How do you balance the # "little hands tugging" and your #laptop? A review of #DailyRituals.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fun book that you can pick up and put down at your leisure and still enjoy a lot. Perfect for reading on the subway! Also - I learned a lot about habits of creative people - both good and bad. Most loved coffee and had hours during which they cannot be disturbed by family members (if they worked from home). Most importantly - you can feel inspired because so many very effective authors wrote for only 2 - yes, that's two hours a day! Yes, they spent other time on business - correspondence, etc. Seems that the prime hours for work are 9-11 in the AM and if you can be persistent, that book will get finished. Plus, there is a People Mag aspect to this, after all, you are getting some fun insights into the lives of celebrities - from Balzac to Hugo to Dickens to Joyce to Plath. There could be more women artists covered, yes, and I personally wish Mason Currey would write an update focusing more on the creative endeavors of modern working mothers who must supervise piano practice in the AM, do school runs, work during the day, and fill out PTA paperwork in the evenings after 9 PM. Not sure even 2 hours are possible on some days! Perhaps Mr. Currey can team up with Sheryl Sandberg :-)

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That was my review on Goodreads of this excellent and fun book.  On Sunday, I listened to an interview with Mason Currey on CBC - the show Spark.  Canadian Broadcasting Station - we love Canadian radio on our Satellite radio as my husband is a Canada-loving Canadian (aren't they all?) Seriously - it is a great country.  Bud I am digressing....

The Spark blog describes Mason's own takeaway - after all his research - on what works best for writers and for him:

Summary -

1. Routine/Ritual - this enlists the force of ritual and also habit.  There have been interesting studies on the power of ritual lately and how ritual makes people remember things better.
2. Best Time Slot - Identify your own best time of day and try to be true to this.  For many, morning is best.
3. One Hour Walk Daily I love this one and think that this can help with so many things in general.  

By the way, when asked by Nora Young about the differences for men and women - mainly, Nora picked up on the same theme from the book:  Men seem to be able to find blocks of time whereas women are picking up scraps of time here and there - Mason responded by giving an example of Jane Austen.  Jane lived in a big house with her mother and sister and wrote whenever she could, usually sitting by a creaking door so that she could tell if someone was going to walk in.  I thought this was a fine example, but still, the prodigiously talented Jane was not tugged on by three pairs of little hands - that's six hands total - at all times of the day.

How do you work best?