Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

by Mason Currey

the first several weeks of a new novel, Oates has said, are particularly difficult and demoralizing: “Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.

“Rip through breakfast and housecleaning (bed and dishes, mopping or whatever) by 8:30.… Be writing before 9 (nine), that takes the curse off it.

She was using sedatives to get to sleep, and when they wore off at about 5:00 A.M. she would get up and write until the children awoke. Working like this for two months in the autumn of 1962, she produced nearly all the poems of Ariel, the posthumously published collection that finally established her as a major and searingly original new voice in poetry.

Yeats always made sure to write for at least two hours every day, whether he felt inclined to it or not.