I’m not arguing with Virginia Woolf: in her day, women were responsible for keeping every room in the house in a way that pleased their menfolk, so I get that she wanted a room in which she had to please nobody but herself. If that’s your domestic situation, too, condolences.
But more likely, in the year 2024, it isn’t.
The person I’m really arguing with is Stephen King. In On Writing, he says that having your own place to write, dedicated to your writing, is essential. I get that it’s essential for him, but that doesn’t mean it’s essential for everybody. In fact, for many people—including me—it’s more like a handicap.
I’ve tried it, in various houses: a room that’s officially mine, tucked away, with books on shelves, and no purpose other than to cocoon my creativity. The result? Pressure. If I have this whole room dedicated to my writing, I’d better make it worthwhile! And the nicer the room, the higher the pressure. I went to all this trouble, painting the walls, finding a rug and light fittings, having shelves built, tacitly banishing other members of the household from it, so what kind of vain egotistical ungrateful self-deluding selfish fool am I if I don’t write well in it?
The pressure to write well is not, for me, conducive to writing well.
There I would sit, feeling guilty and leaden-fingered, desperately conscious of all these great writers (represented by their books on shelves) looking over my shoulder at the stammering efforts I was dragging out of myself. I’d imagine them sneering—because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t realize I was comparing my own barely birthed words to words they might have polished for years. It never occurred to me that any of those great writers, or even good writers, had ever stammered words onto the page themselves.
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