The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

The Daily Rituals of Artists with Mason Currey

In an effort to understand his personal optimal rythm and flow, Mason Currey set out to amass as much information as he could find about the routines “brilliant and successful” creators adopted and followed. The result of his research was a book titled Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

How Mason started developing rituals for his own craft of writing
Why Mason left a job at a library for a crash course in publishing
Balancing a day job with a creative project that is fulfilling
Finding the motivation and fire inside yourself to create
Why the stuff you do for money isn’t always your best creative work
Building a bridge between your creativity and making a living
How imitation of other artists destroys your creativity
Finding your optimal rhythm and flow for your work
Why you can’t sit around waiting for inspiration to strike
The reason most successful creative people have a very strict routine
Why doing the work gives you the ideas
A look at the creative process across multiple art forms
Avoiding distraction and carving out space for creating
How correspondence use to be a useful corollary to creative work
Becoming obsessed with your creative problem

Mason Currey is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles. His first book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, was published by Knopf in April 2013

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Duration:: 1h 2m
Broadcast on:: 19 Mar 2014
Audio Format:: other

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Got your answers is for sale, and if you are interested in winning every sports debate you have for the rest of your life, this is the book for you. We take the 100 biggest sports debates and answer them, settle them once and for all. Meanwhile, Humber, what's your favorite part of the book? My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ro-ass man, then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. The $100 credit on your next ad campaign, go to linkedin.com/results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com/results. Terms and conditions apply, linkedin, the place to be, to be. Discover Hydro, the best kept secret in fitness. Hydro is the state-of-the-art at-home rower that engages 86% of your muscles, delivering the ultimate full-body workout in just 20 minutes. From advanced to beginner, Hydro has over 500 classes, shot worldwide and taught by Olympians and world-class athletes. For a 30-day risk-free trial, go to hydro.com and use code ROW450 to save $450 on a Hydro Pro-Rower. That's H-Y-D-R-O-W.com code ROW450. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, "What the f*** are you talking about? You insane Hollywood s***." So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month, new customers on first-three-month plan only, taxes and fees extra, speeds lower above 40 gigabytes of details. In this episode of The Unmistakable Creative, I speak with Mason Curry. In an effort to understand his personal optimal rhythm and flow, Mason set out to a massive success as much information as he could to find out about the routines that brilliant and successful creators adopted and followed. The result of his research was a book titled Daily Rituals, How Artists Work. Mason, welcome to The Unmistakable Creative. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. It's my pleasure to have you here. You know, I came across your work by way of two sites. One was Brain Pickings. The other was Tim Ferriss's blog, which, you know, of course, probably anybody listening to this knows. Really, I mean, I was intrigued by it because I think anybody listening to this considers themselves an artist and we all kind of have our rituals and so that, you know, made me very curious about your story and kind of what led you to this book. So tell us a bit about yourself, your background and, you know, how that has led you to creating this book. Yeah, sure thing. And thank you for the kind words. I was an English major in college and by the time I graduated, I decided that I wanted to be a writer of some kind, although it's taken me a while to figure out exactly what kind of writer and I still feel like I'm still kind of figuring it out. But as I think a lot of people who try to do creative work have found, it's, you know, it's a struggle to figure out how you do your own work, you know, kind of what your best working method is. And, you know, so I've always been the kind of person who needs to have a kind of a settled daily routine in my own life in order to be kind of stay on an even keel and be productive and get things done. And I've always wanted to be a writer of some kind. So as a result, I've really been drawn to these stories of how other successful creative people have scheduled their days and what their working habits were. And so, you know, anytime I've been reading biographies or obituaries or newspaper profiles of people, I've always seized on these details about how they organize their days. And so at one point several years ago, I had the idea that someone should start collecting these stories in one place. And I looked around and there didn't seem to be anything like that. So I started a blog kind of just grabbing these stories any time I ran across them. Really just more for myself than for anyone else, just kind of a way to keep track of them and as a hobby. And then after a few years, the blog kind of got some attention. I had sort of this moment where it was being passed around a lot and I got a lot of readers. And I got some emails from literary agents and book editors suggesting that I expand the idea into a book. And you know, honestly, at that point, I was thinking, boy, maybe this could be like a magazine story or something. I hadn't really thought that this could be a book. But after talking to them, I saw that this was a great opportunity. And so the Daily Rituals book is the ultimate result of that project. No. So this is interesting, really. You know, I think one of the things, people are going to hear this and then think, wow, this sounds like a real Cinderella story. But I think you and I both know that's not true. So I actually want to start earlier than this book and really dig into sort of the earlier part of your career. I mean, you said, you know, you knew in college that you wanted to be a writer. And I think that many of us, especially those who choose to pursue creative work, we kind of have this inkling of, hey, I want to be a writer. I mean, when I was in college, it was like, I would love more than anything in the world to be a writer. But I'm going to get a sales job because I have no idea how the hell anybody is going to pay me to be a writer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So talk to me about the struggles and kind of talking about the early days of your career, I mean, kind of what has led you to being able to make a living as a working artist and the things that have been challenging and kind of molded you. Yeah. Sure. Well, I mean, when I graduated from college, I decided that I wanted to be a novelist. And so I thought the way to be a novelist was to get a day job, some kind of nine to five job that we pay the bills and then write in your spare time. So