A Writer's Space Read online

  You didn’t protect your writing space very well, did you?

  It’s six-thirty in the morning. You’re at your computer, half-ready to write, but you decide to check your e-mail one more time (you checked it already first thing, five minutes previously). A mildly interesting, mildly important e-mail has arrived about an event benefiting a cause you support. You could wait to deal with it—but you decide to deal with it right away.

  You craft your reply, which takes twenty minutes. You decide to whom you want to forward the message, then realize that you had better send a little explanation along with the forwarded e-mail. That takes another hour. Now you’re hungry, and more e-mails have come in, and you planned only to write from six-thirty till eight, as you have many other things to do. So you make a date with yourself to write at four p.m. You answer a few new e-mails, get up from the computer at nine, and compliment yourself on three productive hours at your desk.

  You didn’t protect your writing space very well, did you?

  The power company is digging up the street in front of your house, which is where your study is located. You sit there in front of your computer and can’t write a word as heavy machinery rumbles up and down the street and men with jackhammers crack through the pavement. You feel proud that you aren’t running out of the room screaming, but you can’t get a lick of work done.

  Of course, you could move to the back of the house, where it is relatively quiet, which would take you about a minute to do, as your computer is a laptop and completely portable. It even has a charged battery. But you don’t write in the back of the house; you only write in your study. So you sit there, fuming, your head throbbing, and after another few agonizing minutes you throw in the towel and shut down your computer.

  You didn’t protect your writing space very well, did you?

  Your in-laws are visiting. You could go to your study or you could sit with them over breakfast. You’ve already had nine consecutive meals with them and there isn’t a thing left to chat about, except perhaps the things you disagree about, but you choose to sit with them.

  You make them their dry toast and put out the orange marmalade and mutter, “I thought I might get a little writing done this morning.” Your mother-in-law exclaims, “By all means!” which you take to mean that she’s as sick of you as you are of her. But you hear yourself say, “Oh, no, that’s okay. I’ll join you for breakfast.” You bring your slice of toast to the table and the small talk begins.

  You didn’t protect your writing space very well, did you?

  Your days are full and you only have two hours in the evening in which to write. Your teenage daughter, whom you love, is learning Italian and wants to practice with you. You don’t mind this because you have your heart set on a trip to Italy and want to know how to do more than order espresso and find the bathroom. So you practice Italian with her.

  This is pleasant and even a blessing. But no writing gets done. You’d like to stop the practicing, but you don’t know how to get out of it without disappointing your daughter. So you keep practicing. One day you discover that you can order a complete meal in Italian, but your novel is no closer to being finished.

  You didn’t protect your writing space very well, did you?

  What should you have done?

  Scenario 1: Locked the door. Or said to your husband, “Dear, I’m working now. But I’ll be happy to discuss the insurance in about an hour.”

  Scenario 2: Skipped dealing with that “important” e-mail, which you could have dealt with in the evening.

  Scenario 3: Moved to the back of the house, even though you “don’t write there.”

  Scenario 4: Let them eat breakfast while you got a little writing done.

  Scenario 5: Said to your daughter, “This has been ever so pleasant! Now I need to get back to my novel.”

  You are the only one who can protect you writing space. To protect it you may have to enlist the aid of your family. You may have to let your husband know when the insurance chats will occur, inform your children that you are completely available to them except for those two hours each evening when you are utterly unavailable, and explain to your in-laws that their visit is an amazing blessing but that you also intend to get some writing done. You may have to protect it by moving it to another part of the house. You may have to protect it with soundproofing, with Do Not Enter signs, and with a lock that locks you in it. You are the only one who can protect it: you are the warden, prison guard, and convict.

  LESSON 3

  Your writing space is a literal space and it’s also a metaphoric space. Both need protection, the first with explicit rules, the second with strong intentions.

  To Do

  1. Write out your security pledge: how you will protect your writing space.

  2. Have a chat with anyone who currently invades your writing space and spell out your new ground rules.

  3. Protect your writing space with a talisman, amulet, icon, or shotgun.

  4. Write a little, safe and snug in your protected space.

  CHAPTER 4

  Honoring Your Space

  It matters what you do when you are in your writing space. It matters whether you are working on your novel or surfing the Internet. It matters whether you are pining for the one agent who will fall in love with your writing or preparing to query thirty agents. It matters whether you are building your platform by offering to write columns, speak at churches, and lead teleseminars or whether you are fantasizing about who will play the lead when your novel is made into a movie. Just sitting in your space isn’t enough; it matters what you do there.

  It matters whether you are writing your second novel, even though your first one hasn’t sold yet, or brooding that you aren’t published. It matters whether you are writing an e-mail to your literary agent, with whom you haven’t been in contact for six months, or waiting for the phone to ring with news that she’s sold your novel. It matters whether you are honorably revising your novel, maybe for the fifth time, because it’s still muddled in spots, or doing everything you can to avoid its muddles. It matters what you are doing.

