Room of Your Own

[sallytuppence]

So my house is being remodeled, and has been for the last month, and will be for the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile my family and I are living in a tiny rental house a few blocks away. Our house is Our House, and the rental is Baby James's House (because a baby named James used to live there

Comments

[asatomuraki]

Hmm. I've had various spaces over the years. I used to have a terrible time writing in a cluttered room, but alas, I married a wonderful man who happens to be a packrat. A packrat who has no problem leaving sloping piles of reading materials beside the bed for months. I used to try to change him, either by nagging or doing it myself, but I've given up. He's a great man, wonderful in every other way, so I've learned to accept him as he is. If he wants to wait three months and clear it out in one Massive Cleaning Spasm... *shrug* It's taken me years to come to that place

[sallytuppence]

A Closet of your own! Sounds like a good solution. Is it quiet and dark?

As I just said in an email to a friend, a true professional would suck it up and write in the bathtub (with no water, of course). Or, like you, in a closet...

[asatomuraki]

It is quiet and dark. My Beloved gave me a light that plugs into a USB port and sits on the edge of mt laptop to illuminate the keyboard, because I stink at touch-typing despite being fairly fast.

If it gets noisy outside, I use headphones. Sometimes the darkness becomes an issue, and my hubby drags me out to work in the back yard. I get something akin to Seasonal Affective Disorder if I spend too much daylight time closed up in there. He also tends to call me at mealtimes so I don't skip meals and get hypoglycemic. :) I know it sounds crazy, but when I get into a story, I hyperfocus and completely lose track of time.

"True professional?" *wince* I haven't published anything since 1990, and that was a poem in a college chapbook. Not giving up, though! :)

[sallytuppence]

Oop, true professional's not really what I meant.

Real writer, maybe. I'm a professional, yes, but still working on the real writer bit...

[sartorias]

I now have the dream space, but it took to age 51 to get there! (That was when we moved in 2002...so, actually, it took 2 years longer when we built the loft.) I have the master bedroom to myself as my workspace, as the spouse has an office to himself downstairs--each with our own computer (his is bought by his job). Thus every single wall has bookshelves. I keep the clothes in the closet so I don't have to waste any space with bureaus. (It's forty feet of closet space, so we not only have our clothes there, but I hve costumes and boxes of books.) The loft is a library, with a good portion of the books, and an easy chair with a lamp for reading. I'd like to get a nice table and chair in there for working away from the desk (drawing and suchlike) but we can't afford that--and I'm lucky to have this. The kids are constantly in and out, but I'm used to that. I grew up in spaces far too small for the people, and ditto my rentspace all through my college years and beyond, into the first ten years of my marriage. our last house

[sallytuppence]

Your dream space sounds really nice--but clearly you don't require a space like that to be able to write. You write anywhere because you are a writer.

The thing is, I don't want to mystify the act of writing; it's never been this fraught artistic process for me. I should be able to write anywhere, anytime.

[sartorias]

Should and getting the brain to cooperate can create frustration. I don't claim any moral superiority--I think a goodly part of the reason I shut off with such ease is not all that great: I'm real close to the schizo scale (my uncle was over on the other edge) and something in my early childhood enabled me to compartmentalize. I vaguely remember the struggle. Constant reinforcement when I was growing up made it easier, but that had its downside, believe me. Won't waste your space blathering about that here.

I'm glad you're going to get your space back when the work is complete--but right now, with a book due, is there any chance you can win some Starbucks time with nothing but laptop and Ipod?

[haddayr]

I should be able to write anywhere, anytime.

Why? Could, schmould. We do what we can.

[gregvaneekhout]

Coffee joints are really the perfect places for me. My headphones provide enough distraction from what's going on around me that I can focus on my work, but I don't get the homework-y, confined feel that I get from working at home.

When I do work at home, I have to be home alone, up to the dining room table where I can look out the window.

I need to see if I can apply any martial arts lessons to getting myself in a headspace such that I can write anywhere, though. That would be optimum.

[sallytuppence]

I need to see if I can apply any martial arts lessons to getting myself in a headspace...

Yeah. You know that the piano is like that for me. When I'm playing piano I can't multitask, and I need to be in the same headspace when I write: focused on one thing, no distractions.

The coffeeshop is not the optimum writing place for me, as you know. All I do is send iBoring emails to my buddies...

[gregvaneekhout]

You have to keep going to the coffeeshop, because your iBoring emails entertain me so.

Some coffee places are impossible to work in. There's one place across the street from my normal joint that likes to close off half the seating and set up a jazz band in there, with full drum kit and amplifiers and everything. I can barely even read when they do that, let alone write.

[ccfinlay]

We have four of us now living in a 900 square foot two bedroom apartment, where we may be for another year, and my last two laptops died horrible terrible deaths and I haven't been able to replace them. So my previous favorite trick of taking the laptop something, either to the living room couch or sometimes out of the house, is dead, and I am stuck at my desk using a windows machine that gives me fits. One thing I do is nap in the evening and then stay up after everyone else has gone to bed, and work from midnight to 3 or so, although this leaves me a bit tired for work the next day. My latest trick for creating headspace and keeping my productivity up has been to load my chapters to google documents and head off to the library for a couple hours to work on the machines there. I drag the boys along, and they're distracted by the books and other public computers, and then we grab a dvd or something on the way out. But lemme tell you, it is a constant challenge

[sallytuppence]

a constant challenge

I guess that's the way it is. The challenges are different for everybody, but anybody serious about writing finds the time and the space, somehow.

So I suck it up and write in the bathroom and get the book done for Blue Heaven!!

[haddayr]

(maybe I'll do another blog entry at some point on parenting and writing...)Yes, please

[sallytuppence]

You were exactly the person I was thinking of when I was writing this entry.

Also because you write as part of your day job, so I'd think you'd need even more to find a separate space for fiction writing...

Do you think you'd write more if you didn't have to cram your writing into tiny spaces and times?

[haddayr]

Do you think you'd write more if you didn't have to cram your writing into tiny spaces and times?

I don't know. I sure would like someday to have the chance to find out.

[sallytuppence]

As a fan of your writing, I hope you get the chance to find out, too.