that I managed to do the day job part. I got a job at a library, a university library, actually it wasn't a nine to five job, the hours were all over the place because we were opening and closing the library. And then my plan was to write a novel in my spare time. But that part proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. I was sort of constantly flailing around. I would write kind of the first chapter of something and then scrap it and then write the first chapter of something else. And after a couple of years, it was like the day job was progressing. I was getting little promotions. I was kind of moving up in the library and I suddenly realized like this is not working. I felt like I needed something to push me to write other than just this fantasy of being a novelist. And I started thinking about maybe going into being an editor in the magazine world because I thought well at least that way I will be working with writers. I'll be forced to do some writing on the job. And I also at the time a lot of what I was really interested in reading was more kind of like long form nonfiction. I kind of decided that I wasn't so interested in being a novelist. So I sort of took the opposite approach then. I went from thinking that you had to just have a day job to pay the bills and you had to do your creative work on the side to trying to find a job that would pay the bills but also let me do something kind of creative and writing related as part of that job. So I found this program in New York at Columbia University a summer program called the Columbia Publishing Course. It's like a six week kind of crash course in the publishing industry both books and magazines. And I did that and out of that I got a job as an assistant to the publisher of a small architecture and design magazine called Metropolis. And luckily the editors there were kind of happy to have an eager young person who helped them write things and edit things and I managed to kind of work my way up the ladder there and get some editing and writing experience. So that kind of worked out the idea of moving to New York and being a magazine editor and writing. It worked out but it still wasn't completely creatively fulfilling. And so this daily routines daily ritual side project kind of was like I said a hobby but it also kind of fulfilled some of this desire to do something a little bit more kind of outside of the realm of this magazine world. And you know I've just been very lucky that it has turned into a kind of viable side project. You know it was a side project. I worked full time the entire time that I was putting the book together and only now the book is out and have I been able to kind of make a go as a freelance writer and editor. So it's definitely a long process and I you know it's funny being interviewed about these things it's not like I feel like I've figured it out in any way or that I'm a good model necessarily for other people but I do think it's encouraging at least for me to hear about other people kind of figure this stuff out so hopefully it's it's somewhat useful to your listeners. Well you know I think that that's always kind of the million dollar question is like well you know is there a formula and I've always said there isn't there can't be because I mean if there was a cookie cutter formula then our show would be pretty useless. But you know it's interesting. So there's two things that you said that I actually want to dig into in a bit more depth. You mentioned this idea of finding something that would push you to write and you know a lot of people probably don't have the option to say you know what I'm going to go and you know enroll in a program at Columbia but I think that finding whatever that is that will push them whether it's writing whether it's something that you know is just something they're burning to do. I mean whatever that creative endeavor it is you think it's possible how do you find that? I mean how do you find that thing that pushes you to the edge where you're like I have to do this project. Yeah that's an interesting question because you know putting the book together I was really struck by how many of these artists in the book have this real fire inside to create and are really driven and kind of obsessed by their work and you know I sort of have this question of you know is it possible to find a creative path when you don't necessarily know what that thing is that you want to be doing and you don't have this kind of drive toward this one form of expression. So I mean I think in my case the magazine world was a good one because it's a world driven by deadlines and it was really useful for me to have to write about something in a certain time frame and to kind of learn some of those basic journalistic chops you know of writing on deadline and at a certain lengths and getting used to being edited and those were all really useful skills and I think kind of snapped me out of this idea that I had after graduating from college which was oh you know writing is about like doing it by yourself and not dealing with sort of the work of day world and it's this sort of pure artistic expression. I think you know there's some middle ground there and for people who are having trouble starting like a writing project I think if you can find a way to have a deadline or have somebody breathing down your neck that can be a huge help. It's interesting you know what I'm hearing when I'm hearing you describe this process is putting in constraints you know and creative people hate constraints right like for most I was like what that sounds really restricting I mean what do you do with that it's one of those things though that I think that has taught me a lot I mean part of why I've always said you know our show is one hour it's taught me to say okay I have to accomplish everything I need to do within an hour conversation and that's been tremendously useful in sort of shaping how I approach things and I think that it's I think there's one of the challenges I see with writers in general is it's actually a lot harder to be concise than it is to write lengthy stuff. Yeah that's an interesting observation I think that is true yeah like it's so much harder to write like a like a really good two or three hundred word thing than to just take as much time as you need. Yeah that's very true and I think the thing you're thinking about constraints is very true too that you know you need something you can't just you can't just be like like I mean my whole problem was you know I was 22 and I'm like I'm gonna write a novel and it's like you just there was no I didn't have anything to focus it in on I think partly I didn't have enough like life experience to really have something worth writing about but also partly it was too open you know and it's been really valuable for me to kind of be forced into some different kind of formats and some different avenues where there were some real restrictions. What's this I want to talk about your time at the magazine because I think that you know you you mentioned that a lot of the lessons that have come from that I think that one of the things that many of us don't get as creatives and as people who write is that sort of training from the world of traditional journalism or magazines because you know we're all sort of you know we live in our