In an article in the Independent, Guy Adams describes the creative space owned by writer/director Guillermo del Toro, the “Man Cave”:
The Man Cave has blood-red wallpaper. Its hallways are filled with monster statuettes, mock-baroque paintings, and Gothic objets d'art. The bookshelves are stacked with leather-bound notebooks, on which he sketched out plot-lines and characters for his best-known films: Blade II, Hellboy, and the critically acclaimed Pan's Labyrinth. It is, in other words, his creative hub.
"I bought it because my crap used to take up three-quarters of the house, and my wife couldn't stand it," he explains. "One day we were fighting because I wanted wall-space near the kitchen for a statue of a rutting woman zombie. And she said, 'you should live in a cave'. So I did what I was told. Now the family home is pristine, and all my crap is in this crazy place where I write."
Is that cool, or what! (OK, I know mostly only my male readers will agree…)
He has a huge number of projects underway. How does he do it?:
"I compartmentalise my life very easily," he says. "When I'm doing one thing, I'm really doing one thing. I have a sign on my office at the studio. It says 'fuck off, I'm writing'. When that sign is on the door, nobody knocks. I just put music on and I occupy myself very hard. And that is how I get things done. And I never stop. I hate free time. I hate down time. This is what I do."
(If you’re interested in cultivating focus, have a look at my book, “Focus: the power of targeted thinking,” published by Pearson and available on Amazon and other online and offline retailers in the UK—the US edition has been postponed to March 2010.)
