Of Retreats and Productive Writing Environments
Over on the Supernatural Underground, my fellow Supe Nicole Murphy has just posted about her two week writing retreat with fellow Fantasy writers in Australia (although New Zealander Russell Kirkpatrick is mentioned in dispatches, so we know there was at least one Kiwi there.) It sounds divine, two uninterrupted weeks just to focus on writing—and I’m not surprised that Nicole’s usual weekly word count doubled during her time there.
On January 18, fellow Tuesday Poet, Janis Freegard, posted Taigyu Ryokan’s (1758-1831) wonderful poem, You Do Not need Many Things, which begins with the line:
My house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest …
and concludes with:
… To enjoy life’s immensity, you do not need many things.”
Perhaps, in order to enjoy an immensity of writing, or any creative endeavour, we do not need many things either, except the space in which to create. Virginia Woolf famously said that in order to write one needed “a room of one’s own” and the Finnish composer, Sibelius, is said to have built his country home, Ainola–which was also “buried in the … recess of the forest” in order to compose more productively. And I know that the thing I felt most in need of this past year while writing The Gathering of the Lost was uninterrupted time.
Yet, although the drive to produce a creative work may push toward withdrawal and retreat, I believe that the heart and fire of writing is also very much about being involved in life and “Mankind” (to paraphrase John Donne.) So it may be that the essential nature of the writing life must always be to teeter on the tightrope between total immersion in life’s hustle and bustle (where little or nothing gets written), and total seclusion, which if maintained or long enough, will also result in nothing being written …
Not always a comfortable tightrope on which to try and maintain one’s balance. But what do my fellow writers say: Do you agree? Disagree? What is your most productive writing environment?
I also need peace and quiet with no interruptions. There is nothing worse than getting into the flow and having the phone ring, or hearing a knock at the door. This is probably why I’m a nightshift writer. My best hours are between 10pm and 3am. Not the best way to live, but it seems to be what has stuck!
I think everyone has different ‘zones’ for when they work effectively, but I always have trouble keeping my eyes open much past midnight. 🙂
It’s before noon. I once had a university job where I could write all morning . . . lovely. I just get up and write as soon as possible. I do revisions later on. I love my current job but I don’t think I’ll have any problems with retirement–I’ll just be able to write more. Over the current holidays I’ve been able to write more and that’s great. The best environment for me is quiet, no interruptions.
I suspect I am mostly a morning person, too, but if I can get going in the afternoon and remain uninterrupted, I’ll often work through until 8 or 9 am without a break.
Peace and quiet are essential! I take the phone off the hook during work hours, to my family’s unending annoyance… but it really needs to happen. I’ve had too many sentences interrupted by someone asking me if I’d mind taking a survey. 😉
I write when I can, where I can. I dream of the day when I can have an office (!)
I dream of a room with a view …