A Place and Time to Write

Finding a Place to Write

Jean Kerr locked herself in her car to write. Ernest Hemingway stood at a drawing board. Erma Bombeck, I suspect, locked herself in the bathroom. Some of us used to haul the typewriter out every day to the kitchen table. Perhaps some still write on a legal pad on their knees in bed or on the couch.

Have you found the perfect place to write, if there is a perfect place? I tried many ways, but the one I enjoyed the most was done with pencil and pad, lying in a hammock under trees on a camping trip in the mountains of Georgia, while my husband took our four young children blueberrying.

I have used the kitchen counter, an improvised bookcase-table in the dining room, and I’ve carried my typewriter out to the children’s tree house where I could sit in the breeze on a hot summer day to write.  Then my husband built me a cabinet that housed my typewriter, paper, and reference material and closed up like an attractive box when I left. It was an unobtrusive addition in a corner of the living room.

A lot of my writing was done before the age of computers. When I first used a computer and was editing two quarterly magazines, I set up a door-sized slab of plywood on concrete blocks to hold everything.

Now it’s easy. I go where the computer is. You may use a laptop, but I have my workroom area with PC, shelves, bookcases, printer table, telephone, coffee cup holder, and — of course — clutter.

Finding Time to Write

If your children are still young, or you have kaffee-klatching neighbors, you need a place to hide. Or a time to write when everyone is gone or asleep.

I’m not a night-owl, so I can’t stay up after everyone else is in bed or deprive myself of sleep to get up before the rest of the family. When my children were preschoolers, I had to squeeze in little moments. It was still difficult when my children were in school. I remember standing in the middle of the kitchen – the oldest in school, the second in kindergarten, and two napping — wondering what I needed to do most with my one or two hours – mop the kitchen floor? fold the pile of laundry? write? Heavy sigh.

Now the family is gone, and I have all the time in the world. And I write.

Have you found a way to conquer the where and when to write? The most important thing, of course, about the where is here, and the most important thing about the when, is now.