I don’t have one particular quiet place any more. I have a little office at home, but it’s become messy and in need of a good tidy and I’ve lost the ability to concentrate in there any more.
Most of my other places are places that I share with Mike.
I sometimes crave having somewhere; an attic covered in theatre posters and arty undefinable sculptures, or a study overlooking the sea.
I imagine somewhere where writing would come easily and ideas would present themselves to me neatly, one arriving gently as I finished work on the one before.
My real quiet place is something I can create pretty much anywhere, though. With my legs curled in front of me and something I can write on fitting on my lap. That can be sitting on the bed in the middle of a weekend afternoon or finding an empty table on a long train journey. Sometimes, I sit on the sofa way after bedtime, writing under the only light in the house still burning.
In those places, I can let myself ponder slowly through yesterday and start to make plans for tomorrow. I can reflect slowly on things that had moved too quickly the first time I experienced them.
I can go back through my more distant history and use those times to create new words.
But it’s a place that I’ve learned to create inside my own personal space. Writing within the comfort of being curved into a corner, my face mostly looking at the page or the screen but occasionally looking up and around the room at everything that’s there but not really seeing anything.
From the haze of an imagination that’s as excitable now as it was when I was eight years old – so long as I give it the quiet space and the empty time that I need to get there.
This post is for this week’s RemembeRED prompt over on Write On Edge, one of my favourite creative writing communities. The brief was to write about our quiet places.
Lovely 🙂
Thanks, Jenn.
I so enjoy your writing! My quiet place (for thinking, as I am not much of a writer…too rusty from years of not writing anything other than the directions for taking medicine…) is my garden.
Thank you! I try writing in the garden from time to time too, but we live next door to a very inquisitive dog and he can be a bit distracting!
I don’t think of myself as a writer at all, but I do think that having the blog has been really useful for developing a bit.
I long for a little room overlooking water 🙂 I am currently on my couch, legs curled under me, my husband at his desk nearby. And this is ok, too. I love that you can make your space move with you.
Thank you Angela – that’s exactly how I am writing this now! I love how laptops and phones help us to be so mobile
I love this- carving out your own space -physically and mentally- to write and creative. So very lovely!
Thanks Galit – I really enjoyed writing it. In fact, I always enjoy the Write on Edge posts when I join in with them.
Nice!
My quiet space is in my mind too. In fact, I love to go to a busy cafe or tavern to write – it’s often easier that working at home. It seems, for me, that a quiet mind comes from not being responsible for my environment. At home, I work best when I have done all the nagging chores and nothing is begging for attention. When I’m out, it’s the wait-staff that has to worry about what next needs doing 🙂
I don’t often go to cafes alone, but I did treat myself in a lovely coffee shop yesterday – and I wished that I’d taken along some pens and paper; I could have happily spent a couple of hours there, writing away and being waited on – I really do like that idea!
Yes. Our quiet comes from a place internally not externally.
Thanks for a lovely post. 🙂