Writing Spaces

Over the years I’ve discovered just how important it is for those who spend their days and nights writing, to find a space with the right ambience—a place all their own—in which to work. There is no perfect writing space that suits everyone, just the one that each writer creates for him or herself. These are as varied as writers’ daily rituals, the significant objects they surround themselves with, the degree of comfort they need, times they find most convenient and conducive to write, and the way they approach the whole creative process from inspiration through to editing.

In the words of Stephen King, ‘Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world’ [On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]. And, so it was for me, when I discovered the quirky old flat in a 19th century terrace above the shops in the inner Sydney suburb of Balmain.

These days, I have no need—as I once did—to clear away my writing gear from the family dining table for meal times, lock doors against domestic noise, burrow away in a dark corner somewhere in the house when I had a growing family, or retire to the dingy back office of a café I once owned to write down a few ideas in between preparing food, loading dishwashers and interacting with customers. And yet I did manage to complete a number of books in those difficult situations.

As I live alone now, the whole, rather weird, terrace flat has become my writing refuge with every room playing its part. It fulfils all my needs. There’s the large back living area filled with natural light and potted plants adjoining a small hidden garden courtyard and a view of a magnificent London Plane Tree, over 20 metres high. The sun and shadows on the blue-cladded wall of what I like to call my secret garden change constantly with the seasons, as does the large background tree. It is here were I most often write at a large, well-worn wooden table—no adjustable desk, ergonomic chair or ugly office storage units—for a modern ‘office-style’ space is anathema to me. There’s also the necessary ‘organized’, rather than ‘messy’ clutter of stationary, some sitting in a beautifully made solid wooden box with ‘Ollivander’s Finest English Wand Makers, south Side, Daigon Alley, London. Est 382 BC ‘painted on both sides. Its association with the ‘Harry Potter’ books reminds me of the magic of imagination and words. A small space on the adjacent wall is often covered in post-it notes of inspiring quotes.

At the front of the unit is another writing space for when the days are particularly cold. It is connected via French doors, to a wide wooden and wrought-iron balcony typical of the 1880’s terrace houses in the area over-looking the busy street below. From there, I can watch the rhythms of a diverse inner city suburb and hear fragments of conversations floating like ribbons in the air as people pass below at all times of the night and day.

Each room, except bathroom and kitchen, is filled with books. I believe—like the great Roman orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero—‘a room without books is like a body without a soul’. And everywhere, I’m surrounded by much-loved objects, many of which have a symbolic significance for me and hold a multitude of stories within them.

My quirky inner city retreat—including its ‘stairway to nowhere’—appeals to my imagination, and is the perfect space for me as it provides the amount of solitude I require, as well as connection when I feel the need. [See Chapter 2: Discovering an inner-city writing retreat in my up-coming book Patterns]

There are certainly other places away from my flat where I can gain inspiration, jot down ideas in a notebook, research and edit the day’s work. For example, in a renovated boatshed along one of the many waterways in and around Sydney, perched on a sea wall somewhere closer to home, in little pockets of bushland, in a park, at the noisy local pub or library-come-community centre, and in a bustling café. However, when it comes to putting my ideas down in some meaningful way—to get the words to come out just right—I must sit alone at my computer set up on the well-worn table facing my garden courtyard garden and the enormous tree beyond.

Someone who could create effectively in cafes was J.K. Rowling. For her, several cafes in Edinburgh provided the best setting to write some of her early Harry Potter books. She explained why in an interview: ‘You don’t have to make your own coffee, you don’t have to feel like you’re in solitary confinement and if you have writer’s block, you can get up and walk to the next café while giving your batteries time to recharge and brain time to think. The best writing café is crowded enough to allow you to blend in, but not too crowded that you have to share a table with someone else’.

Recently I came across a photo featuring the great Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, writing in what looks like a rather ordinary small, wooden shed. However, after a bit of research, I discovered more about his wonderfully creative writing space where he wrote for the last twenty years of his life until his death in 1950. It was no ordinary shed or hut that he built in the extensive grounds of his home: ‘Shaw’s Corner’ close to the small English village of Ayot St. Lawrence in a Hertfordshire village. It was an ingeniously designed ‘rotating’ hut built on a turntable so that Shaw could manually revolve it to follow the sun which also did away with the need for artificial lighting during the day. A 1932 report in Modern Mechanix said that ‘Mr. Shaw has a plan to keep the sun shining on him constantly while he works … When the morning sun shifts, he merely places his shoulder against the side of the hut and gives it a push so that the warming beams fall through his window at the correct angle’. Despite having a more traditional study in the main house, which he claimed he only used for correspondence, he preferred his rotating hut for his creative work. Though rather simple, the hut had electricity, a phone to connect him to his house, a buzzer system to call for lunch and a bunk for naps. According to his biographer, Michael Holroyd, was this was ‘surely everything a writer could need’.

I’m surprised at the number of renowned and prolific writers who chose as their ‘go to’ writing spaces, a place separate from their residence. E. B. White, known around the world for his children’s books, chose the sparse boatshed on his property at Allen Cove, Maine to write his famous novel: Charlotte’s Web. Roald Dahl, referred to as ‘one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century’, who had a wonderful study that reflected his creative flair, also chose to spend time writing in his gypsy caravan parked on his property. When Justin Cartwright, South African born writer, moved to live in England, he bought what was once the derelict entrance to a builder’s yard and transformed it into a long room filled with memorabilia from his homeland. What he liked about this special space was that he could go out of the yard, into the street and straight into his own front door only three metres away. Like many writers, he felt it was essential to separate home and work.

Virginia Woolf—the early 20th century novelist—also had a get-away writing space in the large garden of Monk’s House, a 16th century cottage in the solitude of Sussex. She spent the summers there from 1919 until her death in 1941. What she referred to as her Writing Lodge—and where she wrote most of her novels, dairies, letters and articles—was a renovated tool shed below a storage loft down in the garden which had lovely views over the Sussex Downs. However, although this writing space had a large, solid wooden table for her to use, she rarely did, for—according to her husband and those who knew her, including Lytton Strachey, writer and critic—she was an ‘untidy writer’ and the room often full of ‘filth’ and at times quite ‘squalid’. The so-called ‘filth packets’ covering every surface included ‘old nibs, bits of string, used matches, rusty paper clips, crumpled envelopes, broken cigarette holders’, as well as papers, letters, manuscripts, and large bottles of ink. So she wrote her novels sitting in a low, sagging armchair with a large plywood board on her knees, an inkstand glued to it and a quarto notebook of plain paper attached. But isn’t mess and clutter quite a common trait of creative people?

Many writing spaces are traditional, excessively formal and elaborate, occasionally like something out of a fantasy. Some are small and cosy, others dark and enclosed as if to prevent any distraction from the world inside the writer’s head. Yet others are large and airy, some sparse and free of all extraneous objects with nothing but a desk and chair, and those looking as if they have just been randomly thrown together. Many writers, it seems, prefer to sit on the floor with all their notes and drafts scattered around them working on a lap top, or others under a tree or on the beach. J.D. Salinger, reclusive American writer, author of the 1951 best seller Catcher in the Rye was one who seemed to enjoy writing out in nature and often even in the nude.

There is no one perfect writing space. Each person has his or her own idea of what suits them. This may vary at a particular time and in a particular place, and depend on how much comfort and convenience a person desires or can afford. Also, the preferred genre of a writer might alter the choice of a writing space. Each of us needs to carve out, or claim for ourselves, a space that will nurture, support, inspire and reinforce our creativity.