MEL DONALSON: The writing habits have remained pretty consistent, and I think I've kept them consistent, because I've had-- it's been productive for me. And basically, it's nothing that's a secret. I have a writing station or writing areas, so there's a place, there's a space that I go to so that once I reach that space, I know that I'm focusing upon the writing.
There is a space at my home, a desk area that works, I'd say, 30% of the time. But I often leave home and go to a local coffee shop that knows me there. People know me, and so I say 70% of the time, I write from that space. So what becomes very important, I think, is being able to associate a particular space with the work of writing.
Now what I do that I think works for me is that I complement that working space with something that's physical. So my workouts that I do in terms of going to the gym or maybe running around a track give me a balance. I need that physical workout to go along with the demanding workout of writing. And so in a given week, I'll alternate a day in the gym, where I pretend to lift weights, every other day, perhaps, running. And that helps me, so when I go to that workspace, wherever it might be, I've had a chance to sort of have that physical workout.
And I think the last thing that I do, which has been productive for me, is that I tend to write in my head as well. Sometimes when driving or when I'm walking or running the track, particularly dialogue, if I'm writing fiction, or if there's dialogue in my poetry, I just run it in my head. I hear the characters talking, and basically, I eavesdrop on what they're saying. And so I'm still writing. I'm just not sitting down at a keyboard or with a pen and paper.