Maya Angelou's Daily Writing Ritual: Hotel Rooms, Discipline, and Creative Process

Maya Angelou was a world-renowned memoirist, essayist, and poet, among many other roles and titles. Maya Angelou's daily ritual is one that she developed throughout her long career. She started out in the 1950's as an actress and dancer, touring countries throughout Europe and Africa as a featured actor in the opera Porgy and Bess. In 1961, her then-husband successfully encouraged her to use her writing talents to write for the news magazine The Arab Observer in Cairo. She, then, worked for The African Review in Ghana. 

Eventually, Angelou moved to California and wrote a multi-part tv series based on African culture in America called Black, Blues, Black as well as a movie called Georgia, Georgia. During this time, the first part of her six-volume autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published. Throughout Angelou's career she also released a book of meditations, some spoken-word albums, many poems, and several children's books. Her most notable poem is Still I Rise, a literary celebration of the resilience of black women in America.

Maya Angelou also helped Malcolm X create the Organization of Afro-American Unity and was a coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, established by MLK Jr. She delivered an inaugural poem for U.S. president Bill Clinton and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

So, what did Maya Angelou's writing routine look like?

Her creative process was almost completely unheard of. She was known to keep hotel rooms for months at a time, which she would arrive to at 6:30 in the morning. She would write, in these hotel rooms, laying across the bed with her Bible, dictionary, thesaurus, pens, and a yellow pad. She would read the Bible during these times "' to remind myself how beautiful English is.'" Angelou wrote until around 12:30 or 1:30 in the afternoon and, then, went home.

At home, she would prepare dinner for herself and guests. After dinner, she always read what she wrote that morning. And, very relatably, she would often do away with much of what she wrote.

What can we learn from Maya Angelou's process?

Make space and time for your passion no matter how inconvenient it is.

Angelou would carve out space and time in her own way, by sacrificing her morning hours in a hotel room. Find ways that you can make room for what makes you feel alive.