Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Where and When Do We Write?

I’m all for keeping a writing discipline, but the only discipline I can enforce in my daily life is to write everyday and whenever. In other words, catch as catch can, but this is what is possible at this time in my life; so, I’m sticking with it.

The topic of when or where to write popped up while I was looking through Sophie Burnham’s book, For Writers Only. In it, the author points to the different habits of famous writers.

According to the book, Tolstoy, Henry Miller, and Thomas Mann wrote from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM, and Aldous Huxley three to four hours before noon.

Flannery O’Connor wrote two hours a day, at the same time and at the same place.

Tennessee Williams and Dostoyevsky wrote at night.

William Faulkner wrote only when it rained. (Note to self: write under the rain! )

Anthony Burgess wrote in the afternoon.

Ann Tyler wrote while her kids were in school. I wonder what she did after they graduated, as they must have, by now.

Ernest Hemingway wrote from 5:00 AM to 10:00 AM. First he wrote longhand, standing up, but when his writing gained its flow, he moved to the typewriter and chair, probably with his cats accompanying him. I saw his typewriter in his study or shall I say his aerie in his Key West home. Just going up the steep metal stairway to his study is enough drama and should suffice to get the blood moving.

True to Hemingway’s form, not only the time but the place where one writes seems to matter. Natalie Goldberg encourages unfamiliar settings for writers, be it a restaurant, a park, or a coffee shop. I tried this, but it didn’t work well for me because I ended up watching people and writing about them instead of the work I assigned to me, while I worried someone could catch on to my spywork and I’d be embarrassed.

For some writers, e.g. Cervantes and John Bunyan, prison worked wonders, not that I’d recommend it. For Oscar Wilde, however, it didn't work at all since, to him, pen and paper wasn't given by the order of the court, as prejudice never fails.

Colette had an interesting situation. Her husband locked her up in the room until she wrote a good amount; then, he stole her work to publish it in his own name. Men!

There is an article in Poets & Writers with additional writers’ work spaces.
http://www.pw.org/content/importance_place_where_writers_write_and_why_0?cmnt_al...

The ultimate in writing space is, in general, is “a room of one’s own,” as wrote Virginia Woolf. This is usually a converted shed or garage or cellar or attic or a spare room, although the luckier few have their offices or studios. If I recall correctly, Erma Bombeck wrote in her garage.

As for me, I write in the same little corner between the kitchen and the dining room, which has the view of the kitchen and the dining room, and its situation facilitates and mixes the housework together with write-work. The dining room is anything but, now that hubby has moved into it with his laptop and paraphernalia and a big tv smack in my view, with the thought that we shouldn’t sit separately in our old age, and I agree, even if this situation is not much conducive to serious writing. But then, who says I can be serious, anyway!