On Writing and Rooms

      Legend has it that Charles Dickens wrote his novels at his kitchen table, surrounded by the noise and confusion of nine children.  Be that as it may, and be that this is eminently possible, working in such conditions is, granted, far from the ideal way to create.  I have thought about Dickens, one of my favorite authors, and his writing conditions many times over the years, especially when I am feeling beleaguered by my own children’s demands or envious of the rooms away from home that some other writers have. And yet…..

      While it should be noted that, as Dickens, as a man, was far freer to ignore the pleas and cries of those children than had he been the children’s mother, the truth of the matter is that, Woolf’s famous statements notwithstanding, a true writer writes with or without a room of her own, with or without money of her own, and with or without a lock on the door.  All those advantages make writing easier and more comfortable but an artist creates where she lives, where she is, where she finds herself.  Waiting for that special place or that gift of time or money may mean an artist never creates anything of any value, for I fully believe that all the best art comes from the struggle just to get it done.

      Many years ago, when I was just beginning my writing career in earnest, a fellow artist asked me if I had children. When I said I had one (at the time) she told me I should not have any more.  “Being an artist and having children doesn’t work,” she said.
      I did not follow her advice and had another child some years later. Contrary to her opinion, I found that being a mother enhanced rather than detracted from my art.  But I understood what she was trying to tell me.  Everything in a life takes time and energy away from one’s art and all of life in general is a juggling act.  I do not think I was better able to handle that juggling act that others, but merely that I chose the things I was to juggle and accepted the consequences.  That said, the time and energy that I gave to my children necessarily meant less time and energy—or perhaps a more concentrated form of it—that was able to be spent on my writing. But, as Piaf said, Je ne regrette rien.

      Admittedly, I was fortunate to have a husband at the time who supported me financially and understood my need to write (although the huge bulk of the house, children, planning, cooking and so on was left to me), and eventually I received a small income of my own so that after the birth of my son I worked only part time, and later, quit working outside the house entirely.  That meant I had the luxury of time to contemplate my craft, to intellectually and emotionally nurture ideas, without having to go out to work for a living. Yet, life invariably and always intruded and many, many ideas were left in the supermarket shopping cart, or sidetracked by conversations with other mothers in the carpool line. Other ideas caved into the simplest demands of motherhood, and still other “brilliant” sentences were lost to guilt:  as I was not “working,” I should be volunteering my time, yes?  I was one of those mothers who, for years, could not say No, and so the computer gathered dust while I went off to help out at one school or another, to sit on one board or another. And often the physical exhaustion of mothering toddlers meant that when they went to bed, I did, too.

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