Every Day I Iron The Shirt

By Reece Hirsch

I don’t have many quirks, rituals or fussiness about my writing process.  In fact, much of my new book was written on a laptop on the BART train riding back and forth from my job in San Francisco, so I have perfected the ability to zone out a cornucopia of urban sights, sounds and smells.

But I do have one simple writing ritual.  I didn’t exactly realize that I was doing it until I read an interview with the screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King) and he put his finger on it with the perfect analogy.

LaGravenese compared the writing process to ironing a shirt.  You write a paragraph, and then you go over it.  Then you write another paragraph, then you go over both paragraphs.  Each time you go a bit further.

I am not the sort of writer who can tear right through a first draft and then tidy things up later.  Whenever I sit down to write, I always have to start by rereading and editing what I wrote the previous day.  I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got, but if you’re looking for idiosyncratic writing rituals, how about these:

     *          Ernest Hemingway wrote standing up at his typewriter.

     *          Truman Capote described himself as a “horizontal novelist.”  In 1957, he told the Paris Review, “I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy.  I’ve got to be puffing and sipping.  As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.”

     *          Balzac drank vast quantities of black coffee and sometimes wrote for 48 hours straight.

     *          To keep from procrastinating, Victor Hugo wrote in the nude because it prevented him from leaving the house.  As an extra precaution, he would instruct his valet to hide his clothes.

Most of these techniques would get me ejected from the BART train.