choose yourself era we're like hey I can just put up a blog you can start writing and of course we all know well that doesn't mean it's gonna be in good. So you know I'm very curious you know what lessons that you have brought from that world that have really applied to this whole you know daily rituals project but also you know sort of dealing with the fact that you you knew that you were doing something that would probably lead to this but you also knew that that wasn't you know creatively fulfilling you and how you balance those two things because I would imagine that you know if I were to start a creative job and I can tell you one of the things that I think really kept me in the early days of my life from pursuing a creative career was that I knew I was gonna have to start out by doing work that honestly wasn't all that interesting and I'm very curious kind of what that experience was like for you. Yeah I guess you know I went into the magazine world thinking it was going to be creatively fulfilling and it was it was it was sort of in a sort of wasn't you know it's like you're always kind of you get into one thing and then you feel like you could be doing a little better or that you could that there's another level to get to so at first it was very satisfying to you know be writing and editing for a paycheck I thought that was really great and I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot about you know how to edit people's work and I think that was really valuable for my own writing but then at a certain point you know putting on a magazine is very much a formula you're often kind of doing variations of the same thing and this magazine was in a topic of architecture and design that I'm interested in but it's not the only thing I'm interested in and you know kind of leaves there's a lot of stuff you can't do in that world so you know I kind of quickly found myself wanting to do some other stuff as well so I don't know am I answering your question what kind of some degree I mean I guess you know to me like lessons that you've applied in this project I mean what you've talked about editing which is tremendously useful but I think you brought up a really interesting point that I think is worth digging a bit deeper into and you said that you thought you know writing for a paycheck could be really creatively fulfilling and it's funny is I look at almost every freelance writing gig I've had and I realized I got paid to write that was the least fulfilling writing from a creative perspective that I ever did until I did my book and yeah I got paid for that but I didn't know I was going to get paid for that and yet there was something much more rewarding about doing that work than there ever was for gigs where I knew I was getting paid to write. Yeah yeah yeah I know what you mean it's like at first it was it was just wonderful to be getting paid to do something that I found interesting and somewhat creatively rewarding but I know what you mean it's like the stuff you do for money kind of gets too tangled up in paying the bills and the stuff that you're doing for yourself which often doesn't pay is the really rewarding stuff. So I mean I think that the dream would be to find the job that is creatively fulfilling and that also pays the bills but the bills are incredibly rare. So I think a lot of people end up doing this kind of juggling act that you're talking about you know that was certainly my case you're doing something that's kind of creatively fulfilling and pays the bills or kind of pays the bills and then you're kind of constantly trying to find these other outlets that are maybe more interesting and less from a minute or two. Yeah I think this actually that makes a perfect setup for my next question you know people have asked me it's like okay well now you get to do this full time and there's a lot of freelance work that led up to this most of which I found incredibly unfulfilling. So I guess for me the question really is you know you've talked about a juggling act and I kind of see it as building a bridge between those two things right. This is the work I have to do to pay the bills this is the work that I have to do because I have to do it like there's just a burning desire and I'm wondering you know if people are in that situation how they build a bridge between those two things and you got to remember some people probably in their regular jobs are not even doing creative work that they're getting paid for or you know even it like indirectly could lead to this they have to basically treat it as a completely separate project. Yeah yeah I know I absolutely know that and there are people in my research in the book who you know faced that very dilemma which was how to do creative work well earning a living on the side and and those were some of my favorite stories because I felt like I was doing the same thing you know I was working on the book in the early morning and then I would like he breakfast take a shower and go off to my day job and have a normal eight or nine hour day. I like that idea of trying to build a bridge between the two things. I think it depends on what your kind of creative interest is you know I think there are some creative projects that probably are never going to this is sort of a depressing line of thought but that there are some creative projects that you probably aren't going to make a living off of and and I think maybe just as equally valid of an approach is trying to find a day job or a kind of day job career that is sort of like satisfying enough and not so demanding that you can pursue your passion kind of in addition to it but that is another way to go about it that I think is worth kind of if you can if you can find that job that leaves you time for your other thing and that doesn't completely drain you and that maybe kind of satisfies your need to get out of the house and have some social activity that that's another approach. Yeah well I'm so glad you brought this up because you know I think that I brought this on the show before I mean the world we live in the internet the bubble that we're in kind of perpetuates this you know go leave your job and be an artist and you know be fulfilled and be Tim Ferriss you know yeah which you know what we're finding more and more not only is it not realistic for most people but the thought that hey that's what I'm supposed to do is making people really miserable yeah I think you're totally right I mean thinking about like writers you know most writers today don't make a living from their writing and so many creative writers have university jobs and I think most of them would probably prefer to write full time but that you know a teaching job is a pretty good compromise and it lets them be close to the world of ideas and work with young writers and it's usually flexible enough that they can take summers off or get kind of you know breaks to work on their own work and you know I don't think everyone's lucky enough to be able to get that kind of job but that I for a long time have thought you know what would be the job that would be that would help pay the bills and kind of let me do more stuff on the side I think you know magazine editing for me was a way to get paid to write and to kind of be forced to do more of a writing and editing career but then at a certain point