Richard Tattoni : Writing Day

My writing life fits my personality. Like devoting a short period at the gym and taking the work-out to excess, I’ll often do the same with the activity of writing. When I am writing, I am often binge-writing. When I’m not writing, I’m listening to audiobooks or bingeing on loud music for hours. I’m listening to music because music is where I find my true source of inspiration. However, I also find inspiration from reading books I would’ve wanted to write. 

When considering the schedule of my days, the mind instinctively thinks that it is boring with whatever mundane tasks that need to be done. But in reality, my routine isn’t very routine and it’s more chaotic than anything else. My writing routine isn’t the same every day. Some mornings, begin with a toddler and I’m playing with him on his day off of daycare. The writing happens at night if I’m not overly tired. Most mornings, I wake up to the sound of the two-year-old eating bananas and playing with cars. I finish getting him ready, take him off to daycare and proceed with the rest of the morning. The morning is often productive. The afternoon slows down as things get done. One odd morning, the day starts crazy early; another odd morning, the flu takes up my time and attention. Sometimes there’s only reading over the course of a day or night.

While I find excitement in the process, the schedule I work under is just not so interesting and may even be lame. The non-schedule requires time allocation. There’s thinking time. There’s time listening to classics in audiobook form, reading from a contemporary that I’ve been compared to, revising an old short piece, brainstorming the work-in-progress novel, writing many pages of the work-in-progress novel, making lists of ideas, making lists of who I want to query, developing a teenage mindset for my first-person point of view and reviewing work from members of one of my many writing groups. Whenever I’m doing writing stuff in the evening, I always stop for the family dinner.

Over the years, my writing schedule has evolved and adapted. Looking forward to our family move, there will be a new office for writing. I make time for social media and my author platform, but as the time becomes more valuable, I’m writing my best work offline. Professionalism is required from any sport, but even the best writers begin as amateurs. I write to amuse myself, but also to learn, educate and entertain. I’m an emerging writer with enough failures to know I’m doing it right by now.

Richard Tattoni is a hard-working Burlington native and emerging writer. The writer has completed a full-length novel, a work-in-progress novel, short fiction and poetry. He recently had flash fiction published in Down In The Dirt magazine and Literary Yard with a short story available in Rhetoric Askew's new charity anthology. With a background in media communications and creative writing, he has a love for strangely bizarre and gritty stories concerning the nature of the real world. He spends time in courses, workshops, writing circles and conferences. Master of dark writing and dark chocolate. Dad and lover of grammar.