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Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Writing spaces

So last night, we stumbled upon the BBC's cool slideshow featuring Eamonn McCabe's photographs of writers' rooms. It's a fascinating insight into the working environments of writers like Beryl Bainbridge and Roald Dahl. Some are austere (like V.S. Naipal), others are more genteel (like Margaret Drabble), and then there are those whose rooms are exactly how you would imagine them to be- Roald Dahl's, for one... Can't you just picture him writing while sinking into that comfy old armchair, surrounded by quirky odds and ends? :) My favorites, though, are Seamus Heaney's and Martin Amis'. For no other reason than the flood of natural light that comes in through their skylight.

While we aren't writers in the purest sense of the word, as graduate students, writing has become a huge part of our lives. And until that slideshow, I hadn't really thought about my writing space very much. It's just a place where I work and because it's also in our bedroom, it's not like it has some independent identity of its own like a real study room. But I should probably take more pride in my writing corner- it is after all a space of labor and thought, a space of creation, even if the product is a mundane dissertation.

Jude's writing space is in the smaller of our two rooms and while he does have a larger table, he shares the table with our printer, and the room with our guest futon and three huge shelves of all our books combined.

One day, we will have a large room devoted just to our books and our writing. It will have built-in shelves, generous working tables facing each other, a corner-to-corner-floor-to-ceiling white board wall, and preferably a skylight to let in as much natural light as possible. Yes, one day... :)

What does your writing space look like?

3 comments:

darkorpheus said...

The Guardian has a series called "Writers' Room":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/writersrooms

I would show you my work place, except everything in Dubai right now feels "rented" and not mine.

serene said...

That looks like a larger collection of the BBC one- the photographer is the same person, Eamonn McCabe.

I think I've seen photos of your office space at Kino- with Herodotus? But I'm assuming that's not really where you do your research and writing (about food...) ;)

darkorpheus said...

Posted my "writing space" - I guess my "research" is done everywhere else. The writing is just the quiet time at the laptop with little distraction - because the apartment is just so empty.