The Writing Space
September 1st 2006 10:57
While all writers approach their vocation from different angles and different levels of work ethic (though at some point sweating blood is involved, and the heavy lifting is all mental and very tiring), there is one thing the first criteria, maybe even before a typewriter or word processor.
You need a space. Anywhere from a spot at the dining table after dinner or before breakfast (for starting right now), all the way up to an office or house some distance from home to minimise distractions (for the full-on professional). It seems that the routine of going to that place and sitting and shaping your worlds gets easier each time, because the mind learns to focus in specific ways.
When I was a kid, it was a specific lounge chair at home, though God knows now what the quality was like, because it was right in front of the TV. I acquired a desk to study for school as I headed into my final years, but the association with school (not a good place) threw me off. Then came rock and roll, and lyrics hurriedly scribbled in coffee shops and pubs and take away shops that tried to dignify themselves with the word ‘restaurant’ in the name. Yeah, you know what I mean. Some of them were good, others… not. ‘Twas ever thus.
When I moved out of home, it began to gel in me, the idea of the writer’s place, that little space surrounded by an invisible wall that could muffle sound and keep people a little bit distant. I was still mainly using notebooks and writing pads and old school exercise books I never filled (Bad student! Naughty student! No certificate!), and when I felt compelled that I had written something worth preserving, the two typewriters I had, one given to me by my parents while at school, the other bought at a second hand shop, which was stolen when someone broke into my car,
Then came marriage and work and kids and the whole, as the Americans say, nine yards. The rock and roll dream fizzled out (though still lurks in the dark), but the urge to write never died. Labouring work supported us, but I needed something better to build a career on, and after a lot of thought and testing and advice, I stopped my factory job and went to TAFE to become an IT professional.
(For those who don’t know the acronym, Technical And Further Education is the kind of study that gives the community electricians. mechanics, carpenters and so on. At the time they had begun to branch into the computing field, training people for daily, ‘hands on’ type of positions that BSc’s and PhDs don’t descend to).
The timing was more fortuitous than I knew. Microsoft had just released Windows 3.1, and PC hardware was getting more affordable all the time. The home PC explosion was just around the corner. And I discovered a program… Microsoft Word. Some people swear by WordPerfect, but I swore at it. For those who are interested, there will be a post on word processors and programs somewhere down the track.
Suddenly the restrictions of typing faded, as I changed sentences over and over, trying to, as Clive James says, turn a phrase until it catches the light. And the neat formatted text, after the scrappy handwriting was smooth, smooth, smooth! Picked up a cheap 286, and began to write like never before.
Which returns me, after a long sidetrack, to the Space. At the time we had a spare bedroom, Found a desk, knuckled down. Pulled all-nighters trying to finish assignments as I struggled with DOS commands and creating programs in Pascal, but kept writing, now a constant process of building up and cutting back. Stories, poetry, song lyrics, they poured out. In the room I was able to work away, and in the end, it is about the work.
Then one of my children claimed the room, and I had to find another Space. So I cleared a spot in my garage, bought a new desk and started out there. Garages aren’t designed to keep out summer heat or winter cold as much as a house, but at least the Space was mine.
Until junk overwhelmed it. My wife is, uh, a bit of, to quote Shakespeare, ‘a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles’. And when my kids’ latest at the time PC gave up the ghost, well, of course they ‘borrowed’ dear old Dad’s, after all he’s only using it for his ‘writing’. And not spending time in the Space meant it soon disappeared.
Since then there have been a couple of other Spaces. The current one, where I am as I write this, is back in the spare room, as for some reason the kids decided to share one room again. Behind me is a huge pile of ironing/folding that has to be done, and because it is, for now, ‘my’ room, it seems I am responsible. But I persevere. My latest PC is not the greatest, but it runs Word ’03 pretty well, has a bunch of my favourite music, and connects me to the net via the luxury of broadband (which, admittedly, we mainly have for the kids’ online games).
Stephen King, in the days before ‘Carrie’, had a little desk in the laundry of the flat he shared with his wife and child. From here he churned out dozens of short stories, hunched over an old typewriter, until he eventually made that break. His description of that time, and how it ended is very moving. If you haven’t read it yet, run out now and buy ‘On Writing’, more of which in another post.
So, keep finding that Space, the space you can get to, where you can drift off into that other place and come back with a tale to tell. Doesn’t matter if you lose it again and again, as long as you find a new one and recognise it for what it is.
The place where you create.
