Kaustab Choudhury’s Reviews > Daily Rituals: How Artists Work > Status Update

Day 69: John Cheever. “I must convince myself that writing is not, for a man of my disposition, a self-destructive vocation,” he wrote in his journal in 1968. “I hope and think it is not, but I am not genuinely sure.”

Day 67: Joseph Cornell. The solitary artist's life.

Day 66: Graham Greene. At one point he was writing 2000+ words every morning, working on two books at a time. But by the time he reached his sixties, he was no longer as ambitious about his daily writing goals. In 1968, an interviewer asked if he was “a nine-to-five man.” “No,” Greene replied. “Good heaven, I would say I was a nine-to-a-quarter-past-ten man.” He became content with just 200 words each morning.

Day 65: Somerset Maugham. “When you’re writing, when you’re creating a character, it’s with you constantly, you’re preoccupied with it, it’s alive,” he said, adding that when you “cut that out of your life, it’s a rather lonely life.”

Day 64: Agatha Christie. Even after she had written ten books, Christie didn’t really consider herself a “bona fide author.” When filling out forms that asked for her occupation, it never occurred to her to put down anything other than “married woman.” “I never had a definite place which was my room or where I retired specially to write.”

Day 63: Henry Green. Green led a double life. He was born and lived his working life as an aristocrat, under the covers he wrote with a different name, and with originality.

Day 62: Dmitry Shostakovich. "I always found it amazing that he never needed to try things out on the piano," his younger sister recalled. "He just sat down, wrote out whatever he heard in his head, and then played it through complete on the piano." But this was preceded by hours or days of mental composition—during which he "appeared to be a man of great inner tensions."

Day 61: TS Eliot. "I am sojourning among the termites."

Day 60: Jean-Paul Sartre. "Three hours in the morning, three hours in the evening. This is my only rule." That makes the Sartre's life sound relaxed, but misleadingly. His diet over a period of 24 hours included 2 packs of cigarettes and several stuffed with black tobacco, more than a quart of alcohol, 200 milligrams of amphetamines, 15 grams of aspirin, several grams of barbiturates, plus coffee, tea and rich meals.

Day 59: Pablo Picasso. Who hasn't heard of Picasso? But who has heard of the fact that, in the company of people, he would oscillate between gregarious and anti-social? However, painting never bored or tired him. Even after three or four hours standing in front of a canvas, he did not feel the slightest fatigue. “That’s why painters live so long,” he said. “While I work I leave my body outside the door."