it became it was so demanding that it became kind of like once it kind of became a day job it became a bad day job because there's so many hours and it sucked up all my writing and editing energies so I think it's a constant struggle to find that you know that balance yeah I mean I think you know the fact that you brought up that you know a lot of people probably will never make a living from their creative endeavors mean the idea that you have to make a living from your creativity is ridiculous like I think that there's value in and of itself for if you're not doing it for anything other than the sake of doing it and I've got a I've gotten some pushback on that from people who've read my book they're like well that's all well and good but this is a waste of time and then of course there's something to be said for talent like we've you know we've beat this like a dead horse on the show lately but we said you know in a world with this much noise talent rises to the top talent is exactly what kind of cuts above the clutter yeah yeah I mean I think you should a lot of the stuff you should go into it expecting not to make a living and if you if you do then that's just gravy you know yeah it's a convenient byproduct I mean like you know one thing you know you're saying you're there's it's a bit depressing to think but there are things like I know I am never gonna make like a Steven Spielberg-esque film it's just not one of my talents I'd be really surprised if I pulled off something like that in this lifetime and and I think that that's you know recognizing that I think it pulls out of this sort of misery that we've created around because I think we put such high expectations on ourselves by looking at what other people are doing and saying oh well you know Mason wrote a book so now I have to go write a book and that's that to me is believe it or not I think that actually just totally destroys your creativity yeah yeah I think that's true I think that if you're trying to like imitate some other career path or you're you're trying to like fit into some model of what it means to be like a successful writer that you're just gonna make yourself miserable yeah I mean I think you have to ask yourself like what's the thing I would do whether I was getting paid for it or not and then how at the same time am I going to maintain some kind of lifestyle that I can that I find acceptable you know I mean that's to me you know somebody asked me recently like what's your definition of success or something and I thought that was a hard question but I've been thinking about it and I think it's like if I could just do work that I find interesting and creatively fulfilling and it's something that I can kind of build on over time that and I can like manage to have a reasonable quality of life that I think that that's that would be doing pretty well and that might be publishing new books or it might be doing something else but um you know I think everyone has to ask themselves like what is that uh like what's the right balance for them between what kind of lifestyle do they feel like they have to have and then and then what can they do to make to kind of meet that lifestyle and also leave themselves time for whatever it is that they find fulfilling well I think that that uh that makes a perfect setup to actually start getting into the book so let's shift gears a little bit and uh let's start talking about the book I mean some of these rituals are hilarious you're thinking wow these people are completely insane uh and talking about that they like you know some of them because but I also imagine like a lot of these rituals are because I remember reading somewhere you're saying what you were searching for ideally is to figure out your sort of optimal rhythm and flow uh when it comes to your creative endeavors I mean and I think you know after five years of writing and producing I've realized that there are certain things that I absolutely have to do and have some sense of of routine even though I think we're we kind of buy into this myth that hey you know if I'm a creative I can be completely free of routine and yet I found that I need an insane amount of structure to be able to produce on a regular basis yeah yeah you know I think a lot of people think that being an artist is about uh freedom and about uh waiting for inspiration to strike and about you know not worrying about uh this sort of mundane world of schedules but um what I found in my research is that the opposite is true is that most successful creative people uh have uh often very strict routines and a very methodical approach to their work and that um you know this idea of inspiration is uh I think inspiration exists I think people in my book would certainly say that they've they've had moments of inspiration but that you really have to it's more a perspiration you know that that you really do have to sit down and work on it every day and that um it's through the work that you get the ideas it's not the other way around it's not like you wait for the idea to strike and then you put in the work um so you know it's funny it's funny you mentioned the rituals being really crazy and I've got I've gotten emails from people who say um some people have written to me and said like oh I found your book so comforting is I have all these crazy uh work habits of my own and I was really happy to see that his famous creative people are just as crazy as me and then other people have written and said I realized that I can never be an artist because I'm not crazy enough and I I kind of feel like um I I personally found a lot of these stories comforting because I think it shows that you know you think about these huge names these you know the greatest artists in the last few hundred years as being so almost these kind of gods and that they they must have had some kind of talent or some kind of ability that us like normal humans don't have but I think that when you look at what their daily lives were like it was really it was a lot of labor and that they really struggled often on a on a daily basis with um with moving their creative projects forward and um you know I find it kind of comforting that that it's a matter of working toward these things and not being imbued with some magical ability that only a few people have. 