I have a favourite spatula. It’s nothing special, really—a stubby little silicone number with a wooden handle, still carrying a faint yellow blush from an unfortunate turmeric incident back in 2019. Every morning, somewhere between the first sip of coffee and the moment my brain remembers it has a body, I reach for that spatula. I use it to scramble my eggs. And every morning, the eggs are mediocre. I am a terrible cook. But that little wobble of silicone, the soft scrape against the pan—it’s a bell. A signal that the day has begun, that the fog in my head might clear, that somewhere inside the mundanity, a sentence might arrive.
I used to believe creativity was a wild horse, something that lived in the lightning strike, the abandoned warehouse, the sleepless night. I thought it required chaos, a messy studio, a bottle of something cheap, a heart freshly broken. And sure, sometimes it does. Some of my best poems came from the wreckage. But the older I get—and I am now officially old enough to groan when I stand up—the more I suspect creativity is less of a horse and more of a stray cat. You can leave out a saucer of milk every night. You can’t force the creature to show up. But the routine, the saucer, the tiny domestic ritual—that’s what makes it think, maybe I’ll hang around here for a bit.
The Slow Dissolve of the Glamorous Muse
Let’s talk about the myth of the muse. You know the one: a diaphanous creature who descends upon you in a fever dream, whispering sonnets while you wrestle with an empty notebook and a cigarette. I spent my twenties waiting for her. I wore a lot of black. I stayed up until 3 a.m. staring at a wall, hoping for a visitation. She never came. Instead, I got dark circles and a mild vitamin D deficiency.
What did show up, eventually, was a routine. Not a fancy one. Not a “5 a.m. miracle morning ice bath journaling” routine. Just a slow, almost boring set of repetitions that became the scaffolding for my imagination. I started making the bed. I started walking the same loop around the park, past the same depressed-looking oak tree and the bench where a man in a tracksuit eats a pastry with a knife and fork every single day. (I salute you, Pastry Knife Man. You are a beacon of consistency.) I started writing at 9 a.m., not because inspiration struck, but because 9 a.m. was the time I had designated for staring at a blinking cursor until something gave.
And here’s the weird part: it worked. The muse, it turns out, is not a glittering angel. She’s a creature of habit. She likes a clean desk. She likes the same mug, the same pen, the same view of the neighbour’s cat judging me from the fence. The routine didn’t kill my creativity. It became the saucer of milk.
The Spatula as Baton
Let’s return to the spatula. It’s not just a tool; it’s a conductor, leading the small orchestra of my morning: the kettle’s rising whistle, the pop of the toaster, the sizzle of butter in a pan. These sounds are not distractions from a creative life. They’re its opening act. When I stand in my kitchen, prodding those eggs into a sad, rubbery mound, I am not thinking about writing. I am thinking about whether I remembered to buy toothpaste. But somewhere beneath that thought, my brain is loosening its tie, taking off its shoes, settling in.
There’s a particular tenderness in these small acts. They’re a way of showing up for myself before I show up for the page. I am not a machine that produces words. I am a person who burns toast, who forgets to water the plant, who once spent an entire afternoon trying to remember the word for “the thing you use to drain pasta.” (Colander. It’s a colander. I had to Google it while holding a colander.) If I can be kind to that person in the kitchen, maybe I can be kind to her when she writes a truly terrible first draft.
When the Routine Breaks (and It Always Does)
Of course, life is not a neat little row of mornings. Sometimes the spatula is in the dishwasher, and the day feels cursed from the start. Sometimes you’re travelling, or sick, or simply too sad to scramble an egg. The routine collapses. And the fear creeps in: If I stop, I’ll lose it. The cat won’t come back.
I lost my routine entirely last winter. A family thing. A sad thing. I spent three weeks in a house without my spatula, without my park bench, without my Pastry Knife Man. I didn’t write a word. I thought, This is it. I’ve dried up. The well is full of dust and dead leaves. But when I came home, I unpacked my bag, I slept for twelve hours, and the next morning I made my eggs. The spatula was right where I’d left it. And the words came back—slowly, hesitantly, like a cat sniffing a new piece of furniture. But they came.
