Maya Angelou’s Daily Routine

Maya Angelou’s daily routine, as she described it to George Plimpton for The Paris Review (published in 1990), began by leaving home at 6 AM to reach a rented hotel room by 6:30 AM. She wrote there lying across the bed on yellow pads until 12:30 or 1:30 PM, then went home, showered, shopped, cooked dinner and reread the morning’s pages in the evening.

Key takeaways

• Maya Angelou told George Plimpton of The Paris Review that she left home at 6 AM and tried to be at work in a rented hotel room by 6:30 AM (Issue 116, Fall 1990; the interview grew from their onstage conversation at New York’s 92nd Street Y in 1988).
• She wrote lying across a made-up bed, never slept in the room and asked staff to take everything off the walls; she stayed until 12:30 or 1:30 PM (The Paris Review, 1990).
• Her kit: yellow pads, a dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus and a Bible, as Plimpton recalled her telling him and as she listed it herself in 2012 (The Paris Review, 1990; Splash of Red, 2012); in a 1987 interview she also named a solitaire deck.
• The afternoon belonged to ordinary life: a shower, food shopping and cooking her own dinner, then rereading the morning’s work, from which she might keep two and a half or three pages out of nine.
• The lesson for your body clock is the fixed frame: the same early start, a hard stop by early afternoon and a quiet evening, day after day.

What was Maya Angelou’s daily routine?

Maya Angelou’s routine was a writer’s shift: an early drive to a bare hotel room, about six hours of writing, then an afternoon and evening of shopping, cooking and rereading at home. She described it in her Paris Review interview, which grew from an onstage conversation with Plimpton at the 92nd Street Y in 1988 and was published in 1990, when she lived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and taught at Wake Forest University. Apart from the sherry, the only clock times she gave are leaving at 6 AM, arriving by 6:30 AM, leaving between 12:30 and 1:30 PM and looking at the work around 5 PM; every other time below is marked as our estimate.

The 1990 interview is our anchor because it is her fullest account in her own words. Her later descriptions, to Splash of Red magazine in 2012 among others, keep the same shape: a room rented by the month and a start around 6:30 AM.

Why did Maya Angelou write in a hotel room?

Because in a bare room, she told The Paris Review, she felt as if all her beliefs were suspended and nothing held her to anything; she wanted simply to feel, and to remember once she started work. She said she had kept a hotel room in every town she had lived in, rented for a few months at a time. She never slept there and never let the staff change the bed; they could come in only to empty the wastebaskets. She insisted that everything be taken off the walls, so that nothing in the room held her to anything.

Decades later, in a 2012 interview with Splash of Red magazine quoted by NewPages, she described the same arrangement:

I rent it by the month. I talk with housekeeping management and I explain that I don’t want anybody in my room so they never have to change sheets or change towels.

The room was a place of work, not of rest, and her words separate the two plainly: she kept it for writing, and slept at home. Our guide to Haruki Murakami’s Daily Routine shows another writer who guards the early hours with the same firmness.

What did Maya Angelou keep in her writing room?

Yellow pads, reference books and a Bible. In 1990 Plimpton reminded her that she had once told him she wrote lying on a made-up bed with a bottle of sherry, a dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, yellow pads and a Bible. In 2012 she listed a Bible, a Roget’s Thesaurus, a Random House dictionary, stacks of yellow pads, pens and crossword puzzles. In a 1987 interview with Carol Sarler, reprinted in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989), she also named a solitaire deck among the things she took to the room.

The yellow pad went back to the early 1950s. She told David Holmstrom of The Christian Science Monitor in 1993 that a voice teacher had handed her one at a frightening moment in her life and told her to write down her blessings. From then on, she said:

So, everything I have written, every book, every stage play, every screenplay, was written on a yellow pad.

The Bible was for sound as much as faith. She told The Paris Review that she read it aloud, in any translation, to hear the rhythm and remind herself how beautiful English is, and that on arriving she might read the Psalms, Paul Laurence Dunbar or James Weldon Johnson before she started to write.

Plimpton also asked about the sherry. She said she might have it as soon as she got in, but usually had a glass around 11 AM. It was a single, documented glass and never the point of her day, so we note it here and leave it off My BodyClock.

How did Maya Angelou end her writing day?

With a shower, a shopping trip and dinner. She told The Paris Review that she went home about midday and showered, because writing is very hard work. Then she went out to shop, being a serious cook, and played at being normal, greeting people in the ordinary way. At home she prepared dinner for herself, and for houseguests she added candles and music.

