It has now been almost two weeks since I abandoned all routine, left work, and began my own personal quest for artistic fulfillment in the guise of sitting at my home computer, staring blankly at my keyboard, wondering how the hell to write a novel.

I have one year to figure out the answer to that question. If you are reading this and feeling the sting of envy at the thought of 12 months of freedom from the daily grind of demanding bosses, commuting and office drama, well… I wish I could say I was living up to the imagined glory.

Perhaps you are imagining what you would do with all this unscheduled time? Days spent reveling in hedonistic excess; wine and chocolate for breakfast, spa treatments, trips to the beach, French lessons, casual meandering through coffee shops or mid-day yoga, hours spent perusing Netflix…

Alas, my capacity for unbridled joy has atrophied after years of cudgeling my brain into the conformity of office life. Like a kidnap victim trapped in a beige cubicle, being told to finish that PowerPoint presentation and also to rub the lotion on its skin, I am having considerable trouble unwinding, for fear of getting the hose again.

The first week brought with it chilly weather and oppressive cloud-cover. My autumnal instincts took over, and I slaved away in the kitchen, preparing for months of hibernation by baking unhealthy treats and obsessively hacking through those items that continually sink to the bottom of the “to do” list due to their total unimportance (reorganize cupboards, put up proper window blinds in the kitchen, sell old DVDs, obsessively sort papers in den…).

I’m sure I’ll find equilibrium eventually, but it’s going to take a while to get into a new groove. Last time I took a leave of absence, for the much more pleasant occupation of globetrotting, I kicked off with a month in Colorado and a camping road trip to the Grand Canyon – a wise choice, as the trip was amazing and my friends in Denver helped me find my traveling pace.

Why not just travel again? I could, but I’m worried that if I start I won’t be able to stop. I might head for the horizon and fail to buckle down and write anything more than blog posts about where I’m going next. So, for now, I’ll stay rooted in Toronto and try to find my writing routine. I’m prescribing for myself a gentle reordering of the mind and the development of some new habits:

• try to go for a run at least 3 times a week
• visit different libraries to see where I work best
• spend time with my mom, who has a mellowing effect
• long bike rides on weekends, to get some sunshine
• recording my reading, both for research and pleasure
• blogging more, to overcome self-consciousness about exposing my writing
• auditing a few writing classes at George Brown and U of T

I’m also going to dial down the reading of “helpful” books on The Craft, and embrace a more casual practice of writing down a scene or two of my own invention every day. While it was comforting reading the soothing advice of Anne Lamott’s ‘Bird by Bird’ and hearing the wise words of Nat Goldberg’s ‘Writing Down the Bones’, I started to get panicky after hitting the “how to” manuals, like John Truby’s ‘Anatomy Of Story’ where he gives “helpful” advice like “Step 1: Write Something That May Change Your Life”. Fuck me. Really? That’s a tall order. What if I just want to ENTERTAIN people, hmm? I won’t even talk about ‘The Artist’s Way’, which is driving several of my other friends in their 30s who have not yet achieved their desired level of creative output completely insane.

So this is my beginning. Next post: starting with a bang, my research on opening lines.