In the play Elizabeth Rex by Timothy Findley, William Shakespeare is shown having a special hat that he would put on whenever he wrote. This particular case is fiction, but many writers do have some sort of rituals or devices to help them set their mind in the frame of mood to write. It may be sitting down at the same time every day. It may be sharpening two pencils and pulling up a legal pad. It may be logging on to the Internet, reading the two most interesting news stories, then opening up a Microsoft Word window and starting to type. Some writers will also just write randomly for five or ten minutes before getting down to a more focused work. One writer this author knows goes down into his basement and closes the door, shutting out the world and his family for the time he needs to write.

Do you have a ritual? Does it help you to get focused on writing? Should you have a ritual?

Michel de Nostradamus also had his own rituals before he wrote his poetry. He describes them a little in one of his quatrains. Of course, the fact that his poetry was based on revelatory visions may have had something to do with his particular rituals.