Daily Rituals : : how Artists Work

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"How artists work, how they ritualize their days with the comforting (mundane) details of their lives: their daily routines, fears, dreams, naps, eating habits, and other prescribed, finely calibrated "subtle maneuvers" that help them use time, summon upwillpower, exercise self-discipline and keep themselves afloat with optimism. Artists considering how they work--in letters, diaries, interviews, beguilingly compiled and edited by Mason Currey. Portraits that inspire, amuse, and delight and that revealthe profound fusion of discipline and dissipation through which the artistic temperament is allowed to evolve, recharge, emerge. From Beethoven and Kafka to George Sand, Picasso, Woody Allen and Agatha Christie; from Leo Tolstoy and Henry James to Charles Dickens and John Updike, here are writers, composers, painters, choreographers, playwrights, philosophers, caricaturists, comedians, poets, sculptors, and scientists on how they create (and avoid creating) their creations. A Sampling of Daily RitualsCharles Dickens Dickens's eldest son recalled that, "no city clerk was ever more methodical or orderly than he; no humdrum, monotonous, conventional task could ever have been discharged with more punctuality or with more business-like regularity than he gave to the work of his imagination and fancy." Dickens rose at 7:00, had breakfast at 8:00, and was in his study by 9:00. He stayed there until 2:00, taking a brief break for lunch with his family, during which he often seemed to be in a trance, eating mechanically and barely speaking a word before hurrying back to his desk. On an ordinary day he could complete about two thousand words, but during a flight of imagination he sometimes managed twice that amount. Maya Angelou I keep a hotel room in which Ido 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... "-- Provided by publisher.

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3 of 5 stars submitted by cullerth on July 15, 2018, 2:47pm I was drawn to this book because I enjoy gaining glimpses into the lives of creatives. And this book certainly provides that: the micro essay profiling format makes this a hard book to read straight, but it's great to leaf through at random or to consume in small chunks. After a while it all starts to bleed together. The major takeaway, then, is that everyone approaches their work differently and that there really isn't one secret formula to success. Which is comforting and empowering - find what works for you and then develop the discipline to at least stick with that.

The glaring fault of this book is that it features mostly white men. Very few women and even fewer people of color. I also would have liked to see a greater range of creative professions represented - what about the STEM fields?

And another aside: very few of the people profiled had day jobs. A fair number even had maids or assistants to attend to their needs. The majority of those discussed here were truly able to live their creative work full time - which definitely isn't realistic for most people. I would have loved to see more average, working class people represented.

In short: a nice attempt, but there's room to publish another book about the routines and rituals of creative persons that accounts for the deficits of this one.

how artists work submitted by crp on August 6, 2019, 1:02am Well done; A ton of information on how writers write, rituals they keep, and including the bizarre