You need a space. Anywhere from a spot at the dining table after dinner or before breakfast (for starting right now), all the way up to an office or house some distance from home to minimise distractions (for the full-on professional). It seems that the routine of going to that place and sitting and shaping your worlds gets easier each time, because the mind learns to focus in specific ways.
When I was a kid, it was a specific lounge chair at home, though God knows now what the quality was like, because it was right in front of the TV. I acquired a desk to study for school as I headed into my final years, but the association with school (not a good place) threw me off. Then came rock and roll, and lyrics hurriedly scribbled in coffee shops and pubs and take away shops that tried to dignify themselves with the word ‘restaurant’ in the name. Yeah, you know what I mean. Some of them were good, others… not. ‘Twas ever thus.
When I moved out of home, it began to gel in me, the idea of the writer’s place, that little space surrounded by an invisible wall that could muffle sound and keep people a little bit distant. I was still mainly using notebooks and writing pads and old school exercise books I never filled (Bad student! Naughty student! No certificate!), and when I felt compelled that I had written something worth preserving, the two typewriters I had, one given to me by my parents while at school, the other bought at a second hand shop, which was stolen when someone broke into my car,
Then came marriage and work and kids and the whole, as the Americans say, nine yards. The rock and roll dream fizzled out (though still lurks in the dark), but the urge to write never died. Labouring work supported us, but I needed something better to build a career on, and after a lot of thought and testing and advice, I stopped my factory job and went to TAFE to become an IT professional.
(For those who don’t know the acronym, Technical And Further Education is the kind of study that gives the community electricians. mechanics, carpenters and so on. At the time they had begun to branch into the computing field, training people for daily, ‘hands on’ type of positions that BSc’s and PhDs don’t descend to).
The timing was more fortuitous than I knew. Microsoft had just released Windows 3.1, and PC hardware was getting more affordable all the time. The home PC explosion was just around the corner. And I discovered a program… Microsoft Word. Some people swear by WordPerfect, but I swore at it. For those who are interested, there will be a post on word processors and programs somewhere down the track.
Suddenly the restrictions of typing faded, as I changed sentences over and over, trying to, as Clive James says, turn a phrase until it catches the light. And the neat formatted text, after the scrappy handwriting was smooth, smooth, smooth! Picked up a cheap 286, and began to write like never before.
Which returns me, after a long sidetrack, to the Space. At the time we had a spare bedroom, Found a desk, knuckled down. Pulled all-nighters trying to finish assignments as I struggled with DOS commands and creating programs in Pascal, but kept writing, now a constant process of building up and cutting back. Stories, poetry, song lyrics, they poured out. In the room I was able to work away, and in the end, it is about the work.
Then one of my children claimed the room, and I had to find another Space. So I cleared a spot in my garage, bought a new desk and started out there. Garages aren’t designed to keep out summer heat or winter cold as much as a house, but at least the Space was mine.
Until junk overwhelmed it. My wife is, uh, a bit of, to quote Shakespeare, ‘a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles’. And when my kids’ latest at the time PC gave up the ghost, well, of course they ‘borrowed’ dear old Dad’s, after all he’s only using it for his ‘writing’. And not spending time in the Space meant it soon disappeared.
Since then there have been a couple of other Spaces. The current one, where I am as I write this, is back in the spare room, as for some reason the kids decided to share one room again. Behind me is a huge pile of ironing/folding that has to be done, and because it is, for now, ‘my’ room, it seems I am responsible. But I persevere. My latest PC is not the greatest, but it runs Word ’03 pretty well, has a bunch of my favourite music, and connects me to the net via the luxury of broadband (which, admittedly, we mainly have for the kids’ online games).
Stephen King, in the days before ‘Carrie’, had a little desk in the laundry of the flat he shared with his wife and child. From here he churned out dozens of short stories, hunched over an old typewriter, until he eventually made that break. His description of that time, and how it ended is very moving. If you haven’t read it yet, run out now and buy ‘On Writing’, more of which in another post.
So, keep finding that Space, the space you can get to, where you can drift off into that other place and come back with a tale to tell. Doesn’t matter if you lose it again and again, as long as you find a new one and recognise it for what it is.
The place where you create.
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I aspire to have my work desk area approach reaching a zen like peace. With a perfect balance of light (nightime), sound (a combination of pre TV jazz and birds chirping) and an inspirational view. (Mantras stuck everywhere, "A Writer Writes.", "There is No Try Only Do"-see it can work in the real world.
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