant reminder of who you are and what mood you’re in. Over many years, you have learned not to set anything down mechanically, but to wait — reflecting, brooding, musing — until, apparently of its own accord, like an unexpected breath from deep in the belly, the performance begins.

By arrangement with The Guardian

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 23rd, 2017