Adapting

No, this isn't yet another cry-session about not being able to adapt "Brothers Karamazov." My work schedule changes today. Instead of working 1:30pm to 10:00pm, I now work, wait for it... 12:30pm to 9:00pm! Yes, it's only an hour of difference, but seeing as how I usually begin my writing time at around 11:00am, I'm about to feel the crunch, the lost time. So, now I have to get up early and make sure that I'm dressed and in some kind of "zone" as it were by 10:00am to be able to get in my full 2 hours of writing each morning. I wish I could do more than two hours, but... I don't know. Do you other writers out there have a schedule? How long do you write each day? What about day jobs? Let's hear it for 8 1/2 hours of having a "real job." Where do you fit in the pages? The lines? The fragments? The words? Do you carry a notebook? Find scraps of paper that are lying around? Use a napkin? Steal office letterhead? E-mail yourself?

While working at a credit union in Iowa City, I would type up documents on Word in between customers and then e-mail myself the file at the end of the day. When I didn't have access to the computer, I would grab a scrap of receipt paper and jot down a few notes and stuff it in my pocket. My kitchen table and desk were full of these scraps.

Now, I use my "Reporter" Moleskine Notebook and, as mentioned before, my bullet space pen, which fits nicely in my pocket. These are the tools I use. They help create that sacred place that I need to write. I'm not too superstitious, but I am religious and spiritual, and, on those occasions, when I've forgotten my Moleskine or my pen somewhere, I have felt the crippling sense that I couldn't write without them. Do any of you out there have these idiosyncratic rituals in order for you to write? Must you have a particular coffee? Be in a particular place? Have particular music? What gets you to that place where you step inside your own writing and can walk around in a world that you've created and can forget that... crap, I need to get ready for work...