Writing Rituals - Imogen Eveson
Imogen Eveson
@IMOGENEVESON
WRITING SPECIALTY: ARTS AND TRAVEL FEATURE WRITING.
Whether you’re an author, journalist, playwright, screenwriter or copywriter – every professional scribe has a different set of rituals that help them put pen to paper. Hemingway would write from first light until midday, Didion used one solitary hour before dinner to go over everything she'd worked on that day and Maya Angelou kept a hotel room in her hometown just for writing. Our new Writing Rituals series shines a light on some of our favourite writers and the private ceremonies they engage in each and every day.
writing rituals
Spotlight: Imogen Eveson
PHOTO CREDIT: IMOGEN EVESON
“I love the feeling of a fully formed sentence popping into my head unprompted. The trope of your best ideas coming to you in the shower. And even better, once in a blue moon the whole story structure will materialise at once while I’m out and about.”
Photo credit: IMOGEN EVESON
Photo credit: IMOGEN EVESON
Writing is a process that every writer approaches in a different way – how would you describe your own process?
“Before I start writing I do a lot of research. I try to learn as much as I can about the topic I’m writing about – say an artist or a place – in order to understand the context behind it. I know I’m not going to be able to squeeze ‘the Complete History of Jordan’ into one travel feature, but it gives me confidence I’m making informed choices in my edit. I’ll have visited a place, made notes and conducted interviews. I’ll read as many other articles on the topic as I can. And I’ll have an existential crisis: what could I possibly add to the conversation that’s original? Then I get over that – somehow you always emerge with something that’s your own – and start actually writing.
I’m a visual person and imagine my process as though I’m building up a painting in layers. I start by sketching out the structure of the piece: the gist of what I want to say in the order I want to say it. Written in really bad sentences if need be – just to get the beginnings of something on the page. Then I’ll flesh the ‘sketch’ out with the specifics: plugging in scrawled passages from a notebook, quotes from an interview, details, facts and figures. I then start to stitch it all together into coherent sentences. I find this the hardest and slowest part of the process – it requires the most focus, thought and brain power. And there are always moments during this stage where I feel like I can’t write to save my life. Or, more accurately, like Kurt Vonnegut when he said, “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” But now I’m over the hump and it’s a case of refining, adding more character and colour, and refining some more. I’ll then take a print-out to read on the train or anywhere other than my desk; the slight remove this creates between me and the words is helpful. I’ll do a couple more read-throughs and edits. This is the magic bit when it comes together through some kind of addictive alchemy that makes you forget the painfulness of the process and want to start all over again on the next piece.”
Do you listen to music while writing? Are you selective about what you listen to?
“When researching and refining articles I find I can listen to music or the radio – I listen to 6 Music a lot, the BBC’s more alternative radio channel. But when I’m in the guts of writing I can’t listen to music or radio with any lyrics or speaking at all. So, I’ll put on downtempo electronica that’s largely instrumental along the lines of Bonobo or a playlist from Ninja Tune (the record label he’s on).”
Are there set times of day in which writing or even editing feels more natural?
“I recently found out about sleep chronotypes and the fact there are four animal-themed ‘categories’ that people fall into. I think I’m a wolf: someone who’s not a morning person and takes a while to get going but can continue working well into the evening when most people have clocked off. Counterintuitively, perhaps, for someone who has a 9-5, I suspect my sweet spot for writing might be at the end of a typical working day.”
Name a handful of vices you use to get yourself going…
“I’ll have two black coffees in the morning to help me get going, then a soy flat white after that. In the afternoon I’ll burn expensive candles or incense (I have developed a real Maison Balzac mail-order habit over the course of the pandemic), and some evenings I’ll drink red wine, which really does help me write!”
Many writers find it hard to sit in a chair and stare at a screen all day. Do your writing rituals include anything physical like going for walks to help discover or build ideas?
“It might be going for a swim, taking a yoga class or something as simple as walking down the street to get coffee, but I find anything that involves stepping away from the screen and moving around beneficial. It gives my mind the space it needs to start percolating ideas.
And it doesn’t happen all the time, but I love the feeling of a fully formed sentence popping into my head unprompted. The trope of your best ideas coming to you in the shower. And even better, once in a blue moon the whole story structure will materialise at once while I’m out and about – and I’ll have to scrawl it down in a notebook. It’s rare moments like that that, such as on a recent travel gig when inspiration struck over a solo dinner in an old theatre, that I feel like a writer in the most romantic sense of the world. And it makes up for all the moments writing feels so hard.”
Finish this sentence: When I get stuck or feel frustrated writing, I…
“…leave it to work on other tasks and come back to it later or the next day – if I have the luxury of time. If I need to get it done, I just focus on getting some, any, words down. It always comes together in the end.”
Does your writing routine or the rituals you perform remain the same each day or does it vary from time to time?
“While I do crave variety in my working life, I think my writing routine itself is fairly set in stone. I tend to perform the same rituals each day, whether consciously or not.”
Are there any obstacles you face each day when you sit down to write, and if so, how do you try to overcome them and avoid distraction?
“I definitely experience the perfectionism, procrastination, paralysis cycle – wanting everything you write to be the best thing you’ve ever done isn’t exactly conducive to just getting on with it. I try various things to overcome this including the Pomodoro technique – breaking your work down into ‘tasks’ that you focus on completing without distraction in 25-minute stints followed by a five-minute break. But ultimately, I think that procrastination might just be part of the process and that accepting it, perversely, helps with productivity.”
What’s the first thing you do when you see a blank page?
“I’ll write a title, name the file and feel an ever-so-slight buzz of excitement at its potential.”
Do you have a writing quote you live by or that inspires you each day?
““Just sit down and write it.” Well, it’s not Hemingway or Didion, but something my partner’s dad once said to me by way of encouragement when I was facing a Friday night writing with a deadline looming. I find its simple pragmatism helpful. The beauty of writing is that you can always self-edit; the hard part is stringing sentences together in the first place. So, any advice that helps you stop overthinking and get words written is good advice in my book.”