Notes
2026/10/30
A routine has different criteria of success than a single event. Writing an essay that successfully conveys an idea or tells a story is a single event, it is either successful or it isn't. It might not happen if there's never an idea to start with, or if there is one but no narrative arc can be found.
Writing as routine, on a weekly schedule, takes on a different form, even if it tries to pass itself off as having a more traditional, eventful form. If writing is meant to happen on a fixed schedule, it needs to accept that there might not be a neat linear arc every week, and sometimes nothing that seems worth grasping at. Writing as routine needs to function even in the absence of an event worth writing about.
Writing on a schedule is thus more “showing up” than “working toward something”. It is tempting to think of a writing routine as accumulating something, as building toward something, but that would merely recast the idea of repetitive writing as having a linear arc, simply on a longer time scale.
But not every act of building needs to end up creating ever larger structures. What if whatever is built is disassembled at the end of every day? What if the sisyphean repetition isn't something to be avoided, but instead the whole point?