Writer’s Desk: A Room of One’s Own

Maya Angelou receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

Distractions can be killers. There are writers who churn out quality material in the middle of a newsroom’s bedlam. Others need to shut themselves off from the world completely.

Here’s what Maya Angelou (who was born this week in 1928 in St. Louis, and passed away in 2014) had to say about her process:

I do still keep a hotel room in my hometown, and pay for it by the month. I go around 6:30 in the morning. I have a bedroom,...