How we work

Una página que recolecta diferentes versiones de la creatividad por artistas de diversos ramos:


How we work

We're interested in the habits, rituals and small (and occasionally big) methods people and teams use to get their work done. And in the specific anecdotes and the way people describe their own relationship to their own work. Here's a list of some stories and habits. Not sure it is actually useful for anything. Do any patterns emerge across stories, other than the obvious stories of super-focus, super-dedication?

These examples are mostly "names" because the list so far is mostly from published sources, but everyone's stories and habits are interesting, so go ahead and add yours in the comments.


Ben Ainslie, sailor
Apelles, artist
Frank Auerbach, artist
Autechre, musicians
Francis Bacon, artist
J.G. Ballard, author
Walter Benjamin, writer
Ray Bradbury, author
John Cage, composer, artist
Santiago Calatrava, architect
Pablo Casals, cellist
Paul Cezanne, artist
David Chase, scriptwriter
Bruce Chatwin, author
Chuang-tzu, artist
Cory Doctorow, author
Arthur Conan Doyle, author
Jean-Baptiste Corot, artist
Umberto Eco, academic/author
Ralph Ellison, author
James Ellroy, author
Tracey Emin, artist
Jeffrey Eugenides, author
Gustave Flaubert, author
Lucian Freud, artist
Stephen Fry, actor/writer
Neil Gaiman, author
William Gibson, author
Giotto, artist
Paul H, lawyer
Dashiell Hammett, author
Damien Hirst, artist
Howard Hodgkin, artist
Mark Kostabi, artist
Anthony Lane, critic
Scott McNealy, entrepreneur
Joseph Mitchell, writer
Haruki Murakami, author
Walter Murch, sound designer/film editor
Oscar Niemeyer, architect
Pierre Omidyar, entrepreneur
Camille Pissarro
Jackson Pollock, artist
Arthur Rimbaud, poet
Clifford Ross, photographer
Philip Roth, author
Raymond Roussel, author
Jack Schulze, designer
Ricardo Semler and Semco, entrepreneur
Anthony Trollope, author
Paul Valéry, poet
Virginia Woolf, author
Benjamin Zander, conductor


James Ellroy, author

On what to write: "Don’t follow that bullshit of 'Write what you know.' Write what you like to read. Write what you want to read but no one else is writing."


rodcorp: How we work