Daily Rituals
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Posted on May 9, 2013
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By Gabriel Thompson
“Daily Rituals: How Artists Work”
A book edited by Mason Currey
Precisely one day before this book review was due, I walked from my Oakland apartment to my Oakland office, a 20-minute southbound stroll on Telegraph Avenue. The scenery isn’t particularly inspiring: The stretch includes multiple funeral homes, a dark freeway underpass that reeks of urine, and–more often than not–a new batch of glimmering glass along the curb, evidence of fresh auto theft. But the walk, especially when I’m up against a deadline, can help nudge my mind onto a productive path, and on the best of days I stride into an opening line and quickly get lost in the assignment.
Not always though. On this day, I brewed a small pot of coffee, cracked my knuckles, loosened my shoelaces, opened up a new Word document, and then spent 90 minutes sending emails, taking out the trash, and wandering down a trail of tweets and article links that ended, somehow, in a long essay about the board game Monopoly. By now it was nearly noon and I felt the first pangs of urgency. So I launched a software program I’d recently downloaded, Freedom, which prevents a computer from going online for a prescribed period, and wrote the words that you’re now reading. Two hours later I closed my laptop and stepped outside to eat a falafel sandwich, then returned to finish off the job, drinking two more cups of coffee in the process.
These are hardly riveting details, but I don’t think I’m alone in feeling my ears perk up when I overhear writers of all sorts discuss their workaday habits. Any nugget of information, however small, can seem to be the star by which I ought to navigate the rocky shores of my self-discipline. If someone tells me that his or her daily writing schedule consists of three 36-minute sessions, with 14-minute breaks in between–well, let’s just say I’ll be carrying around a stopwatch for a few days. In fact, I discovered my new friend Freedom, which I paid $10 to download, after reading an interview with an author who said it
This article originally appeared on : TruthDig