Room to Write

Newstatesman

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

— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

While not a woman, once I had no money but a room to write. Now I have money—or my wife does, but California is a community property state—but no longer a room. Since I began my office reorganization, output on my latest book has fallen sharply. I never needed much of an excuse to procrastinate, but this has gotten silly. Last month, in order to compel me to complete the reorganization, I threw out my old desk first. Such a deed rendered me a prose orphan, with no comfortable spot to type.

I am a creature of place. Where I write is important. I'm not a coffee shop author, or one of the muttering territorial playwrights at the public library. I live somewhere. In that place is a space where I wrote two books, countless short stories, animation series pitches, TV animation scripts, acres of marketing copy, jokes for a stand-up comic, essays, and over a thousand blog posts. Since my self-imposed disruption, I'm not writing as much. I'm not happy at day's end for overcoming inertia and cranking out some pages. I can't find a stinking place where I'm comfortable sitting for hours on end and writing.

Yes, the answer screams out: buy your damned desk and be silent!

But a part of me really enjoys cursing the darkness as opposed to lighting a candle which is a fire hazard with all these papers lying about.