A room of one's own (with a lock on the door) and £500 a year were what was necessary for writing fiction, Virginia Woolf famously stated. If it really was essential, there would be few of us writing today: that £500 was the present day equivalent of around £30,000. (As a guide to prices, she was able to buy a whole house, not just a room, for £700.) I'm rather taken with the idea that this wasn't what you were going to earn, it was what you needed before you could start.
It's always interesting to know where other writers feel they can work. There are the ones like Alexander McCall Smith who just scribbles away wherever he is, undeterred by the crowds around him in the airport or the railway station, or like JK Rowling, who wrote most of the first Harry Potter sitting at a table in a cafe. I wonder how often their train of thought is interrupted by someone stopping to say, 'What are you writing, then?'
I would hate that. I don't even like having someone else in the room with me when I'm writing - it somehow feels embarrassing. I'm lucky enough to have my own study and though I don't actually lock the door, it's very much a private space.
I like to have all my reference books to hand, even if now I don't consult them as often as I click on Google. And I like my shockingly untidy desk; it may look bad but I know where everything is and the only time I lose stuff is when I feel obliged to tidy up.
But, perhaps perversely, I don't envy people who have their own private office in the garden. It must be very peaceful but isolated and I like to be in the centre of the house so I know what's going on. And when I'm searching for the right word I can take a wander round and check on the soup for lunch or jot down something I've just remembered we need on the shopping list in the kitchen. For some reason, that always seems to help.
So I'm with Virginia Woolf all the way on the importance of that room. I feel mine is almost as much a writing tool as my computer is, and if I have to give it up - for a visiting grandchild, say - I go round feeling like a snail without a shell.
Sadly, I can't quite match up to her £500 - or £30,000 - criterion. Perhaps it's this that has stopped me attaining the dizzy heights of fame. I always wondered what it was.
I know what you mean. If anyone else is in the room, or sitting close by, though they're just reading, not paying the slightest attention to me, my mind feels stifled. Self-conscious.
ReplyDeleteThat is, anyone who knows me. Writing on a train or in a coffee shop, that's just fine. I'm invisible.
I find it distracting to have someone else in the same room as well. But I've discovered that, if I put on my noise cancelling headphones and listen to some music, I enter my own little world and no longer have an issue with someone being in the room.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that a person's level of tolerance to outside noise/people being around when trying to work has a lot to do with how our brains are wired. Those of us who tend to be highly sensitive to any kind of stimuli (about 20% of people according to some psychology experts) can't work with any type of distraction nearby. I can't even listen to music while writing or editing because I find it too distracting. Yet other people seem to thrive in a railway station/coffee shop atmosphere that would drive me nuts. The formula seems to be to understand our own personalities and create the kind of environment that works best for each of us.
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