The Habit and Ritual of Writing (Part 2)

Part Two: Making Writing a Ritual

We can expect to write easier, and perhaps even better, as we write by habit rather than by inspiration. What role does ritual play in the development of good writing habits and how do we use ritual to drive our writing forward?
Writing rituals serve as safe havens against the goblins that plague us as we strive to share our thoughts. Boundaries of place and time are very comfortable security blankets. One person has converted what was a closet for winter coats into a writers studio. Into the closet, she has wedged a computer desk.  A small bar stool serves as her chair. One might think that would be a claustrophobic nightmare, but, think a bit more. It is almost like a thunder blanket. It acts as a surrounding for your ideas. You are in extreme proximity to your thoughts and the tools you use to transfer your thoughts from mind to page. There is both comfort and desire to accomplish a goal working like this. Obviously, this approach is not for everyone. What is important is the realization that as writers we need a familiar and comfortable place to write.
Inherent to our rituals is the time component. It is much easier to drive the writing habit if it is under the control of time. We can ritualize three hours a day, or fifteen hundred words a day; whatever you decide, it is the ritual of limits that makes our productivity much more comfortable to accept and comply with. 
Writers need the irrational magic of control as the final and most encouraging ritual to support their habit of writing. There is magic looking forward to the suspension of reality inherent in the act of writing. It is almost hypnotic in effect. This is something you share with a group of extraordinary people. In your range of acquaintances how many of you write?  You may be one of two. How powerful you are to step into a separate divergent reality. You create. You build edifices in your mind and transport them, stone by stone, into the real world. You have a talent possessed by very few. You control how you write through the process of habit and ritual.