The routine, I realized, is not a prison. It’s a net. It catches you when you fall out of the sky. You can step away from it, and it will still be there, slightly dusty, ready to be picked up again. The cat is patient. It knows you’ve been through something. It just wants the saucer refilled.
Repetition as Ritual, Ritual as Love
There’s a fine line between a routine and a rut, and I have tumbled headfirst into both. A rut is when you’re doing the same thing every day and feeling nothing. A routine is when you’re doing the same thing every day and feeling everything. The difference, I think, is attention. When I pay attention to the spatula—really notice its weight, its warmth, the way the egg clings to it—I’m practising something close to prayer. I am saying: I am here. This moment matters. Even if the eggs are rubbish.
This is not a new idea. Poets and monks and gardeners have known it for centuries. The repetition of small tasks is a way of quieting the brain’s endless chatter, the part that screams about tax returns and awkward things you said at a party in 2008. When you’re chopping a carrot, you’re just chopping a carrot. And in that quiet, something else can bloom. A metaphor. A memory. The perfect rhythm for a sentence.
My grandmother was a painter. She had a routine so rigid it could have been a military operation: breakfast at seven, studio at eight, a cup of tea at eleven, lunch at noon, a walk at three. She painted every day for sixty years. When she died, we found canvases stacked in her attic, hundreds of them. Most were of the same view: the field behind her house, the way the light hit the poplar trees at different times of day. She wasn’t chasing a new subject. She was chasing the depth that comes from looking at the same thing for a lifetime. The routine wasn’t a cage. It was a lens.
The Myth of the Blank Page
Here’s a truth I’ve learned the hard way: the blank page is never really blank. It’s full of the morning you had before you sat down. If you spent that morning rushing, shouting, staring at a screen full of bad news, the page will feel like a wall. But if you spent it gently—scrambling eggs, walking past an oak tree, nodding at a man with a pastry—the page feels more like a door. Or at least a window. Maybe one of those annoying windows that’s painted shut, but you can still see through it.
The routine prepares the ground. It doesn’t plant the seeds. You still have to do that yourself, with your own weird brain and your own stubborn fingers. But the ground is softer when it’s been tended. The weeds are fewer. And you’re more likely to notice the small green shoot when it finally pushes through.
Sometimes the routine is all I have. On the days when the words won’t come, when the cursor just blinks and blinks like a tiny, judgmental eye, I can still say: Well, I made the bed. I walked the loop. I scrambled the eggs. The day was not a waste. I showed up. I put out the saucer. Maybe tomorrow the cat will be hungry.
Frequently Asked Questions (Because I Know What You’re Thinking)
But isn’t routine just a fancy word for being boring?
Absolutely. I am very boring. I go to bed at ten. I own multiple pairs of sensible shoes. My wildest Friday night involves a herbal tea and a documentary about fungi. But here’s the secret: boring is spacious. Boring leaves room for the imagination to wander. When I stopped trying to be interesting, I became a lot more interested in the world. And that’s where the writing lives—in the interest, not the interestingness.
What if my routine stops working?
Then change it. Gently. Swap the spatula for a whisk. Walk a different loop. Write in the afternoon instead of the morning. The routine is not the boss of you; it’s a collaborator. Sometimes you need to renegotiate the terms. Last month I tried writing in a café, just to see what would happen. I hated it. The coffee was too loud. But the next day, my desk felt like a sanctuary again. The brief departure reminded me why I’d built the routine in the first place.
How do I start a routine when I have the willpower of a damp sock?
Start with one thing. One tiny, ridiculous thing. Make it so small you can’t possibly fail. Put a spatula on the counter. Boil a kettle. Open a notebook and write one sentence, even if it’s “I have nothing to say.” Do it at the same time every day for a week. Don’t worry about the results. Worry about the showing up. You’re not training your creativity; you’re training your trustworthiness. You’re telling yourself: I will be here. I will put out the saucer. The cat will notice.
In the end, the relationship between routine and creativity is not a battle. It’s a dance. A slow, slightly awkward dance, with a lot of stepping on toes and apologizing. The spatula leads. The muse follows. Sometimes they switch. Sometimes they just stand in the kitchen, eating rubbery eggs straight from the pan, laughing at the sheer absurdity of trying to make something out of nothing. And that, I think, is as good a reason as any to get up in the morning.