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Well it's funny because I mean when you're describing that process it sounds like a parallel to your own journey which we've just been discussing like almost identical. Oh do you think so? A lot of ways I mean so let's actually get into some specifics just so you know we have some examples to work with you I mean you've profiled so many different people in this book and I think it's I think it's really interesting that you had people like sigmund Freuden here because I mean in my mind I would have never thought sigmund Freud as an artist but you know now that I've looked at this you know it makes it makes all the sense in the world so let's talk specifics and get it into some of the rituals just so you know people have potentially ideas that they could apply to their own lives. Yeah sure so I mean yeah my goal of the book was to kind of you know a lot of people have asked me like oh so what's the big secret like what's the takeaway you know like what's the one thing and and I have to kind of say you know my goal wasn't to provide some you know theory of creativity you know the unified theory of creative work it was it was more to show like this huge variety of of behaviors and working methods and habits that have enabled people to do their work over the last few hundred years and and to just show how you know everyone really had to figure out their own kind of method and hopefully some of these methods will resonate with readers. You know you know I personally am an early morning person I tend to get my my best work done first thing in the morning right after waking up and so for me like the stories about other early early risers were particularly interesting I especially enjoyed I interviewed the novelist Nicholson Baker he's written a number of novels in the last 15 years and he talked about how he like me works best first thing in the morning and that he's devised this trick to basically get two mornings out of one day where he will wake up really early in the morning at like 4 a.m. and he'll kind of shuffle to his desk in the dark and he'll write for an hour an hour and a half and then he goes back to bed and he sleeps for another hour and a half or so and then he wakes up again and does it all over again because he likes that kind of sleepy half awake just out of bed sensation so much and finds that he writes in a certain way then that he um he sort of has devised the schedule to to get that to maximize that feeling during the day and um so I love those kind of stories and you know I think people who like that kind of stuff will find lots of different examples like that here. Well I love that you're brought up the morning part I have to try that two mornings and one day kind of thing I mean I myself you know definitely a much more of a morning person than I I mean I'm pretty useless after that noon I yeah me too nothing creative comes out there's like limited creative output that shows up and I I feel like I have a very limited time frame in which I can do really creative work and then I feel like I'm more or less useless than in robot mode. Yeah no I feel the same way and you know for what it's worth a lot of people in the book I think found that especially writers and composers um you know I can talk about this later but I feel like there is sort of a difference in the kind of brain power that different types of artists. Yeah actually that sounds fascinating let's get into that. Yeah okay so but first I was gonna say that like especially the writers and the composers um you know most of them say that that two or three hours is is like really the most that they can do of really focused um work and that anything more than that is um unproductive or even counterproductive that they end up the next day having to go back and fix whatever it was they did during this kind of like you know they get sort of loopy and you're sort of like you're you're producing work that's not quite up the par so um you know I think for people out there who want to be writers a little bit a day can actually be enough you know I think a lot of writers if they can get in one or two good hours a day that that ends up being enough to move the project forward so um that I think that is some solace for people who have to work a day job that um that you know that it's these little these little increments of time on a daily basis can really add up to something over over the long haul. Oh yeah I mean I I have no doubts about that I mean I think that you know I wrote a post on medium title how writing 1,000 words a day changed my life and I mean even a thousand seemed daunting to a lot of people and said don't start with a thousand start with a hundred and yeah filled up because what I found is that after a certain point you hit momentum and it's really really weird but to me I went to the point where now so many of these things are habitual that I actually feel like something is off in my day if the routine of writing doesn't happen like yeah it's almost as bad to me as not brushing my teeth I'd feel like you know kind of odd the whole day if I don't. Yeah yeah absolutely I mean in the book Gertrude Stein I found said that she only wrote for 30 minutes a day and you know that was enough for her and um I think like you say if you set out to write a hundred words a day you might find that actually a thousand words a day isn't that hard that once you kind of build up to it I think you know it like you say it's the power of repetition once you kind of train your minds to get into this this track it can be really powerful. So let's do this let's shift gears a little bit you brought up this idea of you know different parts of the brain and different parts of brain power based on the type of art you're creating I mean you know between you and me the only art you know between you and me and my thousands of listeners the only art that I can create is interviews and writing I've tried to draw before definitely not an artist in that sense. Yeah yeah I mean I'm the same way I'm a writer and editor but you know compiling the book I was really struck by how writers and also composers for the most part found the work to be difficult you know that it was often a real struggle that you know that working was a real kind of like grinding your teeth and forcing yourself to stay at your desk and kind of get a good 15 minutes to flow maybe and then kind of you know hit some block and it was the sort of halting progress and often you know a very kind of painful activity even though they might hit these moments of you know inspired composition for the most part it seemed like writing and editing and composing were kind of a left brain activity and kind of a you know a real struggle but then by contrast a lot of the painters and visual artists in the book it's like the total opposite they talk about how when they get in front of the canvas it's like the hours evaporate that they can be on their feet for three or four hours pacing back and forth and they don't even know that it's gotten dark outside and that it was it was the opposite problem it was like they had to force themselves to stop working and kind of attend to their lives so I think there is a real difference there you know I think um I think that it's it's it's a little dangerous to talk about creativity is just one thing I think that there's a big divide there between this sort of left brain type and this sort of right brain visual type I mean it's funny you talk about sort of left and right brain because I think we always associate creativity being very much a right brain thing but you know to hear somebody say hey there's a left brain component of this it's actually an interesting perspective so I want to talk about two things here you know one of the things I heard I was listening to this interview with Robert Danny Jr. and he said you know as as an artist exposing yourself to any art form actually causes you to grow so I'm very curious kind of you know one can we can we take away anything if we're for example writers can we take away anything from you know the filmmakers the choreographers the scientists and and apply it to our work and you know really mix both sort of creative capacities and then of course I'd love to hear your thoughts on sort of cross-pollination of ideas from various creative fields