I didn’t know that I had quite so much in common with jazz scholar and friend Ted Gioia until I read “Award-Winning Historian and Bestselling Author Ted Gioia On The Keys To Productive Research and The Most Important Rule Of Writing” over at the Writing Routines website.
Unlike Ted, however, I left pad and pencil behind at my first newspaper job, as a 17-year-old cub reporter at the Pontiac Press. I was writing, literally writing, a story when an editor brushed by me and said, 
“Here, we compose on the typewriter.” And so I did. (That’s right – typewriter. Remember those?)
Other than that, we differ only in the brand of coffee. Mine at right. Brew it strong enough and you can stand a spoon up in it.
An excerpt from the Q&A:
When and where do you like to write? Are you the same-thing-every-day kind of writer or can you write anytime, anywhere?
Over the years, I have tried every possible writing routine. My first book was written longhand while sitting at a desk in a library—and I had to hire a typist to turn my scribblings into a publishable manuscript. By the time, I wrote my second book, I had purchased one of the very first Apple computers, but adapting to the digital age was challenging. The floppy disk containing two chapters of that book somehow got damaged, and I had to recreate the text from various notes and earlier drafts. But I persisted with digital technology, and now can’t imagine working without it.
Writer’s block? Ha! (Photo D, Shafer)
Today I write in a quiet home office with two computers, and my large personal library near at hand for consultation.
Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits before you sit down to write?
Probably the only essential pre-writing ritual is a cup of coffee—preferably Major Dickason’s Blend from Peet’s. Other pre-writing rituals can easily become distractions, so I avoid them. But the coffee is essential. The fuel for my books is a 50/50 mix of dark roast java and printer toner.
What do you do when the writing doesn’t come easy? Do you struggle at all with that dreaded enemy of writing: writer’s block? Do you think such a thing exists?
I don’t believe in writer’s block. If I waited for inspiration before I began writing, I would never get anything finished, or even started, for that matter. I set aside time every day to write. When I sit down and start, I am prepared—because I have spent much of my life in preparation for the writing projects I undertake.
Read the rest here.
Tags: Ted Gioia
May 3rd, 2019 at 2:59 pm
My father’s older sister got the same word on composing on the typewriter, probably seventy-five years ago in western Pennsylvania. Help was hard to get while the war was on, but apparently that did not mean that one could jot first and type second. She learned to compose on the typewriter, and kept her job.