I really liked the Boice chapters this week. I enjoy my writing space probably more than I enjoy those proverbial children I don't have any I don't particularly want because I hear they are expensive and occasionally cry. But space is really important, in the literal sense and in the metaphorical sense. But since Boice is about the literal here, I'll keep my comments limited. During my MFA I had a giant office I shared with one other person and I did a lot of my work there because it had all the things I wanted: A desk, a door, and a crappy lamp we affectionately called "lampy". Both of us were creative writers and it was the best we could do.
When I arrived at Mizzou and saw the giant room of grad student I was worried that I wouldn't be able to have a space to write. There is something about that room that is not working for me. I don't even know how to articulate it. Luckily, my apartment here is an upgrade from my last one where the bathroom was my second room, and I have an entire room that I made into a library/office. It's quiet, my only distraction is my less-crappy lamp (I named him Ferdinand this time) and occasionally a book when I want a distraction but am too lazy to get up.
I should encourage my students to make use of the library more. There are some excellent hidey places to work there.
Also, speaking of stopping, I'm in the middle of a grading binge and this blog post is actually my stopping and recharging moment. I'm actually taking quite a few breaths between each sentence. Of course, now I'm thinking about what Sarah said about how each breath is closer to death. Haha, that's weirdly funny and startling all at once.
When I read both your post and Boice's thoughts on space, I am brought back to a different time in my life, when I was not in school but was working out in that big, bad corporate world. I was fresh out of my undergrad and took a job as a copywriter. While it was a challenge to get use to the day-to-day grind, what I actually became more disturbed by was my working space. Now it wasn't so much the quality of the room (although that varied from cubicles to wood-paneled closets of sorts--I was moved a lot, if you can't tell, as my company generally just didn't know what to do with a writer), I was more disturbed that I was constant put into a room where there was a customer service representatives..aka people who spent the whole day on the phone dealing with primarily upset people. Talk about needing to meditate...I could never make myself comfortable with the space. I tried everything...headphones, music, earplugs, and more. The space just was not working for me.
ReplyDeleteNow, while I eventually got a promotion and was put in that lovely wood-paneled closet by myself that I mentioned before, it makes me think about how different academia is, in that so much of our structure, organization, motivation, and--yes--space is of our own interests to create and regulate. In comparison, reading both your posts and Boice's comments I am reminded of not only the importance but the advantage of it all.
Anyway, thanks for the walk down memory lane Alison.