So, the author Chris Ryan and I have been talking about writing spaces. All the photos on my new website are of my office in the house my husband and I built, not including the subfloor and stacked lumber and unfinished drywall and shims and foam insulation where the trim is missing around the windows and boxes of crap we don’t have room to store anywhere else.
That stuff I spared you.
Annie Dillard has written extensively about her writing spaces, both real and imaginary. She says she can’t write with a view, and has gone so far as to deliberately cover a window next to her desk. She also describes the act of writing as cranking a wheel to keep your desk in mid-air among the tree tops.
P.G. Wodehouse wrote one of his best novels interned in a German camp during WWII. Po Bronson wrote his first novel in a closet. Paul Bowles worked in bed, although that was because he was too lazy to get up. Faulkner had a couch in his office, where he would lie and, as he told his daughter, “make up stories.” (Of course, Faulkner also spent a certain amount of his daylight hours recovering from hangovers.) Both Virginia Woolf and Bob Dylan have written extensively standing up—she had a tall desk in the office of the Hogarth Press, and he kept a typewriter on the kitchen counter. Jane Bowles used to write to Paul how she’d sit in a room at a desk all day long and again after dinner and still only come up with two sentences. She also mentioned staring out windows a lot. Some writers say they have to face a wall or they can’t concentrate.
Personally, I can’t write facing a wall. I simply won’t sit down at a desk with nothing to look at.
I don’t think I’d do so hot in an internment camp, either.
I have worked at dining room tables, kitchen tables, coffee tables, a desk in the middle of the room, on the couch, in cars, trains, and airplanes, sitting on the floor against the kitchen cupboards in the middle of the night. I always think of Jean Kerr (Please Don’t Eat the Daisies) describing the contents of her glove compartment because the only place she could get any peace and quiet to write was in her car.
I actually work in armchairs now, on a laptop on my lap. My neck goes out from squinting at the screen these days if I work at a table. In fact, I had to build a small platform on the floor in the U of the beautiful oak desk my husband built for me so I could put an armchair there and still be able to reach the desktop. I also have a great old battered green leather armchair in a dormer window where I can sit in the sun in the spring and fall. In the winter—like now—I tend to sit in a rocking chair downstairs in the living room all day, feeding the fire.
I find writers’ workspaces endlessly fascinating. At the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop one writer took us all to task for even making an issue of it—she said she could write anytime, bus station, train depot, loud dinner table, anywhere, and she thought we were a pretty spoiled bunch of debutants to say we could only write in certain places under certain conditions. I admire her chutzpah, but I have to say I’m guessing she had a hard time finishing a sentence while she was passing the mashed potatoes.
There’s a whole aspect of a writer’s desk that’s about not just writing, but personal space. Even in the tiniest areas, writers find room to decorate, to stash miniature objects of sometimes mysterious significance, to post cartoons and quotes, to hang on the wall those things they most want to stare at while they zone out. (A technical writing friend who works in an office has been telling me this morning how she sits and zones and it looks like work—-we were laughing that if Dawn of the Dead were about writers, they’d trundle off duly with their blue hands outstretched to find keyboards, even with no words in their heads.)
Where do you guys write? Do you ever wonder what you’d wind up with if you tried working someplace really weird? Did you DO it?
Wow, I’ve missed out on stuff. You have a book coming out next month! Whoa…I’ve missed out on stuff.
I’ve written in many different spaces, and I’ve discovered I can pretty much write anywhere if I have quiet and a laptop. In college I could park my butt anywhere and write. I miss the freedom of those days!
I actually like writing in busy places like coffee shops.
I write mostly at home but I find it too distracting. There’s always laundry or bills or other stuff to deal with.
Coffee shops! Great call, Andrew. I forgot about coffee shops! And sidewalk cafes.
I used to write in bars, too. Although, for the record, guys hit on women who write in bars. If anybody out there is looking for ways to get hit on.
I used to go out for breakfast at my local greasy spoon in downtown San Francisco every Saturday morning and work on my novel. I liked it because it was quiet, but after awhile the owner himself came out and hit on me.
I must just LOOK open to propositions when I’m writing. I should ask my husband.
i also can’t work in front of a wall. even if a window view is of a parking lot or single leaf hanging from a skeletal apple tree, i need it.
Yeah, I think it’s something about depth perception. I need to be looking at things in three dimensions in order for my brain to start working.
Maybe if Livia Blackburne is reading she’ll tell us about how brains process sight in 3-D.
“Feeding the fire” is an interesting metaphor for writing.
I actually have the opposite experience from (what seems like) everyone else. I can’t write creatively if there are too many distractions, and for me that pretty much means everything—open windows, birds singing, fires to feed, phones to answer. I can write at about 1am when everyone else in the house is asleep, it is dark outside, and I know that nothing will interrupt. I might do best in an internment camp, come to think of it, with armed guards fending off the curious. (At least, that’s the image that appeared in my mind… I’m sure Wodehouse’s experience was not quite that positive.)
I guess that is why I don’t write creatively very often. (Full disclosure: I am a full-time technical writer) This discussion leads me wonder whether I would eventually evolve to be more creative in a multi-dimensional environment if I only spent more time in such places, trying to be creative. Unfortunately, in those environments I am usually trying to be productive instead of creative. Darn bills.
