Not long ago I went through a John Le Carré phase. Mainly thanks to the new Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie in which Gary Oldman plays George Smiley, I read the Smiley books, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, and a couple others. I’d tried to read Le Carré in college, but didn’t get anywhere; this time, I finally was able to appreciate his work.
There’s a great interview with Le Carré in the Paris Review that has this insight into his working habits:
I am an absolute monk about my work. It’s like being an athlete: you have to find out which are the best hours of the day. I’m a morning person. I like to drink in the evening, go to sleep on a good idea and wake up with the idea solved or advanced. I believe in sleep. And I go straight to work, often very early. If a book’s getting to the end of its run, I’ll start at four-thirty or five o’clock in the morning and go through to lunchtime. In the afternoon I’ll take a walk, and then, over a scotch, take a look at what Jane’s typed out, and fiddle with it a bit more. But I always try to go to sleep before I finish working, just a little bit before. Then I know where I’ll go the next morning, but I won’t quite know what I am going to do when I go. And then in the morning it seems to deliver the answer.
I find this wonderfully rich, almost a textbook example of how constantly creative people work.
First, there’s the “absolute monk” bit, which reflects a consciousness about the need to find a practice and stick to it that you see in lots of writers.
Second, there’s the early start. Despite the stereotype of writers burning the midnight oil, at least as many are early birds.
Third, there’s the walk after lunch. The use of regular exercise is so common I’d be bored talking about it if it weren’t so damn important.
Finally, there’s the strategy of mulling over a question the night before, then sleeping on it, with the expectation that the answer will come to you during the night. This may sound irrational, but it’s a technique that lots of creative people learn, and learn to rely on.
If you wanted one paragraph that illustrated deliberate rest– the practices that restore the mind, while letting your muse continue to work on problems while giving your conscious self a break– you’d choose this one.
