Do You Need a Writer’s Room?

In touring the past of writerly spaces, “The Writer’s Room” elegantly describes the rooms kept by Maya Angelou, Charles Dickens, Joan Didion, John Keats, and different luminaries. It finds that, a batch of the time, the quest for the cleanable country is self-defeating: tormented by sounds successful his vicinity (among them a neighbor’s rooster), Thomas Carlyle tried to conception a soundproof chamber, but it turned retired to beryllium “the noisiest successful the house.” Many people, meanwhile, don’t person country for a writer’s room, oregon unrecorded lives that preclude solitude, oregon conscionable don’t similar to beryllium still. They enactment successful libraries oregon cafés; they constitute connected subways, successful infirmary beds, oregon successful Google Docs. Da Cunha Lewin notes that, though we often representation a writer wrong a room, there’s besides “the writer with different job,” “the writer who is successful a queue,” “the writer who is simply a carer,” “the writer who is successful prison.”

There’s a sense, she comes to think, successful which the representation of an inward-focussed writer concentrating astatine a table mightiness beryllium fundamentally misleading. Emily Dickinson, for instance, had a small penning array by her chamber window, but the formal connected show astatine her location depository besides possesses a small, added extracurricular pocket—what the writer Mary Ruefle calls a “workman’s pocket.” (It appears to beryllium well-sized for a pencil and paper.) Dickinson mightiness person spent astir each her clip wrong the house, but it inactive seems arsenic though she wanted to constitute portion distant from her desk. There is “an undeniably romanticist and alluring prime to the table space,” da Cunha Lewin writes, but bodies, similar minds, are ever successful motion. We mightiness bash amended to ideate a writer arsenic idiosyncratic conversing, exercising, socializing, and interacting, alternatively of simply observing—someone who is retired successful the satellite alternatively of unopen distant successful a room.

In “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” from 1899, the economist Thorstein Veblen explored the acquisition of luxurious and unnecessary goods. We bargain bully things due to the fact that we similar them, and due to the fact that they’re better, and due to the fact that we privation different radical to respect and envy us, helium argued, but we besides bash it to power ourselves. Consider hunters: “Even precise mild-mannered and matter-of-fact men who spell retired shooting are apt to transportation an excess of arms and accoutrements successful bid to impressment upon their ain imaginativeness the seriousness of their undertaking,” Veblen wrote. If you bargain a Birkin bag, oregon an over-specced firearm scope, oregon an costly caller camera, you whitethorn oregon whitethorn not beryllium trying to wow different people, but you’re surely trying to wow yourself. This is wherefore it tin really beryllium embarrassing erstwhile different enthusiast notices your splurge and wants to speech astir it. You didn’t needfully privation to beryllium seen by others; you wanted to spot yourself.

How bash artists travel to spot themselves arsenic artists? Any portion of creation begins successful triviality. The archetypal note, brushstroke, oregon condemnation is meaningless; an unfinished archetypal paragraph is humiliating. The circumstances successful which galore originative efforts originate are seldom propitious. Da Cunha Lewin reports that, with a tiny kid astatine home, she present writes portion “slumped connected a seat successful the surviving room.” Everything tells a originative idiosyncratic to springiness up. And truthful writers indispensable asseverate their ain seriousness to themselves—perhaps by sitting down astatine a nicely curated desk, oregon by strolling into a chill java store dressed successful what da Cunha Lewin calls a “uniform of middle-class artistry” (chore coat, circular glasses, wide-legged pants).

An elevating writer’s country tin onslaught a stroke against triviality. But however almighty is that blow? When I was successful college, I struggled to constitute abbreviated stories successful my dorm room, portion my roommate snored down maine successful his bed; I did amended erstwhile I found, successful the basement of the building, a benignant of closet that had been accidentally near unlocked, and turned it into my study. The adjacent year, erstwhile a fewer friends and I created a tech startup, I often spent nights penning fabrication successful the bureau we rented, surrounded by machine servers. It wasn’t precisely a writer’s room, but it was 1 for which I was paying, and its precise beingness signalled my ain capability.