yeah that's a good question about I mean I I would I would hope that you could take things away from reading about other people's creative activity even if it's in a vastly different arena I mean I think you know and a lot of these little stories in the book I think there's this real tension between the fact that on the one hand you can't wait for inspiration to strike you've got to really sit down every day and do the work and you know it's it's not like I was saying before it's not this thing about freedom it's about you know putting in the hours and and and kind of getting into a routine and a ritual on the other hand you know I think there is a level which you can't force it you know I think everyone's had the experience of sitting down and you know it's not like beautiful prose just tumbles out of your pen and there is some level at which you have to be in a certain the right frame of mind you know in a certain mindset to kind of access this creative expression and it doesn't always work you know it's kind of hit or miss so I think that with these stories you find that that people are always kind of kind of trying to find that sweet spot whether they're in the visual arts or writers or choreographers or cartoonists or any any number of different kinds of creative fields so you know I do think that there there is a lot of common ground there it's it's not maybe so so left and right like I was you know I think it's dangerous to get too caught up in the whole left frame right brain thing um so I think I think that there is a lot of cross-pollination for sure yeah I you know it's interesting to say that I think that uh there's no question like definitely there is something to be said for like I noticed there are certain days when even though I'm you know ritualistic almost about it there's certain days where everything just flows and you're like wow that was really easy and then there are other days where you're like okay that is just how did that like that's the worst thing I've ever written I want to shoot myself like I feel like my notebooks on those days yeah absolutely and I mean I think one of the biggest things that may be useful for people is to read about great creative minds and find that they had the same the exact same experience you know so many uh people who you think of as being these gods of uh of the arts you know had the same problem where they would want to they would write something and it would be total garbage and they would throw away more pages than they would produce and um so you know I hope that the book kind of in in these short bursts kind of captures just what it was what it's like to to do creative work on a daily basis that's often you know really really difficult yeah so you know something actually came to my mind Mason well where we're just sitting here I mean I'm sitting here staring at an iPhone on my desk and you know many of the people you profiled I mean they worked at a time when we didn't have you know all this sort of technological interruption and noise and I'm really curious I mean this is you know more sort of like discussion ideas I mean what are your thoughts on on how technology is is impacting our creativity I mean is it like is it hurting us in certain ways is it helping and and you know where where do you draw the line between sort of saying okay this is awesome that I can make a feature length film for my iPhone to okay I can't think creatively because I'm just getting pinged in my brain all day long yeah yeah I do I do think that it's more difficult than ever to kind of avoid distractions and carve out that's that space where you're not being pulled in a thousand directions you know reading a lot of these stories in the book about people in the 17th and 18th and 19th century and how they would take hour long walks and then they would you know sit at their desk for three hours and you know it's so it's like amazing that people had so much time without being interrupted and I think it's really easy to feel kind of nostalgic for this pre-digital era so you know I think that practically speaking I think people need to make a real effort to carve out some time during the day when they're not being distracted when you kind of let yourself just focus on one thing and then you know like you say I think that the internet has obviously created a ton of advantages for artists as well and so it's um you know you have kind of take the good with the bad for sure well you know you know the reason I brought that up is I just you know one of the things I've noticed over the last probably about two to three weeks you know I got into the habit of reading physical books again that you know I've been an avid Kindle reader mainly because I could read much faster and so you know you guys have heard our interview with Danny Shapiro and I may have referenced this once before on the show but she kind of convinced me of the virtues of reading a physical book and starting my day not in front of the computer and and just you know there's a there's a collection of essays that she mentioned on the air called Writers on Loving and Leaving New York it's an anthology and so I bought it after she mentioned it and I've been sitting every morning sort of just quietly thumbing through it reading the sentences and then afterwards instead of opening up the computer actually handwriting in my moleskin and it was just a very very different like what I tap into is something that I don't think I can get from the computer I don't know if you find that to be the the same for yourself but it's it's been really interesting to see and I'm still trying to get my head around how to translate that into something useful for other people yeah yeah that is interesting because I've actually lately been getting up and first thing in the morning trying to to do some writing a longhand on just like an unknown pad and forcing myself not to check email I mean typically I will usually get up and like do a first pass at the email and make sure there's no fires to put out because I have some I have you know some freelance gigs to help pay the bills and so I have various things that I need to kind of keep an eye on but lately I've been saying you know whatever it is can probably wait at least an hour so I try to like just do some work away from the computer and I do think that it you know once you kind of let the computer what let the internet into your consciousness you it's kind of there on the back of your mind and I think it's there's something valuable about doing something first thing that's not you know not tied into this this thing that is always kind of nagging at you you know there's this a way in which once you let it into your consciousness it's always kind of bouncing around in the back of your mind and you know I feel like when you send an email you're always kind of slightly aware that somebody might be replying to that email and that you should check and see if if there's another email follow up and and and you know what it's like I think it's worth putting that off as long as you can first thing in the day and uh and having some time without it because once you open it up it's like it's there for the rest of the day that's that's a really interesting way of putting it but yeah I mean it's it's true it's it's in your consciousness and it's it kind