  It matters whether you are contemplating some shortcut— maybe stealing a few scenes from that first novel of yours that went awry and dropping them into your current novel, where they might just possibly fit—or sitting up straight in your chair and writing the scenes your novel needs. It matters whether you are thinking of hiring an editor, a ghostwriter, or even the handyman to write your book, because you are completely sick of it and can’t face it, or whether you are biting the bullet, brewing some tea, and hunkering down to write.

  It matters whether you are sitting in the dark with the shades drawn and your computer off, because you are sad and depressed, or whether you are helping yourself out of your depression by whatever means possible. If that means getting out of the house, that’s what it means; better that than sitting in your writing space inert and morose.

  Honoring your writing space means that if you are embroiled in tasks, dramas, crises, and errands, you ring a bell at your appointed time and let all of that go. You enter your writing space clear-headed and unencumbered. If you are tired from your day job, you splash water on your face; if you are exhausted from your mate’s chatting, you take an aspirin and a quick nap; if you have a hundred things to do before you get to write, you put that long list aside and remind yourself what honor means.

  Honoring your writing space means that if you need to read what you’ve previously written, you read it. If you need to plunge forward without rereading, you plunge forward. You accept that you have craft to master, attention to pay, and a routine to follow. You refuse to attribute any of your shortcomings to your “artistic nature.” You get off your high horse and sit right down on your swivel chair, do the work, and honor the process.

  At the same time, you set the bar sufficiently high. It is fine to write articles; but is it fine to never write a book? It is fine to begin your thirtieth journal; but is it fine to have written
only journal entries? It may seem funny to get off your high horse and also set the bar high, but the two go together beautifully: you agree to work without fanfare and you choose work equal to your dreams.

  You honor your writing space by recovering, if you are an addict. You honor your writing space by becoming an anxiety expert, a real pro at mindfulness and personal calming. You honor your writing space by affirming that you matter, that your writing life matters, and that your current writing project matters. You honor your writing space by entering it with this mantra: “I am ready to work.” You enter, grow quiet, and vanish into your writing.

  Honor is a funny word, a loaded word, a difficult word. It is not a word to toss around lightly. But I’m willing to bet that you place it at the very top of your list of words with personal meaning. I bet you love it, believe in it, and aspire to it. Live that way, then! Honor the fact that you believe in honor and construct your writing life around it.

  If you live your life as you intend it to be lived, you will find yourself in your writing space thousands of times. Sixty years of writing, two hours a day, translates to better than 50,000 hours in your writing space. Squander some of those hours—we all must. Indulge a bad mood for some of those hours—we all do. Write poorly during some of those hours—there’s no way around that. But try your best to honor your writing space. That’s the key intention.

  LESSON 4

  It matters what you do in your writing space. Do the right things.

  To Do

  1. Make a list of the things you will never do in your writing space. Keep that list handy, right beside your computer.

  2. Make a list of the things you will only occasionally do in your writing space. Keep that list handy, right beside your computer.

  3. Make a list of the things you intend to do most of the time that you are in your writing space. Keep that list handy, right beside your computer.

  4. Consolidate these three lists into one; then mind it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Adding Spaces

  Sometimes you want to be silent in your room with your door closed. Sometimes you want to be silent among people as you sit in a café. Sometimes you want an ascetic, crystalline experience with snow in the air and a view of a Norwegian fjord (or at least a view of a poster of a fjord). Sometimes you want a humid, intense experience, with thousands of people passing below your window day and night (or its rough equivalent, a sidewalk table on a hot summer night). You have your laptop computer: the whole world is your office, if you will let it be.

  There are so many splendid places where you might find yourself writing! You might find yourself in your own garden. You might find yourself in a bookstore café, on a bench by the lake, or in the newly refurbished library around the corner. You might find yourself moving with the laptop around your house, now upstairs, now downstairs, now out on the front steps to catch a few rays of sunshine. You might find yourself in an Italian bakery, a Swedish sandwich shop, a Russian deli. Your mind was always portable; so was your pad and pen; and now your computer is also. What fun!

  It is a bad trick of the mind to announce to yourself that you can only write in a certain place, in certain circumstances, in a certain kind of weather, at a certain time of the day, after having a certain kind of meal, with a certain sort of pen. It is fine to have preferences but important to commit to writing anywhere. That way you can grab ideas when you’re away from home; you can take a little writing trip when you feel dull at your desk; you can choose among your excellent haunts and decide which feels most congenial at the moment. By all means maintain a primary writing place; then add alternates.

  When I go out to write, I go to a particular café a short walk away. I could go to other cafés, but this one is congenial. I usually stay for no more than an hour, as after an hour I crave a second pastry. If I want to stay out a bit longer and the weather is decent, I sit on one of the benches along our main street: there is a bench in front of the supermarket, a bench in front of the community center, a bench in front of the video store, and a bench in front of a hair salon. I choose my writing bench according to how much sun it is getting: the bench in front of the supermarket rarely gets the sun and rarely gets my business.

