Where is your perfect place to write? My usual writing desk is my dining room table. I have a set of French doors to my left and three floor-to-ceiling 12-inch panes straight ahead of me. I love glimpsing my humble backyard and my neighbor’s 20-foot tall fir trees that border it on the right side. The natural light is wonderful, and it’s a pleasure to look out at the sky, the trees, and the intermittent squirrels skittering across our deck.
Silence is key. Even low volume classical or spa music distracts me; I’m convinced I have adult ADD, though I’ve never been medically tested. Sometimes I listen to Springsteen, Beatles, or U2 just before I write to get me in the mood, but when I set pen to paper, I need to be totally focused. The ticking of the radiator is about all the noise I can tolerate.
This past December, my husband, daughter, and I visited Aruba for some R & R. While I loved the white sand beaches and crystalline Caribbean Sea, one of the most divine aspects of our getaway was the few hours I spent in a perfect little writing nook several mornings before my family awoke. We were lucky enough to stay at a resort, and in a corner of the lobby, up a winding staircase was a balcony that looked onto a pristine golf course. In the near distance was a postcard-worthy view of the ocean and swaying palm trees. One morning, while reading To Kill a Mockingbird and jotting down my thoughts, I watched a cruise ship sail into port.
What writer doesn’t long for such an inspiring, calming, and exquisite scene? As Virginia Woolf says in “A Room of One’s Own,” “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Of course, cash and a room that’s conducive to writing are valuable assets, and I am utterly blessed to have been lucky enough to take an eight-day escape with my family and discover my own blissful Aruban corner in which to read, write, and dream. Playwright Lillian Hellman goes a bit further than Woolf and is more specific in her preferences, writing, “A room of one’s own isn’t nearly enough. A house, or best, an island of one’s own.” Did Ms. Hellman have a benefactor? I’m sure Stephen King, James Patterson, J.K. Rowling and some uber-wealthy others could afford it, but most of us struggling writers must content ourselves with a more modest escape. If only!
In my single days, I lived in a basement studio apartment in Astoria, Queens (New York City) from 1996-2004. I sat at an antique vanity I bought at Goodwill for $125.00 and set it against a wall. This wall had a cell-like window (about 12 by 12 inches, complete with bars to keep potential burglars out). I wrote hundreds—if not thousands—of pages of my novel Zelda’s Daughters. While large bay windows would have been ideal, there wasn’t much to see except the side of the next door neighbor’s house and, from my front door and the other cell-like window on the front-facing wall, a congressman’s stately brick house across the street. Except for mornings when my landlady (a very sweet Sicilian woman who lived upstairs and made delicious cookies and zucchini flowers) would yell to the next-door neighbor her 7 a.m. greeting: “Serafina! Serafina!” as though she was the town crier, it was quiet. I could think. Imagine. Learn. Grow.
This brings me back to the pristine Aruban writing nook I relished for a few blissful solitary hours where my world and I were one, where my soul expanded and connected to my thoughts and I felt, This is me, this is what I love. If I could do this seven days a week, all day, every day, with breaks for family and friends…oh, if only. I was so relaxed that I managed to shut out soft music from the lobby and the whir of the golf carts and delivery trucks on the road below. The only noise I noticed was the susurrus of the swaying palm fronds. Fun? Yes, this was not only fun. It was heavenly.
There was even a very sweet young man named Alejandro downstairs working as a barista at the lobby’s Coffee Corner. Each day, before I climbed the curving staircase, we’d exchange pleasantries and he’d make my vanilla latte. I told Alejandro, who is Colombian but was raised in Aruba since childhood, my husband’s and my plans for a writing center and blog, and that if things worked out we’d come back in the summer with a group of writers for a retreat where we all would enjoy his coffee and smoothies and climb the curved staircase together, relish the view, and write.
The accompanying photo shows Alejandro in all his charm, and though I may never see him again (my husband was not as enamored with Aruba as I was), I’m grateful for his kindness, his hospitality, and the warmth he added to those precious hours where I had a postcard view and the time and space to DREAM.
Now that I’m back home and in full-throttle working mode, I hope that in Everything About Writing—the office as well as the blog—you’ll find your own little writing nook here, whether it’s live or virtual. As each of us go about our lives, mentally or physically checking off our daily to-do lists, as the world spins on its axis at 1,000 miles per hour and soars around the sun at 65,000 miles per hour (thank G-d for gravity!), I hope you’ll find the solace, encouragement, and mental/emotional/intellectual space to write your heart and soul out, to pursue and achieve your literary dreams. Whether you live in a basement studio or a mansion, vacation in the Caribbean or the Catskills, I hope you’ve found a place that soothes, sustains and inspires you. Whether your view is of a wall and you write in silence or to the beat of head-banger music, may the words flow from your pen, may your heart be hopeful, and may magic exist on every page.