When the French surrealist poet Saint-Pol-Roux used to to sleep, he would hang a sign on his bedroom door that said: "The poet is writing"

Thus he indicates that his writing begins with sleep, with dreams and nightmares, which constitutes one of his writing rituals.

The Egyptian-French novelist Albert Cossery stayed for more than 60 years residing in a hotel in Paris, rarely leaving it. His writing ritual consisted of staying in his hotel room or sitting in the hotel lobby.

One of the strange rituals is what the late Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz used to do, as he used to walk long distances in the early morning in preparation for writing, while the late Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani was overly elegant and used perfume, then he would lie on the floor with a large number of colored papers in front of him, perhaps to stimulate his emotional side before writing his poem.

None is stranger than the English novelist Agatha Christie, whose ideas for her novels only came to her in the bathroom, so she would spend hours in it writing. As for the Algerian playwright Albert Camus, he only wrote while standing in front of an open balcony.

It is clear to us here that there are writing rituals as diverse as the writers, authors and poets, and they are inherited rituals and not the product of the modern era.

In the descriptions of ancient Arab poets, there is a famous description that the ritual of writing is related to the mood and psychological state of the Arab poet. From what Al-Asma'i narrates from Ibn Abi Tarfa: "Four poets are enough for you: Zuhair when he desires, Al-Nabigha when he fears, Al-A'sha when he is joyful, and Antarah when he is angry, and some added: and Jarir when he is angry."

Here, each poetic state has a ritual.

Writing rituals vary to many dimensions, from excessive smoking sometimes, or drinking intoxicants, or drinking various beverages such as tea and coffee but excessively, as if they modify or suppress full human awareness for the writer to integrate into writing.

Some writers lock themselves in their rooms, and even take off their clothes and hide them so that they cannot out. Also, some of them may find their inspiration in travel or ing out to nature, or ing to the desert.

The Algerian novelist Ahlam Mosteghanemi says about her rituals that she writes in her bedroom, on the bed, under strong lighting, and writes with liquid school coloring pens. During writing, she does not smoke, and drinks nothing but a cup of hot milk with Nescafe.

The Russian writer Tolstoy used to wear peasant clothes before writing, and the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez would not start writing until he wore mechanic clothes, and the French Gustave Flaubert would wear his elegant clothes, and light every lamp in his house, so that people would think he was holding a banquet, to write texts that champion cultural creativity.

A leap in the dark:

The Algerian writer and translator Marzak Baqtash says: "Writing is nothing but a leap in the dark." This dark leap perhaps constitutes the primary obsessions of writing, and it is what moves awareness from a state of relaxation to another state of mental, imaginative and creative movement.

This is what we find often of the change of psychological and mental states between one writer and another and between one female writer and another. The English writer Virginia Woolf, author of the novel: Jacob's Room, could not write with a high mood unless there was a cage in front of her, and inside it a man pleading with her to out, where she was drawing inspiration from this strange behavior some of her literary ideas expressing her feelings. As for the American writer Dan Brown, author of the novel: The Da Vinci Code, he used to tilt his head upside down to enjoy writing relaxed to collect his ideas and identify with them head over heels.

The Japanese writer (Haruki Murakami), wakes up at four in the morning when he is about to write a novel, and works for five continuous hours. In the evening he reads, listens to music, then es to bed at nine in the evening. He says: I follow this routine every day without variation. Repetition, in itself, becomes the most important thing, it is a form of hypnosis. I hypnotize myself in order to reach a deep mental state. He had bad habits that he was able to change completely, as he went to live with his wife in a rural area, quit smoking, as he began to follow a diet based on plenty of vegetables and fish. And he also became regular in practicing running daily. The only flaw in this system that he imposed on himself, according to what he expressed: is that it does not allow one to practice a broad social life.

In his book (On Writing), Stephen King says: (Just like your bedroom, exactly, your office should be special, a place you to to dream. As for your timing – which starts daily at the same hour, approximately, and ends when the thousand words are completed on paper or CD – it exists to habituate you to the dream, and prepare you for it, in the same way that prepares you for sleep before ing to bed at the same hour, approximately, every night, and practicing the same ritual when you do it, for the sake of writing, and for the sake of sleep, we learn how to remain physically stable in the same moments that we give to our minds to free ourselves from the monotonous rational thinking of our daily concern).

Strange habits:

Among the strange writing rituals, the novelist Khairi Shalabi would leave crowded Cairo and his upscale residence in the Maadi district in Cairo and to cemeteries to write there in its stillness and silence. Victor Hu gave up his clothes to avoid the temptation of leaving the house, and ordered his servant to hide them far from him, wearing a large gray shawl. Edith Sitwell chose to lie in an open coffin and start writing. Some writers choose to write in the bathroom, such as the poet Rod McKuen, and the writer Dalton Trumbo who used to write in the bathroom at night accompanied by a parrot given to him by Kirk Douglas.

The famous writer Agatha Christie asked her architect to design a large Victorian-style bathroom for her to eat apples in. She said: I need a ledge because I love eating apples. While Vladimir Nabokov preferred reading and writing in the car and writing on index cards. Bernard Shaw used to hide in a hut until he finished his writings, and Marcel Proust was used to writing in bed at night.

Are they strange writing rituals perhaps to the degree of madness? They are the habits of writers, poets and authors and perhaps if not for them we would not have read their literary masterpieces.

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