of I have found that after pretty much the moment I open email it's really hard for me to get back to the place that I was at when it was just me and then a cup of coffee like I know how hard I try like I couldn't even if I tried to shut it down in the afternoon the fact that I've started it already um it makes it like it makes it almost impossible to get back to that yeah yeah totally I mean a lot of mornings I would get up and I check my email and I'd be like okay I don't have to deal with these things quite yet so I can go do some writing but that sucks you know you're sort of like just knowing that you've kind of like have these things that you're putting off till later and they're gonna be there when you get back it's kind of it's already sort of degraded that your concentration and and that um that kind of for me at least that kind of early morning uh sort of thoughtfulness that you that you lose once you get sucked into the that world so I mean one thing I I wrote a little piece for um one of the New York Times op-ed blogs called draft it's like a blog about the process of writing and one of the things I noticed in my research was how many writers in the pre-internet era really for them their correspondence was this like really valuable kind of quasi literary activity you know they would they would often use their letters their letter writing reading and answering letters is a way to like warm up to or cool down from their sort of main writing project for the day so you would have like updike would answer a few letters in the morning before he would turn to his novel writing or you would have all these other writers and and and even non-writers who had kind of like certain portions of the day that was their time for dealing with correspondence and it was something that they they valued and enjoyed whereas you know by contrast all the contemporary people I spoke to were extremely wary of email and had the same kind of problems that you and I are talking about it was like once you kind of let it into your consciousness it was always there and you had to be really careful not to check email too early in the day because it would distract you from your work and it was this kind of constant nagging distraction so you know I think there's unfortunately I don't have a solution to that but I think there is a really interesting issue there that that correspondence was once a kind of useful corollary to your creative work and has now become this really dangerous temptation and I think you know unfortunately we've kind of lost the the good parts of corresponding in a lot of ways it's become more like of a almost a to-do list rather than the sort of way to kind of rehearse your creative work or to work out ideas on the page yeah I guess maybe the value there maybe the lesson there is you know I occasionally sit down and write a physical letter to somebody obviously not somebody who needs an email response from you yeah it's funny I wrote this blog post about how you know letter writing has the art of letter writing has died and people are all besieged by email and then of course got like a ton of emails for people including some like you said who pointing out that they actually do still write physical letters so some people do do that and I think there's some value to that but it's almost like you know I don't know that the era is passed like somehow I can't quite get really excited about trying to revive it let me let's let me ask you about this I mean you know people are going to listen to this and say okay you know you guys have made an incredibly compelling case for all the morning people out there but what about the night owls I mean what kinds of interesting things that you learn about them because I mean so far it is it seems like our entire case is you should be a morning person and that's creative so let's talk about the flip side of this a little bit yeah no I don't want to give that impression at all I mean I really believe in this idea of scientists I think called chronotypes the idea that certain people are more alert and better able to focus at certain times of the day that that seems to be a real thing and you know in my research it did skew a little bit more toward the morning people and that may be a confirmation bias on my part but there were also a lot of people who swore that they could only work at night you know people like the French novel was Proust is famous for writing only at night Kafka was a nighttime writer the short story writer and Beatty has said that she can't really get going until about 10 or 11 at night there are a lot of examples and so I think if people feel like they're a night person they're probably right I think that there there really is something to the idea that different people have this mental energy at different times of the day I mean James Joyce said he could only write in the afternoon so I don't think it's just early morning and nighttime people and I think that's one of the tricks is if you're trying to be more productive or to get your creative project kicked into gear I think first kind of figuring out and recognizing what part of the day is your kind of magic hour is really crucial and then doing whatever you can to arrange your schedule so that you can take advantage of those hours is like kind of the baseline thing for for for kind of taking advantage of your schedule yeah I mean I think that so much of that comes down to awareness right I mean we're like we're talking about earlier in such a fast paced world that like you got to just slow down and recognize that hey wait a minute I just had a you know an hour straight of some really productive creative work well maybe this is the hour in which I should be doing that work every single day yeah yeah absolutely I mean it's so easy when you're on the computer and and doing putting out fires and dealing with email and stuff to feel like you're being productive I mean you are kind of being productive and it feels it often it feels good and it could be kind of addictive I mean if you were to step away and say stare at a blank piece paper for half an hour that might feel like a waste of time but that might actually be the thing that you should be doing and you know there's sort of like the the daytime internet to-do list email kind of world is sort of always there and I feel like people if they could figure out when it is that they have the best kind of mental energy for their creative project and then you know set aside that time and kind of cordon it off and and make it sacrosanct even if it might mean like sitting in a room by all intents and you know to the outside observer not really doing anything like that that can over time build into something you know so I think I think that that's it that trick well I mean I think as creatives that that is like another common fear it's like I'm sitting around doing nothing I mean like I can't imagine if if somebody said hey I want to come and observe you work for a day I'd be like do you want to sit around and watch me do nothing for a day that's going to be really traumatizing like I always say it's like you know if you came and spend a day with me you basically think I did nothing all day. 