  I wish I could sit on a bench in the children’s playground behind the library, but, for safety reasons, adults aren’t allowed unless accompanied by children. I wish I could sit in the wine bar but it is a little too small and intimate, a little too hard not to chat with the proprietress, who has good stories about her time in Rome. I wish I could sit in the deli, but sandwiches are my downfall and the lamb-in-pita cries out to me with a plaintive wail. I wish I could sit in the library, but it reminds me of the prison of elementary school. But I am blessed with enough writing haunts and I do not mourn these losses.

  And if I wanted to hop in the car, how many splendid places I could add! There are a dozen congenial cafés along just one stretch of Valencia Street, a neighborhood thoroughfare not five minutes’ drive from here. I could go to museums and sit in their cafés; I could sit on college campuses; I could mingle with tourists; I could spend the day out on the town with my laptop. I can hear the zipper now as I undo its Chinese red carrying case and pull the laptop out. Maybe I am having an Irish coffee; maybe I am sitting on a bench atop Bernal Hill, with its stunning views of San Francisco; wherever I find myself, that is a writing space.

  Go on a vision quest this week and find some congenial spots to write. Bring your laptop or your pad and make sure that the spots really work. Set yourself a special writing goal for the week and meet it in a variety of writing haunts, proving to yourself that it is possible to write unselfconsciously in the world. Make a list of your new writing haunts and maybe even a map, something like a treasure map. A writer’s space is wherever she lands; her treasure is the writing she gets done in these myriad spots.

  Be open and inventive. Use your dining room table to spread out the table of contents of your novel, one chapter title per index card, so that you can rearrange chapters effortlessly. Use your neighborhood Starbucks as the place you go when you want to create the marketing plan for your new book, a task of so little interest that you need a place built for breaks. Use the waiting room of your dentist’s office to make notes for an article, the side of the road to jot down the last line of your poem that just came to you. Stand ready!

  How many haunts do you need? Maybe only that primary one: that sofa by the window bathed in light and silence, that desk in the study, that kitchen table with its bowls of nuts and candies. But you’ll probably want an alternate space, too, a space that serves as a treat, as a destination, and to help break up your routine. By actually using your alternate space you remind yourself that you can—and should—write anywhere.

  LESSON 5

  In addition to your primary writing space, locate one or more alternate writing spaces.

  To Do

  1. Make sure that you’ve secured a primary writing space, one where you do most of your writing, as discussed in Chapter 1.

  2. Scout out a congenial alternate writing space.

  3. Add on additional spaces—a café, a park bench, a second room in your home.

  4. Write everywhere.

  CHAPTER 6

  And Why Even Get Out of Bed?

  Naturally you want a room in which to write that is dedicated to your writing pursuits and not the center of family commotion, the place where the canned goods are stored, or home to the water heater and the washer-dryer. But maybe you can’t have such a dedicated room; maybe space is at a premium and all that’s available to you is the kitchen table or a desk in your bedroom. Are you then hamstrung or limited? Not at all, not unless you consider yourself limited.

  If you have a bed, you have an office. Writing is about thinking, feeling, and scribbling and can be done perfectly well while reclining. Colette, Proust, Walker Percy, Edith Wharton, James Joyce, my good friend whose novel just sold, our younger daughter who is working on her first novel, and countles
s other writers have written in bed and prefer to write there. What more do you need than your computer, your lap, your cup of coffee or tea, and warm feet?

  Steve Denning explained, “Like many writers, I like writing in bed. I find this particularly relaxing with a laptop computer on a special table that fits over the bed. When you’re lying in bed, you no longer have to worry about gravity. Your body is totally supported and your mind is free to float wherever its fancy leads it.”

  Maybe it’s quite cold in the house. You could turn on the heat or you could save money and stay in bed with your writing. During the winter months of the war years 1941 through 1945, George Santayana did much of his writing in bed, wearing well-mended gloves in order to stay warm. The philosopher Irving Singer fluffs up his pillows, curls up in bed, and composes. “I do my best thinking when I am reclining,” he explained. “Writing in bed defeats your inhibitions and allows the creative juices in your vegetative being to flow most freely.”

  The writing sisters Constance and Gwenyth Little, authors of a score of cult mystery classics, did all of their writing in bed. Tom and Enid Schantz explained, “If their screwball cozy mysteries were unusual, so was their writing regimen. They gleefully admitted to writing all of their books in bed. Constance thought of the plots, outlined them in great detail in large script, all from her bed, and then sent them over to Gwenyth, who did the rewrite and injected the humor, all from her bed.”

  The physical space you need is first of all the bubble in which you exist, your own atmosphere that extends a few inches in all directions beyond your skin and reaches as far as the keyboard of your computer. Next it is a corner of a room, a place where the rain doesn’t fall and no one yells at you, fitted out with a chair and a table, or a sofa, or a stool, or an antique desk, or something else on the continuum from minimalist and functional to luxurious and functional. Next it is an enclosure, a room but also a room with a door, a place of privacy, a place meant for a working person to do his work. Beyond that it can be a library cubicle, a café table, a bench in a train station—any spot under the sun where a body might find himself or a body might set itself. But first of all it is the bubble in which you exist, in bed as well as anywhere else, defined by you, your pad, and your pen.