“Who can unravel the essence, the stamp of the artistic temperament?! Who can grasp theb deep, instinctual fusion of discipline and dissipation on which it rests!”
Thomas Mann ‘Death In Venice’
What makes the great creatives stand out, and be able to have such prodigious output? The premise of Mason Curry’s book is that it may come down to their work habits/routines. Curry’s book documents the work practices of great writers, composers, architects, scientists and more. It makes for fascinating reading.
The great German poet, historian, philosopher and playwright Friedrich Schiller kept a drawer full of rotting apples by his writing desk. He claimed that the decaying smell gave him the necessary urge to write.
American novelist and short story writer John Cheever placed a high value on the salutary effects of erotic release. He thought that his constitution required at least two or three orgasms a week, and he believed that sexual stimulation improved his concentration and even his eyesight. “With a stiff prick I can read the small print in prayer books but with a limp prick I can barely read the newspaper headlines.” Hard to believe but Cheever said this!
American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic and philosophy professor William Gass started his day in an unusual fashion. A colleague asked him if he had any unusual writing habits.
“No sorry, to be boring”, he sighed…” How does your day begin? “Oh, I go out and photograph for a couple of hours”, he said. “What do you photograph? “The rusty, derelict, overlooked, downtrodden parts of the city. Filth and decay mainly,” he said in a nothing much to it tone of voice, as casually dismissive as the wave of a hand. “You do this every day, photograph filth and decay? “Most days ’And then you write?’ ‘Yes’. “ And you don’t think that that’s unusual? “Not for me.”
Reading the essays a few things came to the fore. Alcohol played a large part in many of the essays. The bottle played a large part in their lives.
The love of writing comes through clearly in this quote from writer Jerry Kosinski, “I love writing more than anything else. Like the heartbeat, each novel I write is inseparable from my life. I write when I feel like it and wherever I feel like it, and I feel like it most of the time : day, night, and during twilight. I write in a restaurant, on a plane, between skiing and horseback riding, when I take my night walks in Manhattan, Paris, or in any other town. I wake up in the middle of the night or the afternoon to make notes and never know when I’ll sit down at the typewriter.”
The great Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote his first draft in pencil on ruled index cards. This meant that he was able to write any part of the novel on cards and then shuffl;e the cards to get the right sequence. Once he finished the draft he gave the cards to his wife to type up the novel.
American poet James Dickey worked very successfully as anadvertising copywriter. “It was a demanding position, made more so by the fact that Dickey was simultaneously trying to find time for his literary endeavours during the weekday. “Every time I had a minute to spare, which was not often, I would stick a poem in the typewriter where I had been typing Coca-Cola ads,” he said. Unlike most of his fellow ad men, Dickey kept his office door shut. If a colleague came knocking, he would quickly clear his desk of poems and poetry books.”
Truman Capote who the late, great actor Philip Seymour Hoffman played, described himself as a completely horizontal writer. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched out on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.”
Sylvia Plath worked non-stop for two months in the autumn of 1962 on her collection of poetry called ‘Ariel’. In October 1962, four months before she took her life, she wrote prophetically, “I am a genius of a writer. I have it in me. I am writing the best poems of my life, they will make my name.”
Margaret Mead, the renowned cultural anthropologist was always working. Indeed, noi working seemed to agitate and unsettle her. Once, during a two week symposium, Mead learned that a certain morning session had been postponed. She was furious. How dare they? Do they know I get up at five o’clock every morning to write a thousand words before breakfast?…Empty time stretches forever. I can’t bear it.”
Polish Composer Frederic Chopin’s creation was spontaneous and miraculous. He found it without seeking it, without foreseeing it. It came on his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he was impatient to play it to himself. But then began the most heart-rending labour I ever saw. It was a series of irresolutions, and of frettings to seize again certain details of the theme he had heard, which he had conceived of as a whole he analysed too much when wishing to write it, and his regret at not finding it again, in his opinion, clearly defined, threw himself into a kind of despair. He shut himself in his bedroom for whole days, weeping, walking, breaking his pens, repeating and altering a bar a hundred times, writing and effacing it as many times, and recommending the next day with a minimum and desperate perseverance. He spent six weeks over a single page to write it as last as he had noted it down at the very first.
For legendary German composer Ludwig van Beethoven washing and bathing were among the most pressing necessities in his life…If he did not dress to go out during the morning working hours, he would stand at his washstand and pour large pitches of water over his hands, bellowing up and down the scale or sometimes humming loudly to himself. Then he would stride around his room with rolling or staring eyes, jot something down, then resume his pouring of water and loud singing. His servants would often burst out laughing. This made him angry and he would sometimes assault them in language that made him cuit so much an even more ridiculous figure. Beethoven also came into conflict with the landlord, for all too often a lot of water was spilled that it went right through the floor.
I have just chosen a few of my favourite stories from this book which was a fascinating read.
Daily Rituals : How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration and Get To Work
Editor : Mason Currey
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan
ISBN 9781-1-4471-7147-5