The eNotes Blog The Daily Rituals of Ten of the Worlds Most CreativePeople

The Daily Rituals of Ten of the Worlds Most CreativePeople Do you have a daily ritual when you write? I dont know of a single writer who does not.   Maybe its summoning the Museeverything must be  just so  if there is any hope of words appearing on paper.   Most of us are NOT like the writer,  Muriel Spark  who,  Ann Lamott  notes, is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this. No, most writers have certain things they are committed to doing every day: common milestones are a starting time, and ending time, and a number of words that must be met. Oh, and a reward at the end (or perhaps thats just me. but I doubt it). Here are ten  creative people who know that while the result may appear effortless, the process is paramount. 1.   Charles Dickens   The author was another proponent of strict routineand walking. He worked from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., without fail, and needed complete silence. At 2 p.m., he would go for a three-hour walk and returned bursting with energy and ideas. 2.   W.H. Auden The poet was a fan of routine, strictly adhering to a schedule of working in the morning from 7 to 11:30. He said: â€Å"Only the ‘Hitlers of the world’ work at night; no honest artist does.† He also took lots of drugs.   Mason Currey,   in his new book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work  Ã‚  says that   Auden regarded amphetamines as one of the labor-saving devices’ in the mental kitchen, alongside alcohol, coffee, and tobacco- although he was well aware that these mechanisms are very crude, liable to injure the cook, and constantly breaking down.' 3. Ingmar Bergman The famed director also wrote scriptshe wrote in the morning, at lunch (the same meal on most days) and then wrote from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., followed by a walk. 4.   Truman Capote The  In Cold Blood  author preferred to write in bed and was somewhat compulsiveamong his superstitions, he couldn’t stand any more than three cigarette butts in an ashtray at once. 5.   Maya Angelou   Maya Angelou favors writing in sparse hotel rooms. She typically works  from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., accompanied by a dictionary, a Bible, and a bottle of sherry. 6.   David Lynch In addition to consuming a lot of sugar, Lynch has an ongoing ritualtranscendental meditation. He started the practice in 1973 and has remained an advocate. 7.   Stephen King   â€Å"It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isnt in the middle of the room. Life isnt a support system for art. Its the other way around.† 8.   Patricia Highsmith Liked her sugar and her nicotine. In the morning, she worked in bed with matches, cigarettes,   ashtrays, coffee, donuts, and cup of sugar. And at night, a stiff drink. One presumes the donuts were gone by nightfall. 9.   Joseph Heller Usually worked for about three hours in the evening after his regular job as an advertising executive. Even when he quit his day job following the success of Catch-22,  he still only wrote a few hours a day. 10.   JK Rowling Whatever job I had, I was always writing like crazy. All I ever liked about offices was being able to type up stories on the computer when no one was looking. I was never paying much attention in meetings because I was usually scribbling bits of my latest stories in the margins of the pad or thinking up names for my characters. This is a problem when youre supposed to be taking minutes of the meeting.