Maya Angelou had a famous writing routine. She’d go, every day, to a sparsely furnished hotel room. She always had a deck of cards, and she said she spent more time playing solitaire than writing.
Here’s how she described it to the Harvard Business Review:
There are times when I sit on the hotel bed with a deck of cards and play solitaire to give my “little mind” something to do. I got that phrase from my grandmother, who used to say, when something surprised her, “You know, that wasn’t even on my littlest mind.” I really thought there was a small mind and a large mind, and if I could occupy the small one, I could get more quickly to the big one. So I play solitaire. I’ve used up a deck of Bicycle cards — good cards — in a week and a half.
Maya Angelou was generous with her advice, and she told this story many times in slightly different ways. A neuroscientist might say she’s suggesting that if you occupy the amygdala you can allow the prefrontal cortex to work. A person with a different view of psychology might say she’s talking about getting into a state of mind that’s fresh and creative, rather than tired and mechanical. It’s the kind of thinking that prompts some writers to use the Pomodoro Technique.
I don’t know how this works. But I think her suggestion that writers should pay attention to their states of mind is important.
When I first heard this advice years ago, it seemed to me to be too nebulous to be useful. Today, it strikes me as practical.
• Sources: Allison Beard, “Life’s Work: An Interview with Maya Angelou”; Harvard Business Review, May 2013. You can find it here:
https://hbr.org/2013/05/maya-angelou
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