I Need my Dedicated Writing Space
It might sound pretentious, but every writer needs a space with the right energy
When I was put on furlough at the start of Lockdown, I was ecstatic. For as long as this lasted, my days were my own to do as I wished.
And that meant writing!
I was determined to make the most of my free time. Naively, I thought that I would only have a few weeks at most to enjoy this freedom, and I didn’t want to waste it. So I would get up each morning, keep regular office hours, and spend 8 hours a day working on my writing.
And so, on Day One, I sat down at my desk and started working.
An hour later, I had to stop. That was it. I’d run out of steam.
Why was I having trouble working longer than one hour?
Well, it was all about stamina and space.
I’ve been writing for over ten years now, but during this time, I’ve always been in full-time work. My time was not my own, so the things I actually wanted to do had to be slipped in where I could.
And so, during weekdays, that meant my lunch breaks. A single, hour-long slot of time where I could sit in a coffee shop and get my writing done.
A single hour. In the same coffee shop.
The length of time I was now able to write for, in the place where I always did my writing.
Stamina
I had lost my writing stamina. For years, I’d only had that single, sixty-minute timeslot to get as much done as I could. Because at the end of that time, like it or not, I had to be back in the office to put my energy and intellect into whatever the man who paid me wanted me to do.
Like any other muscle, my brain had grown accustomed to a particular way of working. But now, I was no longer sprinting. I needed to learn to go long-distance.
Now, over a year later, I can happily sit down at my desk and keep writing for the entire day. Hell, if the ideas keep coming, there are days where I’ve kept going long into the night.
Space
The other problem was I wasn’t in a coffee shop.
What do I mean by that?
Now, I’m not a particularly spiritual man. But I do believe that humans have an energy that can charge or affect the world around us. This is how being at a concert feels different from watching a recording of it. You’re not there sharing all that energy. Or how a single person in a bad mood can bring down an entire room of people who moments ago were perfectly happy.
And I was used to working in that coffee shop. The surroundings, the people, and the decor were all part of the energy I needed to write.
After a while, I slowly built up the same energy around my desk at home. When I sit here, I’m sitting in the accumulated energy I have put into this spot during the many hours I have sat here writing.
Now I’m not saying I can’t write anywhere else. I’ll write wherever I need to. But I won’t be as focused.
I’m sure this all sounds very pretentious. I’m a writer, darling, and I simply must have my uninterrupted space if I am to create! But I feel every writer has their own habits and practices to get them into the creative mindset.
I doubt everyone is the same. I’m sure there will be plenty of you out there to tell me that you’re completely the opposite. That sitting in the same place every day would stifle you, and you need to feel unconfined. But scroll through the Twitter timelines for any of the authors I know personally, and at some point, you’ll find the same post: a photo of the space in their home where nothing gets done but their writing. Where the energy is dedicated to that one single occupation.
Their own personal creative space.