Thanks for inviting me into the discussion, Victoria! Hmm, most of the 3D vision research I know of has more to do with how people do it than how it affects their mood/creative processes. I’m guessing it has something to do with how well you handle distractions, like people have said. Somepeople need the blank wall, and others need to have something more interesting, to get them excited to write. You could make an analogy with the auditory modality. Some people need it quiet, other people need it noisier, or prefer music.
On a marginally related note, apparently extroverts perform better with caffeine, while introverts don’t, but that’s a whole other story…
Actually, Wodehouse almost enjoyed the internment camp. He grew up in boarding schools, basically abandoned by his parents (they dropped him and his brothers off in England when he was two and he didn’t see them again for three years), so he felt most comfortable in an institutional setting among other men. Of course, he was also strictly programmed to never complain, but always pretend things were hunky-dory no matter what. In fact, he got into a lot of hot water for making light of the internment camp on German radio, at the invitation of Goebbler and for (in his mind) the amusement of his American audience. He was never able to return to England after the war, for fear of prosecution for treason—he and his wife spent their last thirty years in New York.
But it’s true, Jeff, that creativity and pressure to produce can turn into their own self-defeating mechanism. Some people love it. It’s sheer writer’s block for me.
Thanks for the information, Livia! There’s something about the hypnotic effect of watching something move just very slightly (now Chris’ skeletal branch with one leaf is stuck in my head) that starts things working in my subconscious. I’m in much better shape with a view out a window than just a picture on the wall.
That’s fascinating about extroverts and caffeine. Caffeine makes me insane. Then knocks me out cold. I’d be fascinated to hear more about that.
And do any of the rest of you guys have reactions to stimulants or depressants that affect your ability to write?
coffee addict here. it affects my moods, my productivity, my focus, my sleep, and health issues. but i love it! i love working in coffee shops, but i’m really picky about ambiance.
At home, it’s in front of the TV, on or not, on a little lap top stand. Coffee houses are where I go when home gets too distracting. But I do most of my rough draft writing at work in the break room at lunch.
As a visual writer I need zero distractions. For this I have a private office where it is possible to turn up mood music and work. At less intense times the location depends on the weather. During shirtsleeve weather I work on the patio or next to the pool. When at our home in St. George, UT., I will go to the park next to the library. They have a public Wii connection, electrical outlets (for when the battery gets low) and covered benches/tables. This is not a great place to work, however because there is a water feature with lots of little kids laughing and splashing. The grandpa in me gets too easily distracted watching them having so much fun. On the other hand, like the Cosco food court, this is a great place to pick up on character ideas.
Thanks for the invite to the discussion!
Right now I am working mostly in the bedroom – laptop on a breakfast tray. It is the only place where my imagination feels more free to come out safely without being bombarded by household chores and other day to day demands. I also like working in cafes but only when I am editing. I can’t write rough drafts without a certain level of privacy. Right now with my newborn I am doing a lot of one-handed scribbling in notebooks and composing in my mind during the wee hours while he is nursing.
Mari, what is the draw of the TV? Is it the stimulation? Are you using the TV to screen out other distractions? Or is it just where your stand happens to be?
I was once taken severely to task by a friend in college who invited me over to study for a test because I showed up with a six-pack and immediately turned on the TV.
Of course, I’ve mentioned before how enamored I was of studying for computer science tests. I don’t think I could write that way anymore.
Victoria
Sean, are you familiar with Ray Bradbury’s comments about working at home and the terrible distraction of his charming little daughters coming out to get Daddy to play with them? He says he always went.
And that’s an excellent point about the difference between screening out distractions and looking for material. Two totally different goals determining how we choose our writing environment.
Do the rest of you distinguish between the two? Or do you try to find places that satisfy both?
Victoria
Alegra, I remember the period of writing with one hand! I wrote the first draft of an entire novel on a yellow legal pad with a 4-year-old on my lap.
I have to say, I’m amazed you get any writing done at all with two older children and a newborn. There is a great peace to being tethered to a chair all day by a nursing infant (I read almost all of Hemingway), but I can’t imagine how you find time to handle the older ones.
Does NEEDING to get the utmost out of your time simply force you to be less lazy with it?
Victoria
Chris, I’m laughing at the picture of you staring out a window zapped to the eyeballs on caffeine, hallucinating your characters against the background of the Finnish winter. No wonder your details are so intense!
Victoria
I would also love to know the draw of the TV or any other chaotic environment. I simply can’t—I don’t even listen to music. I also find it difficult to work in a living room, kitchen, or any other “normal” environment, I think because my mind is tuned to extroversion in those places. I can often work in my office, but even then I am accustomed to the phone ringing, my child walking in unexpectedly, or the cat knocking over my coffee. Maybe I should try working in the bathroom instead!
None of this has to do with motivation or procrastination, of course.
I guess I write wherever I can. Since I work at an office during the day, and the job sometimes involves attending meetings, I am often rummaging through meeting notes and other stuff for things I wrote down while doing something else. I have been known to write drafts while taking exams, in the movies, on buses, trains,etc. And also during public readings.
But if I can I try to write in my nice sunny 8 sided room at home, at the battered old picnic table style ‘desk’ and usually sitting on one of those big blue rubber balls [eases the back, helps me move rhythmically]. With plenty of view, and usually no music.
T.
p.s. I got a kick out of your typo in the 4th paragraph.
Oh my god, Teresa, I just saw that. I guess Wodehouse was one of the lucky ones who didn’t get interred.
Victoria