Jack Kerouac saw alcoholism as a means of spiritual exploration. Ben Franklin started his days with an air bath—half an hour each day in his birthday suit in front of an open window—to read, write, and get his mental juices flowing. T.S. Eliot wore green-tinted face powder and lipstick, while fellow poet Friedrich von Schiller sought inspiration from the scent of rotting apples.
Was their genius a result of their odd personality quirks, or did these strange behaviors stem from their previously eccentric minds? If you feel like your creativity could use a boost, try these tips—at your own risk.
10 Edgar Allan Poe
Granted, authors in the 1800s didn’t have the quick word-processing tools we have today, making handwriting often the more efficient choice. But Edgar Allan Poe went a step further, writing his works in a scroll fashion—on continuous strips of paper, attached with sealing wax. The habit set his editors on edge.
Poe’s short stories are not for the faint of heart; they were so gory and morbid that many of his contemporaries found them almost unreadable. It wasn’t until well after his death that Poe’s work was admitted to the respected literary canon. Poe’s cat also played a significant role in his creative process. Poe called his beloved tabby, Catterina, his “literary guardian.”
9 Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu
Here’s the most prolific modern inventor that you’ve probably never heard of. Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu (who actually prefers to be called Sir Dr. NakaMats) patented the floppy disk in 1952 and has patented more than 3,300 inventions total during his 74 years of life. And many of his greatest ideas hit him when he was close to drowning. Dr. NakaMats believes in the mental benefits of long, airless stints underwater.
“To starve the brain of oxygen,” says the man, “you must dive deep and allow the water pressure to deprive the brain of blood. Zero-point-five seconds before death, I visualize an invention.” The Japanese inventor then jots his idea down on an underwater notepad and swims back to the surface.
Another key to Nakamatsu’s success? Brainstorming in a “calm room,” a bathroom tiled in 24-karat gold. Dr. NakaMats says the tiles block out television and radio waves that harm the creative process. The room is also nail free, because he believes that “nails reflect thinking.”
8 Agatha Christie
She wrote 66 detective novels and 14 collections of short stories, but Agatha Christie didn’t write at a desk. As a matter of fact, she never even had an office—she wrote Murder on the Orient Express, for example, in the hotel room pictured above. She did use a typewriter, though; for Christie, typing itself was part of the writing process.
This writing process of Christie’s was often disjointed. She wrote wherever the mood struck, sometimes at a kitchen table or in her bedroom. Christie sometimes started writing long before she even had a plot for her stories, and she generally started with the details of the murder scene itself before moving on.
