The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Where You Write From

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Where You Write From

I am giving some serious thought to the amount of time I get for writing (very, very little) and the place where I write (very, very crowded). It's not like I don't have the same amount of time as everyone else; I just have two part time teaching jobs that require a lot of prep, and my kids were raised NOT to watch tv, so they call me every two minutes to talk to me or show me what weird thing the cats are doing. I probably can't quit one of my jobs unless I get a super juicy contract, but I need to stop writing in a corner of my bedroom where there is no view and where the cats bite the papers that come out of the printer. I also need to stop writing run on sentences. Soon.

My favorite authors have always been the Brontes, and the picture above is of their house. Now, I mean really, talk about atmosphere. That's an amazing place.

And look at how you approach Wordsworth's place:

And the spare beauty of Emily Dickinson's writing room:

I realize, all too well, that I am not exactly in the same league as these folks, but I really need to find a better spot to work in.

Maybe it doesn't matter; but I'm starting to think it does. Where do you guys write? Do you have any rules in your house about the phone or the doorbell or questions? (Like this one I just got while typing this, "MOOOOMMMMM!!! I found a place where they pierce septums. Can we just go look at it? Later? MOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!! Why aren't you answering me?") And does your space matter to how well you write? Can you write anywhere? Or do you need to compose in that one spot? And how do you get sustained silence?

6 comments:

Mary Witzl said...: I've definitely got the same problem. There is something about the sight of me sitting and writing that brings out my kids' desire to communicate with me. They can sit sullen and closemouthed for hours, but the minute I sit down at the computer with a cup of coffee and the promise of some free time, they find all sorts of things they want to talk about. (Maybe we should have let our kids watch t.v. after all...?); Sunday, 15 March, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: My kids don't get when they show me a feature they just discovered on the phone that I lose my train of thought. In fact, the train becomes a cloud and drifts far away. When I do tell them to watch tv, they constantly call me in to see how weird/funny/interesting what they're watching is.

I think if I had a place somewhere in the house reserved for writing, it would help.; Sunday, 15 March, 2009
Adrienne said...: I have two kids hovering right this minute :)
Maybe it's why I write picture books? Sometimes I'm writing in my head when I walk the dog (and hope I'll remember it when I get home).; Sunday, 15 March, 2009
Tabitha said...: I had the same problem last year. My writing space was a corner of the living room, and my kids would hop onto the sofa and crawl right over me. They had no concept of "mommy's writing" and barged right into my brain. :)

Then we moved, and I made a point to find dedicated writing space. I also made sure my kids knew that my writing space is off limits, and that I'm busy when I'm sitting there. It has helped tremendously, and now if they really want to talk to me they will quietly ask. It's a wonderful thing. :); Monday, 16 March, 2009
Hardygirl said...: I have a great spot (a cozy little office/studio on the back of our garage) but the problem is--the children know where to find me!!!

My best work happens when my husband is out of town and I pull all-nighters. Of course, I spend the next five days walking around like the undead with toothpicks holding up my eyelids.

sf; Monday, 16 March, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: It sounds like the physical space makes a difference. I've tried spending seventeen hours with them, then just peeking at the manuscript for fifteen minutes and it's like: There's MOM! And we haven't seen her for what, five minutes now? Better hurry.; Monday, 16 March, 2009

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

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