We start the #SundayReaders series with a reflection by the highly esteemed Maya Angelou and her own description of her writing habits. Angelou has never been able to write at home. I try to keep home very pretty, she has said, and I cant work in a pretty surrounding. It throws me. As a result, she has always worked in hotel or motel rooms, the more anonymous the better. She described her routine in a 1983 interview: I usually get up at about 5:30, and Im ready to have coffee by 6, usually with my husband. He goes off to his work around 6:30, and I go off to mine. I keep a hotel room in which I do my work -- a tiny, mean room with just a bed, and sometimes, if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around 7, and I work until 2 in the afternoon. If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If its going well, Ill stay as long as its going well. Its lonely, and its marvelous. I edit while Im working. When I come home at 2, I read over what Ive written that day, and then try to put it out of my mind. I shower, prepare dinner, so that when my husband comes home, Im not totally absorbed in my work. We have a semblance of a normal life. We have a drink together and have dinner. Maybe after dinner Ill read to him what Ive written that day. He doesnt comment. I dont invite comments from anyone but my editor, but hearing it aloud is good. Sometimes 1 hear the dissonance; then I try to straighten it out in the morning. In this manner, Angelou has managed to write not only her acclaimed series of autobiographies but numerous poems, plays, lectures, articles, and television scripts. Sometimes the intensity of the work brings on strange physical reactions -- her back goes out, her knees swell, and her eyelids once swelled completely shut. Still, she enjoys pushing herself to the limits of her ability. I have always got to be the best, she has said. Im absolutely compulsive, I admit it. I dont see thats a negative. Author: Mason Currey Title: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Date: Copyright 2013 by Mason Curry Pages: 122-124
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 17:31:15 +0000