Imagining writing spaces

Music to lose oneself inside

Week 2 of my writing course has started and I'm enjoying myself. So that's not at all bad. It's free. I think I'm learning something (about myself if nothing else). And I'm writing, inspired by Andy Warhol in a way and with track after track of Brian Eno's mesmerising* 'ambient' music playing in the background. It has a meditative, trance-inducing quality that seems to help me write, distraction-free, like I have never known before.

Here's an exercise completed during this afternoon's three-hour session. The time flew past unnoticed.

Trying to picture the worst place for you to try to write can help you realise what your best venue might be. Imagine two different venues for writing – one that seems most suited to you, and one that you would find bizarre or too difficult. Write a paragraph describing two writers at work, one in each of the venues.

(Edit of previous attempt, still describes my imaginary writing-space from Hell. All those responsibilities!) 

The Kitchen Table 

It's crowded with belongings that are not mine. Some, I suspect, have no known owner. Space is at a premium and we tussle over any new area that opens up temporarily. It's like the universe described by Dr Steven Hawking - constantly in motion and expanding. Chaos rules. Meals take place there sometimes and a fruit bowl, like a giant black hole, devours any object falling into its clutches. Were there not bananas once, a handful of pears, perhaps a pineapple? All vanish no matter how often we replace them. There are stacks of books - his, hers, theirs - like ancient standing stones in far locations set by the great librarian in the sky. Layers may shift and change over time but the columns remain. Inviolable. Like the pillars on Mount Olympus. There is mail too - who could imagine so much could still be sent and received in this online age? And homework - there is always homework; three sets at varying stages - not quite finished, waiting to be checked and ... "oh, is that where my homework went?" 

So. Not a place to write. But what a place to live our lives.

And the positive alternative:

"Andy Worhol - superstar"

My Place 

I have a room of my own, as Virginia Woolf advised us almost a Century ago. I know I'm lucky. 

It's a small room at the end of the hall and the cat is my most frequent visitor. She, by and large, is entirely disinterested in a mere mortal like me. Unless she wants fed. 

My desk faces an almost blank wall, except for the paper carrier bag I've hung there: large, square, white with giant black letters down one side. 'MoMA' - from the gallery store. It contains a print of Andy Worhol's image behind these words, "art is what you can get away with". I think that's a bit like my mind. Words are in there. Hidden. They might be art. I just have to work at taking them out of the bag. 

There's a PC on my desk and clutter - my clutter - which only I may move: a teapot, books I've read or am about to read, and my new writer's notebook, never out of reach now. I have bookshelves behind me, a radiator for winter and a window with a seductively uninteresting view of the world beyond: our back garden which is world enough when I'm working. 

We've agreed it's my place. To think. To be not distracted. To take small risks as I write. To make mistakes. To learn. Make more mistakes. And write again.

* By the way, "mesmerising" seems to be this week's fave word. I'm using it all over the place.