Day 2 of 30: On Creative Rituals
& the habits and routines of iconic artists
Hello! It’s day two of the month of journaling, and we have a prompt and some thoughts to share on creative routines and rituals.
First up: Some ideas on how to cultivate a consistent journaling practice. I have lots of tricks, but the most important is to find a way to fold it into your daily routine. What that looks like for me is setting aside a few minutes first thing in the morning. I get up, I make my coffee, and I journal. When my life is extra busy, I write in the four minutes that it takes for my French press to brew.
A second tip is to keep the stakes low. If I only have those four minutes, I don’t put pressure on myself to write more than that. I also don’t worry about the quality of the writing. If I keep the stakes low, I can come back to it day after day.
Below we have a prompt to help you develop your own creative routines and rituals, as well as some habits of iconic artists. May their practices inspire yours!
Three cups of coffee in,
Suleika
Day 2: Creative Rituals by Naomi Ayala
A prompt on cultivating your own
From putting out our clothes and making our to-do lists the night ahead to planning our next day’s meals, routine gives our lives a sense of order and helps us prepare for the unpredictable. Like a go-to routine, a go-to pre-writing ritual directs us and contextualizes our creative experience: How do we want to feel? How can we set the stage for the art of making?
A pre-writing ritual might be as simple as putting on your lucky tee shirt before you sit at your desk and pick up your journal or turn on the laptop. Or it might be delightfully elaborate. I myself start with sitting meditation then ceremoniously slip on my “Power Necklace”—a leather string with a large, green aventurine pendant that helps me “tune in” to me and the stone’s attributes: stimulating perception and enhancing creativity, helping us see alternatives and possibilities while becoming more decisive.
Today, take some time to create a short ritual to follow before you sit down to write now and in the weeks ahead. What calls to you? Would a special scent help your creative readiness? Will you wear it or diffuse it? How about a special sound? Would you strike a singing bowl or dance to a song that makes you feel playful? Would something as simple as opening up a window for fresh air or holding Mountain Pose for five minutes be your first step?
The Routines & Rituals of Iconic Artists
Toni Morrison: Writing Before the World Wakes Up
Writing before dawn began as a necessity. I had small children when I first began to write and I needed to use the time before they said, ‘Mama’—and that was always around five in the morning.
From The Paris Review, Issue 128, 1993
Marie Howe: Tips to Combat Writer’s Block
Whenever I can’t do the practice, I’ll get a composition book, and I’ll write three pages a day, but I write it with my non-dominant hand, so it’s a big scrawl. I’ll write ‘I don’t want to write about’ and then just write into that—so that there’s a release in it.
Or you can get a three minute egg timer, and don’t stop writing for those three minutes. Just three minutes. That’s it—and don't look back. Get up, live your life, and do it again the next day, and the next day.
From our Studio Visit on September 13, 2020.
Truman Capote: Write Lying Down
I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.
In The Paris Review, Issue 16, 1957
Chris Ofili: On Pushing Your Limits
Having a routine, knowing what to do gives me a sense of freedom and keeps me from going crazy. It’s calming. Someone else’s routine would seem restrictive to me. But rules and limits are something to push against. It’s like doing your morning exercise. Things don’t kick in until you push at your limits.
From the New York Times, May 8, 2005.
Joyce Carol Oates: Climbing the Hill of Inspiration
There’s a hill near where I live on a country road. It’s about a mile, maybe a mile and a half. At the top of the hill, I’ve gotten so many ideas. I run over there, and waiting for me on top of that hill will be some idea. That’s obviously a mystical, superstitious notion on my part—yet it seems to happen quite often.
From The Tim Ferriss Show, Episode #497
Khaled Hosseini: Write Whether You Feel Like It or Not
You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not. Perhaps most importantly, write for an audience of one—yourself. Write the story you need to tell and want to read.
From The Daily Beast, “Khaled Hosseini: How I Write,” November 7, 2012
David Lynch: Caffeine and Sugar and Meditation
For seven years I ate at Bob’s Big Boy. I would go at 2:30, after the lunch rush. I ate a chocolate shake and four, five, six, seven cups of coffee—with lots of sugar. And there’s lots of sugar in that chocolate shake. It’s a thick shake. In a silver goblet. I would get a rush from all this sugar, and I would get so many ideas! I would write them on these napkins. It was like I had a desk with paper. All I had to do was remember to bring my pen.
On a healthier note, he also touts the creative benefits of meditation, which is a practice he knows something about. In Catching the Big Fish, he wrote:
I have never missed a meditation in thirty-three years.
Quote about Bob’s Big Boy: from the New York Times Magazine, January 14, 1990.
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This was wonderful! Thank you for compiling these here.