London Writers' Salon

#177: Mason Currey — Daily Rituals: Building a Creative Life With Routine, Discipline, and Procrastination

Episode Summary

Writer and editor Mason Currey on what artists’ routines can teach us about focus, discipline, procrastination, and building a sustainable creative life.

Episode Notes

Writer and editor Mason Currey on what artists’ routines can teach us about focus, discipline, procrastination, and building a sustainable creative life.

You'll learn:

• What led Mason to writing, and the early pressures that shaped his relationship with the work.
• Why he started Daily Routines as a side project, and what he was trying to solve with it.
• The moment the blog went viral, and what changed when an audience arrived.
• What it took to turn a quote-collecting blog into a book, including the research and structure behind it.
• Why routines work best when they’re personal and flexible rather than prescriptive.
• Ideas for protecting your best hours, including Nicholson Baker’s “double morning.”
• The difference between physical routine and creative routine, and why both matter.
• A realistic way to design an hour of writing, including what to do when “nothing happens.”
• What Worm Zooms are, and why “small progress” can be a powerful creative philosophy.
• The question underneath every routine: how artists make time for the work while paying the bills.

Resources and Links:

• 📑Interview Transcript
• Nicholson Baker Books
• Making Art and Making a Living by Mason Currey 
• Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
• Daily Rituals: Women at Work by Mason Currey
• Worm Zooms
• Death in Venice by Thomas Mann 
• Mason’s Substack

About Mason Currey

Mason Currey is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles and the author of the Daily Rituals books. In addition to compiling the Daily Rituals books, Currey was a design-magazine editor for ten years, working as the managing editor of Metropolis, the executive editor of Print, a senior editor at Core77, and the programming chair for the 2015 Core77 Conference. His freelance writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and Slate, and he has delivered talks on the creative process to high school and college students, writers’ groups, and the partners of the design consultancy IDEO. Currey is currently writing a new nonfiction book and sending out a fortnightly newsletter on routines, rituals, and wriggling through a creative life.