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Yeah wow that's interesting because I feel that way sometimes too you know it's like I mean there's a people a lot of times ask about like procrastination and if it's valuable and then there's definitely a fair amount of procrastination in the book and I definitely do a fair amount of procrastination and I do think there is a little bit of value in that it's like you're kind of working yourself up into this state where you can finally get something down you know it's like you're almost creating a little bit of anxiety and you know it's like the really good work the really like kind of lasting valuable creative work is not easy to combine you kind of have to do whatever you can and sometimes it's doing nothing sometimes it's putting things off and sometimes it's other weird rituals that kind of get you into that right space where you can get some really valuable stuff down. Well you know I think this makes a perfect setup and we're getting close to an hour so you know you're about the idea of really good creative work and obviously I mean everybody you have profiled in this book are sort of iconic figures right like threat I mean they've made a name for themselves they're going to go down in history you know we we basically I mean you've written a book about them so obviously they've done something right I'm really curious I mean through studying all these people you know I mean in some ways what you and I do is very similar right I mean my my whole day is spent talking to modern contemporaries contemporary creatives and you know kind of learning how they do what they do and I'm really curious if you could isolate what you think it is that made certain people successful as creatives because I mean what we know as anybody who does creative work that our work comes with no guarantees like well you know you choose the you know at Danny Shapiro said this life chooses us which I really thought yeah I can't imagine doing anything else I'm curious if you've if you saw anything that made like across all these people that you researched was there anything that you could say that okay there is a certain characteristic that people have that as creatives that you know enables them to succeed versus linger in obscurity forever. Well I think it was I mean it's interesting you say linger in obscurity because I almost think that the thing was the willingness to keep laboring and obscurity if that's what it took you know somebody these people didn't know that they were going to be later on considered great artists or great minds some of them had recognition their lifetimes and some didn't I think it was that they were you know they they had found a project that they were willing to keep working on regardless of whether it afforded them a nice lifestyle or whether they had to live in a kind of semi-poverty and regardless of whether they were recognized or made money well you know it's like it's they all were really obsessed with their creative problem and I think that's what really brought them together and that that it's the willingness to keep working away at it over your whole lifetime that that really set them apart and so so many of them ultimately had great breakthroughs and had recognition but in on a daily basis and for huge swaths of their lives you know to the outsider would seem like they're just wasting their time and I think it was the the willingness to keep working at it even when it might seem like they're failures that really set them up apart. Well I love that you brought up the idea of just keep working on it but not you know not like you know we talk about five ten years you know the overnight success but I mean you talk about a lifetime I mean and I you know one of the things that I am realizing is there are a lot of creative people who never saw the impact of their work before they died and you're kind of like that's that's crazy but you think it's like you said I think it comes down to this just burning desire that you can't not do this. Yeah absolutely yeah I mean I think it's a lot like what you said it's sort of the idea that it chooses you so I mean if you're doing something out of some kind of obligation or because you think it's some kind of shortcut I think you know you're just kind of setting yourself up for trouble it should be something that you want to do and I think finding that thing is really in some ways the hard part and yeah there's no easy answer to that unfortunately. Well Mason this has been really just eye opening and really cool and a lot of fun you know for those of you guys who haven't checked out this book how artists work daily rituals really interesting I mean I'm you know it's cool because it's one of those things that you can pick up any day as a sort of reference book I mean it's one of the things that you know I pretty much will be sitting on my desk going forward. So Mason I'm going to close with my final question you know it's funny because I had been saying for hundreds of interviews I couldn't come up with a new question to close with but you've really I mean you've studied people who for all intents and purposes are unmistakable like you know you look at their work and you recognize it. So I'm you know I'm curious in a world with this much noise how do you become unmistakable? Oh boy. You know I think it's fact what we've been talking about I think it's defined your thing you know you can call it your niche or whatever it is your your project the area in your field where you feel most able to kind of devote long-term energy and to investigate you know over many years and to kind of like make a contribution and and then to work away at that you know to to find that area and then kind of keep building on it I think ultimately is where you really distinguish yourself. Awesome well Mason this has been amazing like I said I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share some of your insights with our listeners here at the unmistakable creative. Yeah thank you so much for the time I really appreciate it yeah and for those of you guys listening we'll wrap the show with that. You've been listening to the unmistakable creative podcast visit our website at unmistakable creative.com and get access to over 400 interviews in our archives. 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How Mason started developing rituals for his own craft of writing
Why Mason left a job at a library for a crash course in publishing
Balancing a day job with a creative project that is fulfilling
Finding the motivation and fire inside yourself to create
Why the stuff you do for money isn’t always your best creative work
Building a bridge between your creativity and making a living
How imitation of other artists destroys your creativity
Finding your optimal rhythm and flow for your work
Why you can’t sit around waiting for inspiration to strike
The reason most successful creative people have a very strict routine
Why doing the work gives you the ideas
A look at the creative process across multiple art forms
Avoiding distraction and carving out space for creating
How correspondence use to be a useful corollary to creative work
Becoming obsessed with your creative problem

Mason Currey is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles. His first book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, was published by Knopf in April 2013

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