Write a Novel that Spits in Hollywood's Face

Henry Martin, author of Escaping Barcelona (among many others), asked me to write a guest post for his blog. I'm not sure why he asked me back after the last time he had me over to talk about reviewing books on Goodreads. It's not like we have much overlap as far as readership goes. He writes literary fiction, and I live on Grub Street.

So, after much hemming and hawing, I relented and came up with this little editorial.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

I love reading about the daily routines of artists and the like, so it was pretty nice to find this book. What I learned about the work habits of the painters, composers, writers, and philosophers covered in this volume is that many of them:

1. Drank lots of alcoholic and caffeinated beverages
2. Smoked lots of tobacco
3. Took long walks
4. Popped uppers to get going and downers to get to sleep
5. Got up early for a few hours of concentrated work (and then dicked around for the rest of the day)

I also realized, after reading this book, that I've got numbers 1, 2, and the second half of number 5 covered. I figure that means that I'm well on my way to becoming a creative juggernaut.

Note on the Kindle Edition: The photographs in the Kindle version I read were all misplaced. Every single one of them. And, of course, the captions accompanying the photographs were all wrong, too, and sometimes humorously so.

Read this book!