Kathleen Gray's Blog › Of One’s Own

Of One’s Own

Published 6 months ago

Virginia Woolf: ‘It is necessary to have five hundred [pounds] a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry.’

Harriet Beecher Stowe: ‘There was all the setting of tables and cleaning up of tables and dressing and washing and washing of children and everything else going on.’

A Mug of One’s Own

I sit with the laptop precariously balanced on the corner of the breakfast table.  Around me is the detritus of breakfast: a half eaten bowl of porridge and a few crusts of bread. A dollop of marmalade from said toast has just landed between the y and h keys, and I’m trying to clean it with an envelope found lying under the laptop.  The envelope is yesterday’s unopened mail which happens to wash up on the kitchen table along with a basketful of waiting-to-be-ironed clothes, a glass bowl containing three lemons (two of which I notice have mould on them), a hot water bottle, and a light bulb.  Sounds familiar?  I sip lukewarm coffee from a mug which bears the legend: A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf, complete unabridged, ninepence. We wish!

How is it for you? 

Do you have the much longed for “room with a locked door” in which you can write your novel and poetry, or are you like me – and I suspect many others – simply grabbing a bit of space whenever it arises? All praise the laptop and iPad, which is as flexible and as portable as the notebook and pencil – which I personally have a soft spot for – so that now our writing rooms are with us where ever we go.  I have written in the car (always stationary, cross my heart, officer), in the dentist’s waiting room, in a wood, under a bridge, by the sea and of course in many a café; although J K has spoilt that one a little for us.  ‘You writing the next Harry Potter, then?’ I have been asked on a couple of occasions. I’ve never had the balls to say, ‘Yes, actually I am’. Alas, I’ve never perfected the art of writing in bed, a la Proust.  A tangle of sheets and pillows always ensues, as well as a terribly sore back and neck.

Orange can help with connectivity to new plots

As writers we are urged to Feng Shui our personal space so that the creativity/chai flows unhindered.  This means having an ergonomically comfortable chair, and not the one with the wobbly leg I’ve got a bit of paper stuck under then.  I can’t have my back to the door; I need the sound of running water – no, the tap dripping doesn’t count, (note to self; phone plumber).  Ideally, I should have goldfish in a pond, wind chimes and the toilet seat down – all the time.  The Guardian newspaper used to run an item where the reader was privy to an author’s writing room.  How I drooled over window views across lush gardens and contemporary art on red walls.  Some of them even had two desks! 

If I win the Booker

I will build myself a wonderful ‘space’ via a lavender and rose filled walkway. I walk up a few steps and on to a panoramic terrace; I slide open the glass panels and enter a wood scented room with a huge, uncluttered desk on which rests the latest technology and some white paper and a fountain pen.  At the side of the room is a state of the art coffee machine and posh biscuits to dunk in the perfectly frothed cappuccino.  I sit down, stretch out my arms, crack my knuckles and begin.  Birds sing outside and of course the sun is shining.

And in the meantime…

…there is the kitchen table during the day, and in the evening – when the household transfers to the living room where the wood burning stove is lit –  I can recommend an invalid’s table, mine, costing £3 from a local furniture recycling project.  It’s on wheels for easy manoeuvring, the height adjusts and the top tilts; I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.  Of course, the ideal is a room of one’s own, but we shouldn’t let this be the reason for not sitting down; anywhere, any place to write our creative thoughts to share with the world.

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