When my daughter Mary was in kindergarten and the teacher asked the kids in her class what their parents did for a living, she answered brightly, “My Mommy is a typewriter!” Yep, the job description fit. All my kids knew at that age was me sitting at my desk in the kitchen pecking away when I wasn’t seeing to their needs. I launched my writing career, such as it was then, when they were babies so they grew used to having a mom with one foot in the real world of diapers and meal preparation and school runs and another in the imaginary worlds of my fictional characters. They thought it was normal I was distracted a lot of the time, and amazingly, now that they’re grown, they don’t blame me for any neuroses they might have developed as a result.
Back then what I wanted as much as to be a published writer was my own, dedicated writing space, one that wasn’t forever in danger of being spattered with spaghetti sauce or have little hands in everything. (Though the one advantage to my desk being next to the stove was I wouldn’t have had far to go to end it all if the rejections were ever to become too much to bear) In the intervening years I’ve had a full range. From the closet turned home office to a luxurious, furnished suite with a seating area and separate office for an assistant (fortunately I didn’t have to die and go to heaven to get the latter). What I discovered along the way was, it’s not about the size of the space or how it’s furnished or if there’s room for an assistant (which I no longer have, by the way). Only one thing matters: that it’s mine. Which means it’s dedicated to the sole purpose of being a home office. My home office. That means no convertible sofa for when guests stay over. No second desk for my husband. No litter box for the cat (of which I have neither). It has a door I can close and no one else gets to come in unless they’re invited, and first they have to knock (I have yet to refuse entrance).
I believe I’ve earned it. Virginia Woolf wrote that every woman needs a room of her own, and I would add to that: Every woman who earns her living as a writer, or aspires to, needs a room of her own in which to create. It can be big or small, simply or elaborately furnished, in a furnished basement or in the attic. It just has to be hers and hers alone.
