How Artists Work : Grit and Energy

“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”

• Chuck Close

I’ve long held an interest in the mundane aspects of the creative process. On the micro how do the great artists create? How do they make incremental progress on a creative masterpiece? What’s their routine? Do they have quirky ticks? And, most curiously, do they suffer from the same afflictions (procrastination,  self doubt, ebb + flow of inspiration) as us mere mortals?

These questions lead me to the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. It’s an easy a read, a collection of 160+ short anecdotes on a wide range of artists from Kafka to David Lynch. It’s meticulously researched and prefers direct quotes to capture descriptions.

Each artist has a deeply personal approach often shaped by individual circumstance. But it’s worth noting two major themes repeated over and over- grit and personal energy management.

Grit

The truly prolific show up day after day and produce. They develop a habitual, creative rhythm and rarely deviate from it. Many have an output goal, number of words for example, and won’t quit until it’s met. A few excerpts from the book:

“I have kept the candy - store hours all my life. I wake at five in the morning. I get to work as early as I can. I work as long as I can. I do this every day in the week, including holidays. I don’t take vacations voluntarily and I try to do my work even when I’m on vacation.” -Isaac Asimov

“I write and write and write, and rewrite, and even if I retain only a single page from a full day’s work , it is a single page , and these pages add up. As a result I have acquired the reputation over the years of being prolix when in fact I am measured against people who simply don’t work as hard or as long.”

• Joyce Carol Oates

King writes every day of the year, including his birthday and holidays, and he almost never lets himself quit before he reaches his daily quota of two thousand words.

• Stephen King

When he is writing a novel, Murakami wakes at 4:00 A.M. and works for five to six hours straight. In the afternoons he runs or swims (or does both), runs errands, reads, and listens to music; bedtime is 9:00. “I keep to this routine every day without variation,” he told The Paris Review in 2004. “The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”

• Haruki Murakami

Personal Energy

I first encountered the idea of a “personal energy metric” in Scott Adams’ excellent How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. The idea is simple, we have a finite amount of energy that ebbs and flows based on timing and circumstance. Rather than resist this it’s better to develop a creative rhythm that acknowledges personal energy and seeks to maximize it. Turns out Scott Adams isn’t the only one with this awareness. Again, back to Daily Rituals:

“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until that next day that is hard to get through.”

• Ernest Hemingway

Living in Paris in the early 1930s, Miller shifted his writing time, working from breakfast to lunch, taking a nap, then writing again through the afternoon and sometimes into the night. As he got older, though, he found that anything after noon was unnecessary and even counterproductive. As he told one interviewer, “I don’t believe in draining the reservoir, do you see? I believe in getting up from the typewriter, away from it, while I still have things to say.” - Henry Miller

“I’ve found over the years that any momentary change stimulates a fresh burst of mental energy . So if I’m in this room and then I go into the other room , it helps me . If I go outside to the street , it’s a huge help . If I go up and take a shower it’s a big help . So I sometimes take extra showers . I’ll be down here [ in the living room ] and at an impasse and what will help me is to go upstairs and take a shower . It breaks up everything and relaxes me” - Woody Allen

The book is packed with many more examples, too many to list here. If you’re interested in the mundane, day to day mechanics of the creative process - or want reassurance that even the greats struggle - check it out.

“My experience has been that most really serious creative people I know have very, very routine and not particularly glamorous work habits.”

• John Adams

References:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009Y4I4OM

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

Mason Currey

Published 2013

https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-ebook/dp/B00COOFBA4

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

Scott Adams

Published 2013