Here’s an article called Shedding Writer’s Block, pun intended, which basically covers the need of every writer for a place of one’s own: “Writers deliberately put themselves in exile by going into a shed,” says novelist and historian Jane Smith. “Completing your writing is a way of integrating yourself back into the world.”
Be it a hovel, a cave, a basement, or the office—it’s that place of isolation where we get our work done. Mine changes based on how lazy I am in the morning. Some days it’s nice just to prop up the pillows and work in bed. Other days I go to the porch—or maybe the library. All that matters is that the juices start flowing.
Here, too, is an article about The MacDowell Artist Colony in New Hampshire: People have “lost their sense of awe and wonder” about life, she says. “MacDowell is a place where you can go to be in awe.”
Or rather, you can go and create your art without anyone bothering you. I loved this line from the article: “I never have anything like writer’s block,” he says. Instead, he tends to find so many interesting artistic paths to explore that he must force himself to choose one. He does that by telling himself he’ll come back later and follow the abandoned threads of thought.
The New York Times also covers the writer’s home, in this case a rather famous one, and how the ghosts of the past can affect the art of the present: “In Vita�s diaries she would often mention her affairs and write, �I loved you beneath the gaze of the golden angel,� ” Ms. Nicolson said, adding that she recently spoke to a group of Virginia Woolf scholars who seemed to regard her as a kind of icon herself � “they almost wanted to touch me,” she said � because she had slept in the same bed as Woolf. “When I go to bed at night,” she said, “I feel like I sleep peacefully because Vita�s angel is watching over me. And during the day I often think Vita is looking down on me, happy that I am living and writing here, as she did.”
And, finally, an old interview with the Smart Bitches.
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