The place in which I work

Patty here...

I love the idea of holing up in a cheap motel on the beach and writing. The room would have no telephone, no television, no wireless Internet connecting me to my email. I’d be there alone with a laptop, and a bottle of Jack Daniels (just for ambiance) because according to Faulkner “A writer without a bottle of whiskey is like a chicken without a goddam head.” And the room would be very very quiet.


Years ago somebody gave me a book called The Writer’s Desk by Jill Krementz. It’s full of photographs of famous authors taken in the rooms in which they write and includes a short quote about each author’s writerly routine.

Ross Macdonald is pictured in an easy chair next to a bed. A board is stretched across the arms of the chair forming a writing surface. Sitting at his feet is a spaniel of some sort. The wall behind him is covered with wallpaper that features large mallard ducks, maybe to please the dog.


Macdonald says:

“Writing is about 75 percent a good memory for people, and not words…I keep on changing the plot. I might stick with the main outline—who kills whom—but almost everything else is likely to change.”

Eudora Welty liked to write in the early morning. Here’s a picture of her office.

“I don’t care what the weather is. I don’t care what the temperature is. I don’t care where I am or what room I’m in. I’d just get up and get my coffee and an ordinary breakfast and get to work.”

William Maxwell says:

“I like to work in my bathrobe and pajamas, after breakfast, until I suddenly perceive, from what’s on the page in the typewriter, that I’ve lost my judgment. And then I stop.”

Joan Didion opines:

“I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I’ve done that day. I can’t do it late in the afternoon because I’m too close to it. Also the drink helps. It removes me from the pages. So I spend this hour taking things out and putting other things in.”

Willie Morris writes in the afternoon.

“I work on an enormous oak table that I had especially built…My cat, Spit McGee, who has one brown eye and one blue and is named after a swamp boy in a children’s book I once wrote, often jumps on the table and gets in my way, usually sprawling languidly on my manuscript…I welcome these intrusions when I’m starting a new book, because the book takes a little time to unfold. Once it does, I make Spit McGee sit on the floor.”

P.S. This is't really Spit McGee but I included the picture because I think the guy's wearing William Maxwell's PJs.


Philip Roth, not unexpectedly offers:

“I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, “Is he as crazy as I am?” I don’t need that question answered.”

This is where I work.


It’s not as orderly as Eudora’s office, because I do a lot of other things there besides writing, like managing my life. The empty Voss water bottle (soon to be bud vase) is on the desk along with the Maltese Falcon and graduation Gumby. I have notes stuck to my computer screen reminding me of things I shouldn’t forget but always do. There's also a page from a Bad Cat calendar showing a snarling kitty-cat. The caption reads: “Away with you! You’ve disturbed the darkness in which I do my best work!” It makes me smile every time I look at it.

William Buckley wrote in the backseat of his car. Hemingway sharpened pencils to get in the mood. Amy Tan surrounds herself with objects from the past. Some people take long walks, some write in the morning, some in the afternoon, some at night. What about you? Where do you go and what rituals do you employ when you begin a creative project?

Happy Monday, Happy 2007. Wishing you all good health and great happiness.