From Hemingway to Haruki Murakami – Great Writers’ Tips About Working From

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The coronavirus pandemic is forcing many of us to work from home. There’s plenty to
learn from the people who’ve always worked in isolation.

The Guardian Brigid Delaney

Here are tips to not just survive social isolation and work from home, but thrive in it.

If there is one cohort uniquely prepared for both working from home and going into isolation – it is writers (also
people in closed monastic orders).

Writers with book deadlines or a passion project that must be written now usually have to go into lockdown in
order to get the damn thing finished.

They stock up on food, limit their communication with the outside world, create and stick to a routine and stay
healthy by getting enough rest and healthy food.

Here’s some of their tips for not just surviving while you work from home or socially isolate – but for thriving
and doing some of your best work yet.

Do the Hard Things First

You may be at the mercy of others with your schedule – particularly if you work in a team, but if you can work
independently – seize the day early.

Ernest Hemingway started writing at 6 a.m. each morning and had the fairly consistent routine of a mid-level
accountant – not the loose unit that he was in his non-writing life.

“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no
one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write,” he told Paris
Review.

If working from home, start working on the big tasks for the day – the presentation you need to finish, the report
you have to write – as early as possible. Obviously if you have caring responsibilities, some things are going to
be out of your control, but you’re going to be freshest in the morning. There’ll also be less distraction from
email and your group chat sending you the latest scary news from the pandemic.

Once you’ve got the tasks that require the deepest thought out of the way, you can switch to bitsier, more
reactive work. You’ll probably find you get more work done in less time, so if you’ve got the kind of job that
requires you to be online just in case work comes in, you can spend the rest of the day doing things you enjoy
like reading or baking while you wait for your inbox to ping.

Have a Routine and Stick to It

You’ll need to lock in a routine fairly quickly and stick to it if you want to be productive working from home.
Writers in full throttle will have a schedule that wouldn’t look out of place in the military. They get up at the
same time each day, have a word count goal, a time when they put down their pens, a time set aside for
exercise, a time when they start drinking and – for today’s writers –a discipline around using the internet and
social media.

Even interaction can be scheduled. As Graham Greene wrote in the End of the Affair, “When I was young not
even a love affair would alter my schedule. A love affair had to begin after lunch.”

Make sure you plan ahead. When I’m writing, the night before I will write a to-do list, so when I wake the next
day (always at the same time each day, and starting work straight away) I have a sense of what needs to be
done. I methodically work through the list and tick off tasks throughout the day. By the end of the day, even
though I have just been a blob sitting in a chair, I feel a sense of achievement.

Kurt Vonnegut in a letter to his wife outlined his routine – which really had all the elements: “I awake at 5.30,
work until 8.00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the
nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11.45,
read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare.”

At 5.30 p.m. he had a Scotch and was in bed at 10 p.m. All throughout the day he did incidental exercise such as
pushups and sit-ups.

You Must Exercise Daily

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami could only get through the slog that is a writer’s confinement by
committing to a rigid exercise regimen. He said in a 2004 interview, “When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I
get up at 4 a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both),
then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9 p.m. I keep to this routine every day without
variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerise myself to
reach a deeper state of mind.”

Even if you live in a tiny apartment and are working from home, you will need to exercise every day or both
your body and mind could get a bit unhinged. These guides to exercising at home during lockdown – using apps
and makeshift props – might help. And then there’s our early role model – the marathon runner in Wuhan who
ran 31 miles around his dining room table.

The Internet is Your Enemy

Social distancing would be a lot harder without the internet. As I write, it’s day 10 of my social isolation and
I’ve been in more contact with more friends, in more parts of the world, than the entire rest of this year
combined. With no coworkers to look over your shoulder and judge you for checking Facebook, texting, and
having long phone chats, you’ll have to be self-disciplined about not spending all day on FaceTime in your
pyjamas.

If you are going to be effective you’ll need to quarantine yourself from social media and phone calls with
friends.

Writers have long seen the internet as the enemy of productivity and have for years now been putting in place
practices that limit their time online while writing.

Novelist Zadie Smith doesn’t have a smartphone while Jonathan Franzen writes in a room without wifi and
tapes up the ports on his computers so he is not tempted to connect.
In the Woman of the Hour podcast, Smith said, “If I could control myself online, if I wasn’t going to go down a
Beyoncé Google hole for four and a half hours, this wouldn’t be a problem. But that is exactly what I’ll do. It’s
not some kind of high moral ground, it’s that I so want to [write], that I just have to get it done. And everything
else has to take a backseat.”

Australian writer Benjamin Law recommends an app called Forest which turns off your social media and
internet for certain lengths of time so you can concentrate deeply. I use a program called Freedom, which blocks
off the internet for a period of time that you set (usually three to five hours a day). That time in the early
morning, when you’re doing your hard work, is when you should use these tools.

As I’ve seen about a million times on Twitter this week, William Shakespeare wrote King Lear while
quarantining from the plague. If you use this time wisely, you could get a lot done. Or at least you could finish
your work day faster, so you can get back to reading that book.

Brigid Delaney is a senior writer for Guardian Australia. She has previously worked as a lawyer and journalist
at the Sydney Morning Herald, the Telegraph (London), ninemsn and CNN. She is the author of Wellmania,
This Restless Life and Wild Things.

 Need a break? Don’t fall into the too-tired-to-rest trap

 How to write a book – top tips for National Novel Writing Month
 Learning to say no brings a thrill of freedom

This post originally appeared on The Guardian and was published March 18, 2020.