When we left on our honeymoon, I vowed I would use my phone minimally on the trip. I wanted to disconnect from all the usual distractions–news, social media, email, etc. But, a few days in, like a sick addict, I couldn’t resist pulling up my Facebook feed. And then I saw that Maya Angelou had passed away.
You know what comes to mind when I think of Maya Angelou? High school. In my lit class, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was a big deal. A BIG deal. It seems like we talked about it for the entirety of a semester. I had already fallen in love with writing by the time I read that book, but that book changed what I thought of as writing. That book, and Maya, showed me that the line between prose and poetry can be a blurry one.
Last year, I read a post on The Daily Beast that made me like Maya Angelou even more. From that post, here are a few entertaining insights into her writing process:
I’ve read of some eccentric writing habits of yours, involving hotel rooms without pictures on the walls, sherry, and headgear. How did you first come upon that cocktail for writing success, and has the routine evolved over your career?
And headgear! Ha! It was head ties, not headgear! Well, I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing. When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess. When my husband would come into the room, he’d accuse me, and say, “You’ve been writing!” As if it was a bad thing. He could tell because of my hair, so I learned to hide my hair with a turban of some sort.
I do still keep a hotel room in my hometown, and pay for it by the month. I go around 6:30 in the morning. I have a bedroom, with a bed, a table, and a bath. I have Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary, and the Bible.
Anything else in the hotel room?
Usually a deck of cards and some crossword puzzles. Something to occupy my little mind. I think my grandmother taught me that. She didn’t mean to, but she used to talk about her “little mind.” So when I was young, from the time I was about 3 until 13, I decided that there was a Big Mind and a Little Mind. And the Big Mind would allow you to consider deep thoughts, but the Little Mind would occupy you, so you could not be distracted. It would work crossword puzzles or play Solitaire, while the Big Mind would delve deep into the subjects I wanted to write about. So I keep the room. I have all the paintings and any decoration taken out of the room. I ask the management and house-keeping not to enter the room, just in case I’ve thrown a piece of paper on the floor, I don’t want it discarded. About every two months I get a note slipped under the door: “Dear Ms. Angelou, please let us change the linen. We think it may be moldy!” But I’ve never slept there, I’m usually out of there by 2. And then I go home and I read what I’ve written that morning, and I try to edit then. Clean it up. And that’s how I write books!
Do you still drink sherry when you write?
Not so much anymore. I stopped about two years ago.
You have said that nothing frightens you as much as writing, but nothing satisfies you as much either. What frightens you about it?
Will I write a sentence that will just float off the page? Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it’s right, it’s easy. It’s the other way round, too. If it’s slovenly written, then it’s hard to read. It doesn’t give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.
What would you like carved onto your tombstone?
[Laughs] “I did my best, I hope you do the same.”
The writing world will miss you, Maya!