Writing Rooms

I read Virginia Woolf's essay "Room of One's Own" around the time I was deciding that I would be serious about writing, that I needed to become a writer. My first "room" was a little wooden desk my husband built for me in the corner of our very small bedroom. The surface of the desk folded down to hold my typewriter (yes, it was a typewriter and not a computer), and could easily be closed back up to hide my mess of papers. The desk did what it needed to do for me--created a space that allowed me to portion a part of my life to writing a novel (filed in a drawer) and short stories (some published). As we moved houses and cities and even provinces, my desks got bigger and fancier and my typewriter was replaced by a computer. First a rather large and clunky desktop that had floppy disks and later Windows and later still a small Mac laptop. The house where I live now has a room dedicated to my writing. I have a large desk that looks out across the lake where we live. I have two full bookshelves. My great-aunt's rocker sits in the corner and I have an old dresser full of drafts (and old floppy disks--don't ask me why). Still I find that most of my time is spent writing in other places--at my kitchen table, in an easy chair, on the deck in the summer. Having a laptop has seemed to change how I write. Although I love my dedicated room and will go there for long stretches when I need to get away from daily life, I now realize that I don't need that room for writing. What I have learned to do over the years is create a mental space for writing. That is something I can do anywhere. And now when I reread Woolf's essay, I recognize that much of what she was saying really was about creating that sensibility: that a time to write, the right to write is what creates a room of one's own.

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/writersrooms for some interesting writing rooms.

My Writing Room