Gambling, Wine & Mahler: A Typical Day for a Writer?

Charles Bukowski has published more than 15 wildly popular books of fiction and poetry, including Run With the Hunted (1962), and The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969).

Late in his life he said:

“Every day I’ll wake up around noon. Then I’ll go to the track and I’ll play the horses … Then I’ll come back and I’ll swim and … have dinner and I’ll go upstairs and I’ll sit at the computer and I’ll crack me a bottle [of wine] and I’ll listen to some Mahler or Sibelius and I’ll write, with this rhythm, like always.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Needless to say, every writer’s process is different. My day doesn’t look anything like Charles Bukowski’s day. For instance I wake up early, and then I take a walk by the river. I am back home to write by about 9 and write until around 12:30. After lunch I do the business of writing–submissions, marketing, typing changes into the computer–and then I fix dinner. I edit other people’s manuscripts in the evenings or during the day if I have a deadline. (Here is my editing/consulting website for anyone who is interested.)

I don’t play the horses or Mahler and if I cracked open a bottle of wine, I would probably fall asleep. My rhythm is a little different, but that doesn’t make it right or wrong, nor is Charles Bukowski’s, although it seems to have worked for him. We all do what we have to do to get the job done and no schedule is set in stone. (Forgive the clichés.) Sometimes I do things differently just to shake things up and sometimes deadlines blur the lines.

What about you? Do you have a set writing routine or a time when you feel most creative? What does your typical day look like?