Hannah Dennison on Writing Rituals.

 RHYS BOWEN:  I'm so happy to include my good friend Hannah Dennison in my week of celebration this week. Hannah and I are fellow Brits. We used to meet for long chats, but since she's moved back to UK we have to meet for long Facetimes. I miss her.  And I love her new series set in the Scilly Isles (not the silly isles) just off the coast of Cornwall. So it's great to welcome her here today.

HANNAH DENNISON: It’s so great to be back posting on Jungle Red today. Thank you, Rhys, for inviting me. My second adventure in the Island Sisters Mysteries, Danger at the Cove, came out mid-August and this is the tail end of an intense couple of months of promoting it. For those who aren’t familiar with my new series – or, by some miracle, missed seeing all the hoop-la, it’s set on Tregarrick, a fictional island in the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago twenty-eight miles off the southwest Cornish coast. As the series title suggests (how I longed to call it the Scilly Sisters, Rhys’s idea and sadly, out voted by my publisher), the series is about two sisters who find themselves chatelaines of a crumbling Art Deco hotel and naturally, murder and mayhem ensue.

 For the last two years I have been working flat out writing two books at the same time (I don’t know how anyone writes three) and continuing to work virtually as a Miss Moneypenny for my boss in Los Angeles. As you know there is a time difference of eight hours which, because I now live in England is eight-hours behind. I have a lot of late nights.

 But now I am in the no-deadline zone for three more weeks before I start writing the next book and I am feeling discombobulated. I’ve finished mucking out my office (I had horses growing up, trust me, it’s an accurate description) and have caught up with chores and friends who thought I went to Mars, but I am still floating around in my pajamas until 11:00 AM.

 The pajama “thing” started fifteen years ago when I got up at 4.30 A.M every morning so I could write before heading off to work in downtown LA. I’d get straight out of bed, collect three cups of coffee (two with foil on top to keep the heat in) and climb into the bed in the guest room – all made up with nice pillows and linens—with my laptop and my cat Mister Tig who has long gone. I’d stay put for two to three hours, not leaving that spot. At weekends, I’d get up a little later, but then I’d be in my pajamas a little later, too.

 Without realizing it, I’d created a ritual. It had become an important part of my creative process. Anne Lamott, in her wonderful book, Bird by Bird mentions donning lucky socks; Christa Faust says her office must be immaculately tidy before she can even begin to write; Stephen King goes through these motions when he sits down to write; "I have a glass of water, or I have a cup of tea. I have my vitamin pill I have my music; I have my same seat; and the papers are all arranged in the same places.” Jill Mansell says she can’t start without a mound of jellybeans—another admits to having the television on playing reruns of CSI with the sound on mute. One of my students—a Methodist minister who lives in Wales—told me that before he writes his sermon, he drapes a scarf around the back of his chair and lights a candle.

The same is often true for readers. My sister only reads in her special reading chair in the corner of her sitting room, my mother must have a gin and tonic on hand and me, I must have something to graze – preferably chocolate. Unfortunately, I’m quite sure that does not qualify as a ritual but as a bad habit.

 Sometimes I worry that my pajama ritual has become a bad habit, too. Of course, I can write fully dressed (!) but not those early drafts. That initial part of my writing process comes from the subconscious muse. When I wake up in the morning, I must go straight to my laptop. If I stop to shower, it’ll take me a while to get into my creative groove. Does anyone remember Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way (1992)? She talks of “morning pages” – the stream of consciousness that spills onto the page immediately on waking before the distractions of the day take over. Although I no longer do morning pages, the discipline has stuck, and it’s become an unbreakable – and very good, habit.

 There is a big difference between habits and rituals. A habit is an activity you have repeated so often that it becomes automatic like brushing teeth or mindlessly eating popcorn when watching a movie (my guilty pleasure). There is very little energy or thought that goes into it.  A ritual is the exact opposite of a habit because there’s an energy, and a commitment behind it. It’s a conscious preparation and an intention that needs to be honored.

 As fellow writers and readers, do you have rituals that have become habits or vice versa? I’d love to hear what they are. Perhaps one of them might inspire me to replace my pajamas with something a little more professional.

 BIO

British born; Hannah originally moved to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting. She has been an obituary reporter, antique dealer, private jet flight attendant and Hollywood story analyst. Hannah has served on numerous judging committees for Mystery Writers of America and teaches mystery writing workshops for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program now on Zoom. After twenty-five years living on the West Coast, Hannah returned to the UK where she shares her life with two high-spirited Hungarian Vizslas.

Hannah writes the Island Sisters Mysteries (Minotaur), the Honeychurch Hall Mysteries (Constable) and the Vicky Hill Mysteries (Constable)

 

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