Marieke Hardy - How I Write

I am a creature of habit. I like routines, structure, and discipline. This, despite the fact that I once made the impulsive decision to strip down to my scanties and dance in front of two thousand bikers at a music festival whilst covered in an interesting spray of beer and vomit. I am nothing if not complex.

Considering I have now been a freelance writer for about 15 (holy fuck I’m old) years I’ve had plenty of time to hone my writing routine. It involves the following:

1. Blinking awake at around 7.15am with the dog’s bottom in my face and the arms of a very lovely naked bearded boy around my waist. Sometimes the opposite, which I’m also fine with.
2. 7.30am: Taking a brisk walk to collect coffee and the newspapers.
3. 7.45am: Drinking said coffee and shouting at said newspapers.
4. 8am: Sit down at desk and begin work.
5. 11am: Elevenses. Fittingly.
6. 12.30: Enormous lunch.
7. 3pm: Perambulate around neighbourhood streets with patient dog, pausing only to converse and exchange funds with friendly drug-taking scamps.
8. 6pm: Close computer. First wine for the evening.
9. 7.30pm: Dinner with lovely bearded boy, now disappointingly clothed.
10. 10pm: Shouting at Scrabble board.
11. Fin.

There are days, yes, several, where this routine falls in a heap and I sit lumpenly at my desk with my nose resting pathetically on the ‘g’ key of my laptop whilst wailing WHY DO YOU HATE ME BABY SON OF JEEBUS. On these particular days I find it is best to stand up, walk out of one’s study, and head to the nearest watering hole to immerse oneself in an atmosphere of liquor and conviviality. If you can, make friends with the local drunks. They will make more sense than the strychnine-laced porridge currently polluting the recesses of your mind.

I write because I don’t know how to do anything else and I write because it stirs me and I write everything from postcards to recipes to blog posts to columns to television scripts to diary entries to short stories because without the words I am nothing and I have no choice but to continue until someone politely suggests that I perhaps take up badminton instead. That is the end of my story, I look forward to hearing yours.

You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead Allen & Unwin, RRP$29.99. Marieke Hardy appears in conversation with Time Out's Andrew P Street at Dymocks in September

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