I have read Maya Angelou from her very first book. I even remember the cover of the first one - a yellow low budget edition perfect for train reading. Recently I have found out about her writing ritual:
Maya Angelou would wake early in the morning and check into a hotel room, where the staff was instructed to remove any pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads while lying on the bed, with only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, and would leave by the early afternoon, having written 10–12 pages, to be edited down to three or four pages in the evening.
She goes through this process to "enchant" herself, to relive the agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang, by placing herself back in time and reliving traumatic experciences.By placing herself back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic experiences like her rape in Caged Bird, she is able to tell the human truth". She would even play cards in order to get to that place of enchantment, in order to access her memories more effectively: "It may take an hour to get into it, but once I'm in it—ha! It's so delicious!"
I admire the crispness of her work. She can also be so very sobering:
Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions.
You may have a heart of gold -- but so does a hard-boiled egg!
You may have a heart of gold -- but so does a hard-boiled egg!