A room of one's own

Writing Life: 11

In 1929, Virginia Woolf wrote a long essay entitled A Room of One’s Own. While the essay was justifiably focused on the barriers society imposed on women in general, and women writers in particular, many writers, men and women alike, often find it easier to write, and write well, if they have a quiet space, a private place, shut off from the world—if only temporarily—where they can put their minds to work, their pens to paper, and/or their fingers to keyboards.

Virginia Woolf at her desk in Bloomsbury.

The memorable line from her essay was:

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

I realize she was making a broader and very important statement about gender inequality, but I’ve also always been enamoured of the idea of having a quiet and private place to write.

Where I write

When we renovated our Toronto home back in 2008, my wife Nancy and I agreed that we’d build a library on the third floor overlooking our backyard. It was not just to be a place where I could write and we could store the hundreds of books we’ve both gathered over 35 years of marriage. But as it turned out, I tend to be the one who spends time in the library. In fact, it’s hard to pry me out of this room—I’m writing this piece in our library. I love spending time here. While I, like many writers, have written in many different places, including hotels, planes and trains, coffee shops, and even in a few left bank Paris cafés, most of my nine novels have been written at this very desk in our library.

It makes a difference—at least it does to me—that our library is perched on the third floor of our home overlooking the backyard. It just feels further away from the rest of the house, separated, sequestered, isolated, quiet, private. I like that.

Our library on the third floor, away from, well, the rest of the house.

When I enter this room and close the door, it almost makes me feel more like a writer than I did before I’d crossed that threshold. When my creativity is dwindling, my inspiration ebbing, my motivation faltering, there are books-a-plenty within arm’s reach to replenish my writerly resources. There are other sources of inspiration in this library on which I depend to keep me writing, including a framed photograph of the late great Canadian writer, Robertson Davies whose novels I adore.

The photo of Robertson Davies that hangs in our library.

There’s an antique, though nonfunctioning, Underwood typewriter. One of my guitars is always nearby providing a welcome respite—or occasionally an unwelcome distraction—from my writing. The bright red chair began its service in my grandparents’ living room in the 1940s. Back then it was pale green. We recovered it in 1988 in the bordello red. It’s very comfortable and I often read there. The 1928 map of Paris that hangs above the desk provides the Paris-obsessed, Lost Generation junkie that I am plenty of daydreaming fodder. As you may have seen from earlier posts, there is an entire section of our library dedicated to Paris in the 1920s, that revolutionary place and period that changed the face of literature.

Just one of the Paris shelves.

On one of the shelves just to my left when I’m writing, I have gathered my own novels between typewriter bookends that I found somewhere, and just love. Without being too maudlin, when I’m struggling with a novel, I sometimes stand up and literally rest my hands on my novels almost as a way of reminding myself that I’ve done it before and I can do it again. (Silly, I know. But you often do silly things when no one is looking.) Then I get back to my writing.

There is a deck outside those French doors overlooking our backyard and garden. The deck and railing are temporarily gone—the wood had begun to rot—and will soon be replaced so it’s not particularly safe at the moment. (Thankfully, I”m not a sleepwalker.) When the new deck and railing are installed, I’ll be back out there—weather permitting—getting a breath of fresh air and sometimes reading. We installed lights in the soffits so you read out there at night, too. To be honest, I don’t actually spend as much time on the deck as I expected I would when we built it—perhaps a measure of how much I love being in the room itself. But being able to see the large trees through the glass doors is very calming as I write.

I know I’m extraordinarily lucky to have such a space in which to write. I never take it for granted. And I truly believe that if I had to, I could and would write in a dimly-lit outhouse (preferably with wifi and some industrial strength air freshener) if that’s all that was available to me. But I do so enjoy writing in this library.

An Icelandic Nobel Laureate’s writing space

Here’s the writing room of the great Icelandic writer, Haldór Laxness who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. I toured his home—now a museum—when I served on the faculty of the Iceland Writers Retreat back in 2018 (Read about that here.). It was very cool to be in that special space.

The writing desk of Halldór Laxness.

The other side of Halldór Laxness’s writing room.

I’ve written in many places, but I’m most comfortable in our own library on the top floor of our home. It’s the most writerly place I know.

Thanks for tuning in this week. There’ll be another post in sevennday’s time. Until then, happy reading and writing.