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| Where do you write? |
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Jean Currie  |
| Previously published in Link, the journal of the National Association of Writers Groups (UK) |
| Are you often asked that question? Why is it so important? Ask a dozen writers and you'll probably get a dozen different answers. One, I know, rents an office and commutes every day as if he were a nine-to-five employee, working overtime when he has a deadline to meet. He tells no one the address or phone number. Another hires herself out as a house-sitter so that she can enjoy the peace of plants and walking the dog or feeding the cat. A third has the loan of a room in a vicarage when the pastor and his wife are out fulfilling their duties in the parish. A fourth claims she can't get any peace in her household and is driven to lock herself into the bathroom. She settles to work on the throne (with the lid down) her laptop on her knee. As for me, I have no special place. I write on trains, planes, in cars (not when I'm driving), when I'm eating my sandwich lunch, sitting in the garden, on scrap paper in odd places, in my dentist's/doctor's waiting room, under the drier in the hairdresser's -- I used to write in the bath. I would work away until I became aware that the water was cold. I once confessed to an editor who published my short stories that I had solved the problem of soggy paper. I talked into a Dictaphone. He wrote back immediately, imploring me to give up the practice. He couldn't sleep for worrying about my imminent electrocution. They don't make editors like that any more. I gave up taking baths when we had a drought and I was told showers were less wasteful. Sadly I haven't managed to find a way of using a Dictaphone there. The instrument isn't the problem; I am. Every time I open my mouth to speak I get it full of soapy water. Have you tasted some of these scented soaps? When I tell an earnest enquirer I write in the shower, I get a funny look, but think about it. What else would I do when I'm poking into nooks and crannies, between my toes and in my ears? My brain clicks into over-drive. First comes the idea, then the eye-catching title and the arresting opening followed by perfect prose. You think I'm an oddball? There's a lot more to writing than putting words onto paper/screen, you know. |
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Learning is a treasure which accompanies its owner everywhere. Chinese proverb |
The life so short, the craft so long to learn. Hippocrates |
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