How do creative people work? How do they manage to structure their day so that everyday routine becomes part of the creative process? When there is not enough time for what is planned, should one sacrifice everything — sleep, decent income, cleanliness in the house — or is it possible to develop the ability to concentrate efforts, to work less but better? Beethoven and Kafka, George Sand and Picasso, Woody Allen and Agatha Christie, Leo Tolstoy, Henry James, Charles Dickens, John Updike. Writers, composers, artists, choreographers, playwrights, philosophers, caricaturists, comedians, poets, sculptors... Excerpts from letters and diaries, interviews and personal conversations — Curry collects evidence from everywhere about how the great ones create. These brief sketches can both entertain and captivate, and inspire; they help to penetrate the 'deep, vibrant fusion of discipline and indulgence' from which the creative temperament is composed and fed. The reader will learn how celebrities combined domestic life and creativity, what schedules they followed, how they fought their fears, fatigue, and doubts, how they ate, slept, communicated, walked — in a word, about all those 'clever rituals' that helped them become great. 'An ordered regime is like a track along which the mental forces of genius move at a good pace, shielding him from the tyranny of fickle moods.'
