NotitiesMasters of Habit: The Wisdom and Writing of Maya Angelou
James Clear
Maya Angelou beschrijft haar schrijfgewoonten in een interview uit 1983, waarin ze haar dagelijkse routine uiteenzet, van vroeg opstaan tot het werken in een hotelkamer. Ze benadrukt het belang van het veranderen van je perspectief op dingen die je niet leuk vindt en definieert succes als het houden van van jezelf en je werk. Angelou wijst ook op de neiging van mensen om anderen te labelen om zo met de werkelijkheid om te gaan.
As you may expect, Angelou’s creative genius didn’t expose itself without hard work. She was a true master of habits, routines, and consistency. Here’s how she described her writing habits in 1983 interview with Claudia Tate (as covered in Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals), “I usually get up at about 5:30, and I’m ready to have coffee by 6, usually with my husband. He goes off to his work around 6:30, and I go off to mine. I keep a hotel room in which I do 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. I try to get there around 7, and I work until 2 in the afternoon. If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it’s going well, I’ll stay as long as it’s going well. It’s lonely, and it’s marvelous. I edit while I’m working. When I come home at 2, I read over what I’ve written that day, and then try to put it out of my mind. I shower, prepare dinner, so that when my husband comes home, I’m not totally absorbed in my work. We have a semblance of a normal life. We have a drink together and have dinner. Maybe after dinner I’ll read to him what I’ve written that day. He doesn’t comment. I don’t invite comments from anyone but my editor, but hearing it aloud is good. Sometimes I hear the dissonance; then I try to straighten it out in the morning.”
“What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.”
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
People often put labels on people so they don’t have to deal with the physical fact of those people.