This month’s Poets & Writers carries an article by Alexandra Enders that I wish was available on line — “The Importance of Place.” Place, meaning the place where you write. The intro is given over to the usual sort of celebrity home tour: Proust’s cork-lined room, Hemingway’s standing desk. But quickly enough Enders gets to the real concern:
…I am constantly looking for a new place, for the place where I believe I will be able to work best.
Why do some writers prefer company and background noise, while others need isolation? Why do some need the magical monotony of sameness, and others the inspiration of variety? What does it mean for a writer to be locked into a place? What does place even mean to a writer?
She speaks of “the transition from waking to working” — using space as a way of delineating the part of the day in which you are a writer, not allowing the concerns of the rest of your life to intrude on that space/role. She also speaks of the tension between being alone and and being with others in terms of “intermediate spaces”: “Many writers choose libraries, intermediate spaces that aren’t totally isolated but are quiet, protected, and controlled.” There is also the example of the Writers Room in New York, “a nonprofit organization that offers desk space to writers who prefer to work in a shared environment.” Others use diners and coffee houses for the same purpose — to be alone but not lonely.
The concept of the Writers Room is intriguing (other cities have counterparts: Boston’s Writers’ Room, The Loft in Minneapolis, the Toronto Writers’ Centre, the Uptown Writer’s Space in Chicago. They range from posh to bare-bones, but at minimum each of them offers a hot pot of coffee and a reasonably quiet place to work while surrounded by other writers.
I very much like the idea of a dedicated writers’ space. I like being with other people and being left alone at the same time. I’m very, very easily distracted and there is no place in my house that doesn’t speak to me of other, supposedly more important work to be done: laundry, dusting, cooking, bookkeeping. I like working in restaurants, but they can be hard on the budget and the waistline. And I like the idea of being so serious about writing that I would leave my house three or four days a week and go to an “office” just to do it. I suppose that’s how gyms work for a lot of people who want to be serious about exercise, who want to do something solitary but in the company of other serious people.
Writers, what do you think?
Filed under: authors, libraries, magazines, writing Tagged: | Alexandra Enders, Poets & Writers, The Importance of Place, Writers Room
I think if you want to write, you’ll find a place, but I also believe it helps to find a place that makes you feel relaxed. I think that’s the key. For some writers, they relax better alone. For others, they like having other people around. For me, I tend to like being alone in general when I’m writing (fewer distractions) and yet often when I’m stuck on a story I find myself changing rooms, etc, and discovering that the change of place can help to rejuvenate my writing.
Time of luner month is most important to me, about ten days or less before a full moon, and up to two days after. With these conditions, place isn’t important. Outside of these conditions, I would have to find a comfy coffehouse type place, with some background noise. Too weird?
Very weird!
How did you figure out the lunar connection, Ed?
Hmmm, I’m gonna have to start charting the lunar course against my writing, and see what I come up with.
That said, I *can* write pretty much anywhere, but to really do it justice, I need a space.
I think learning to write whenever you can wherever you can is one of the skills you want to develop just like mastery of grammar, characterization, pacing, description…. Learning how to get stuff done is just as important as learning what to do. The game is to find the balance that works for you between quantity and quality. Maybe you’re Proust and you spend twenty years on one book, but it’s the greatest novel ever written. Maybe you’re Joyce Carol Oates and you crank them out every 20 minutes. Where you write is part of getting stuff done. I wrote a lot of Only Begotten on the commuter train. I really wanted to write that book, and I wouldn’t let the lack of a quiet place stop me from doing it. Other people can’t write without their favorite pen, a cup of cinnamon tea, and a cork-lined room. But find what works for you, but no matter what, you have to write your ass off.
Learning to write whenever you can is a great skill, because writers have exactly that luxury — give us a pad and a pen, and we have the tools of our trade. We can fit some writing in anywhere we go.
On the other hand, we don’t exhort computer programmers or artists or composers or accountants to learn to work where ever they can, partly because, in my opinion, we view having a dedicated place to do those sorts of work as a boundary between working and leisure, as a way of controlling and protecting our work environment, and as a way of respecting the value of our work.
Can “place” serve those same kind of functions for writers? Is it important that it do so?
A room of one’s own!