Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
I've been reading Mason Currey's book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work and I absolutely love it. It's a collection of descriptions about the way artists, scientists and thinkers work.
Currey compiles a great collection of names from Francis Bacon to Charles Darwin to Maya Angelou and puts them in an order that allows you to see continuities and compare differences in the daily rituals of creative minds.
Some commonalities that I've read are that most creative minds work in short spurts and then spend a lot of time doing routine things that don't seem to be a part of creating like, exercising, eating, socializing or in many cases paid work. But the key is that they all consistently carve out creative time between these "non-creative" tasks. Another commonality is that many creative minds seem to do most of their work early in the morning. However, it's not the majority. Regardless of whether they work in the evening or morning, the key for most is the ability to do creative work regularly.
The chart above is from an article about Currey's book on deMilked which is also a fun way to get a snapshot of some of the artists featured but, I highly recommend picking up the book for your library. It's definitely one that will be referred to often.SaveSaveSave