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There's this great episode of the sitcom "Roseanne" in which
Roseanne decides to revive the ambitions of her youth to be a great
writer. Of course, great writing begins with actually writing
something, and Roseanne unfortunately finds her long-established
domestic life and duties making creative thought very difficult.
She starts out by getting up early in the morning and writing at
the kitchen table. Soon enough, her husband Dan is awake, trying to have a
conversation with her. He quickly catches on that she needs some quiet
time to focus, so he obliges and proceeds to read his newspaper,
ruffling the pages loudly (but not intentionally). Roseanne moves to
the living room to write, but very quickly her peace there is
interrupted by little son D.J. who turns on the television. Dan notices and
enters, telling Roseanne to go back to the kitchen table; he'll stay in
the living room with D.J. The silent space at the kitchen table is
short-lived, however, as teen daughters Becky and Darlene come crashing
down, Darlene shouting a loud "Good morning" to everyone.
"Shhh!" Becky
loudly whispers, "Mom is trying to write!"
The two try to preserve the
quiet around Roseanne's personal writing space, but eventually they are
whispering a conversation, one on each side of her.
Things don't look good for this frazzled mom trying to write the
great American novel. Roseanne's birthday approaches, and Dan has a
bright idea. He and the kids renovate the basement, making it into
Roseanne's very own writing room, a little office of sorts with a desk
and shelves Dan built himself ("For holding all your manuscripts," he
says). Darlene and D.J. give her paper and pencils, Becky gives her a
dictionary, and Dan gives her the gift of a day all to herself to write
-- he's taking the kids out for the whole day.
Roseanne spends all day down in that little space set aside
especially for her to write. She ends up spending the day tidying up.
She later tells Dan she can't write because she just has too much going
on. Between her job and keeping house, she just doesn't have any room
in her brain for creativity.
Later, as she's putting D.J. to bed, he asks her to tell him a
story. It's about P.J. Pannawack, a little boy whose adventures
Roseanne makes up purely for her son's amusement. "Why isn't P.J.
Pannawack in the library?" D.J. asks his mom. "Well, because he's not a
real book, just something I made up," Roseanne says. D.J. answers, "Oh.
Well, he should be in a book."
Later that night, as Dan is checking the doors and turning off the
lights, he can't find Roseanne anywhere. Finally looking into D.J.'s
room, he finds his son snoozing soundly in bed and Roseanne sitting
next to him, scribbling furiously in her notebook. He smiles and leaves
them alone.
Roseanne has found her inspiration -- and her writing space --
intimately connected with, and subservient to, the routine stuff of
life.
Like Roseanne, I find it very hard to write at home, whether in
complete silence or smack-dab in the hustle and bustle of family
activity (especially not smack-dab in the hustle and bustle of
family activity). We have tried several times to create a writing space
for me, an office of my very own. Downstairs in our library, we once
created a nook (okay, a cubicle) using book shelves, placing
our big desk in the corner and adorning it with all the requisite tools: paper and pen cup full of pens and reference books and other inspirations. In 7 years in this house, I've
never written a single word at that desk.
We donated it to a friend's garage sale a few years back.
Instead, my best writing always comes out there. I have to
get away, it seems. But not to someplace "inspirational." I once toyed
with the idea of writing in the vast, lush indoor gardens at Nashville's
Opryland Hotel, but I never tried it. Not just because it's quite a drive from my
home and would cost me money to park the car, but mainly because I know I'd
be too distracted in such a place.
I'm a total cliche. My best writing has been done at local coffee shops. Plain decor,
unobtrusive music, the soft buzz of people talking around me. There's
noise, there's activity, but none of it requires my attention. I also
completed a fair bit of writing in my first novel while stuck between
two fat persons on a flight from Nashville to Spokane, Washington.
Elbows pinned to my sides, I somehow managed to write nearly thirty
pages into my black-and-white composition book, which took up the
entire area of that little tray table.
My best writing place is not quiet, but it's also not too noisy.
It's in the midst of hubbub but not any hubbub which may require me to
participate (as at home). I need to get away, but not to any place
picturesque or peaceful. And it seems that, whenever I best lay my
plans to write, the more they go awry -- basically, the lesser my
output and creativity.
The best writing happens in the flow of life,
when we're not trying too hard to artificially make the process special.
Putting thoughts on paper is hard enough, special enough; we only make
it harder when we make too big a deal of things on the periphery, when
we become more enamored with the idea of writing than we are with the
work of writing itself. (Sort of like the person who loves books but
rarely reads.)
Here's one of the more well-known anecdotes from Stephen King's On Writing:
For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive
oak slab that would dominate a room . . . In 1981, I got the one I
wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study in
the rear of the house. For six years, I sat behind that desk either
drunk or wrecked out of my mind . . .
A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and
put in a living room suite where it had been. . . . In the early
nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes
came up in the evening to watch a baseball game or a movie and eat
pizza. . . . I got another desk -- it's handmade, beautiful, and half
the size of the T. rex desk. I put it at the far west end of
the office, in a corner under the eave. . . . I'm sitting under it now,
a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover.
I'm doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. I
came through all the stuff I told you about . . . and now I'm going to
tell you as much as I can about the job. . . .
It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time
you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle
of the room. Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way
around. |