In the same interview she called it an orderly, proper, quiet dinner, and said she looked at the work around five. After the dishes were cleared, she read what she had written that morning. More often than not, she said, out of nine pages she might save two and a half or three, and she called that the cruelest time of the day. Then she went back to the room the next morning.

The cooking was serious. Angelou published two cookbooks, Hallelujah! The Welcome Table (2004) and Great Food, All Day Long (2010), according to Wikipedia. In 1993 she told The Christian Science Monitor:

I trust myself in the kitchen, in a car, and with the yellow pad.

An early, home-cooked dinner leaves a long, quiet evening before sleep; our guide to the best time to eat dinner explains why that timing suits your body clock.

What can you take from Maya Angelou’s day for your own body clock?

Three parts of her day are about timing:

1. Start at the same hour. Leaving at 6 AM and arriving by 6:30 AM gave her a fixed anchor. A regular start, every day, is the core of our guide on how to fix your sleep schedule.
2. Put the hardest work early, with a hard stop. She wrote from the early morning to early afternoon and then left. Light and dark have the biggest influence on circadian rhythms, according to the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and her 6 AM start came before sunrise for much of the year, so the light lesson is a modern one: if you start early, get outside once it is light.
3. Mark the switch. Her shower and shopping trip turned writing time into ordinary time. A walk, a shower or cooking can do the same for you, and a calm, regular dinner sets up the evening. Stephen King’s Daily Routine is another writer’s day built on a morning shift.

Your day on My BodyClock

The day above on My BodyClock is a writing day for Maya Angelou in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in the late 1980s, with every estimated time marked. It opens with the 6 AM drive and her 6:30 AM arrival at the hotel room, then a long Work block of writing on yellow pads until about 1 PM. The afternoon turns to a shower, a late lunch and food shopping as Flow, a rest at home, and a first look at the pages around 5 PM. Cooking and an orderly dinner follow, then an evening reread of the morning’s work, a quiet hour and sleep from about 10 PM. The wake-up, the drives and the shopping are Flow, so all 24 hours are planned.

To build a day like it, find your Body Clock Type with the Owaves quiz, then add your own early Work block, a hard stop and an evening wind-down in Owaves: My BodyClock on the App Store. On Android? Join the Android waitlist.

FAQ

What time did Maya Angelou start writing?

She told The Paris Review, in the interview published in 1990, that she left home at 6 AM and tried to be at work by 6:30 AM. In a 2012 interview with Splash of Red magazine she again said she went in around 6:30 in the morning.

Why did Maya Angelou rent a hotel room to write?

She said she had kept a hotel room in every town she lived in, rented for months at a time, and never slept there. She had everything taken off the walls so that nothing in the room held her to anything, and she slept and lived at home.

What did Maya Angelou keep in her hotel room?

In her own accounts: yellow pads and pens, a dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, a Bible and, in 2012, crossword puzzles. Plimpton’s question in the 1990 interview also mentioned a bottle of sherry, and in a 1987 interview she named a solitaire deck as well.

How many pages did Maya Angelou write a day?

She told The Paris Review that if she had written nine pages, she might save two and a half or three after rereading them in the evening.

Sources

1. George Plimpton. “Maya Angelou, The Art of Fiction No. 119.” The Paris Review, Issue 116, Fall 1990. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2279/the-art-of-fiction-no-119-maya-angelou
2. The Paris Review. “Maya Angelou with George Plimpton” (on their 1988 onstage conversation at 92Y). The Daily, 21 February 2017. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/02/21/maya-angelou-with-george-plimpton/
3. NewPages. “Maya Angelou Interview” (on Splash of Red magazine’s interview). NewPages Blog, 4 December 2012. https://www.newpages.com/blog/blog-items/maya-angelou-interview/
4. David Holmstrom. “The Voice of a Writer ‘in Process’.” The Christian Science Monitor, 20 October 1993. https://www.csmonitor.com/1993/1020/20161.html
5. Carol Sarler. “A Day in the Life of Maya Angelou” (1987), in Jeffrey M. Elliot (ed.), Conversations with Maya Angelou. University Press of Mississippi, 1989. https://archive.org/details/conversationswit00ange
6. Wikipedia. “Maya Angelou” (cookbooks). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou
7. National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIH). “Circadian Rhythms.” https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/circadian-rhythms

Photos: AI illustration (Nano Banana 2) · TomasHa73 / Pixabay · pcglenn / Pixabay · jackmac34 / Pixabay · JillWellington / Pixabay · Myriams-Fotos / Pixabay · Phill_Dillow / Pixabay