I’ve always been drawn to those magazine articles that show writers’ dens; it’s appealing to see the sanctum sanctorum. But it’s a kind of cheap thrill too, like rifling someone’s underwear drawer or medicine cabinet.
The printed text is the public persona, all primped and contrived — but this messy desk, that ancient laptop with dirty keys, those curling Post-its on the wall; those are the private person, unguarded, which is what the voyeur in us wants to see.
Of course, this is just a fantasy — when a journalist comes to photograph your private space, you ensure it looks the way you want it to. (Before anyone photographs or films my office, I always tidy — not because I’m a well-groomed minimalist but because personal clutter is like an open diary. )
I like my little office. I feel at home there, I spend hours there every day. I prefer to work there if I possibly can. But my little office is also just a room in whatever house I happen to be living in…and I move round a lot.
I’ve been in this particular house for five years, which is two years longer than I’ve lived any place since I was five years old. My wife and I are tired of moving. We like that we’ve begun to put down roots. But we get itchy feet, too. We like change. So we’ve just had the house ripped to pieces. What used to be my little office doesn’t exist any more.
Right now, I’m typing in the corner of my bedroom. There’s rough particle board floor beneath feet, unpleasantly gritty with plaster dust. For privacy, I’ve pinned blue plastic tarpualins to the window frames; outside, six house painters listen to classic rock on a local radio station and my dogs howl and yap at every car that goes by.
I can write pretty much anywhere — in any room in any country. This isn’t my natural inclination, but a skill I was obliged by circumstances to learn. I was obliged to learn it because I wanted to write a book. Books get written on kitchen tables, in offices during lunch breaks, on trains, in hotel rooms, in public libraries, in pubs.
(I exclude from this list coffee shops. I’m perfectly willing to accept this as an irrational prejudice; that would make it one of many. Perhaps you are a genuinely good, ambitous and hardworking writer and a coffee shop simply happens to be the best place available for you to write. If so, I apologise in advance. But in my defence, I haven’t met you yet. All I’ve seen is the posuers, perched there in dangerously tempting proximity to very hot liquids in easy throwing distance.)
But I digress. As some of you know, although I’m English and my professional life is focussed in Britain, I make my home in New Zealand (one of the best parts about being a writer is, you can live anywhere — and I can’t think of anywhere better than here).
Last Monday, to help promote the New Zealand International Arts Festival, specifically Writers and Readers Week, I somewhat reluctantly agreed to take part in a competion called ONCE UPON A DEADLINE:
Watch out for writing where you least expect it. On Monday 8 March, look out for six playwrights and one scriptwriter racing around Wellington in search of a story. They could be sitting at a bus stop, riding an elevator, or watching animals at the zoo. Each will be armed with a laptop, wireless internet, and a minder to make sure they stick to the rules and keep to the clock. At the start of the day, each writer is given a route to follow and will spend one hour at each location, including a turn in the writer’s cage.
The locations were kept from us until the morning of the event. So I found myself blinking and tired, writing a short story in — a coffee roastery; a cage at Wellington Airport; the middle of a class full of sixteen year old boys (who dwarfed me); at the cheese counter in a city-centre supermarket; in a local radio station; at a Pompeii exhibition in the national museum, Te Papa.
After that we spent an hour with an editor, then gathered at the Town Hall for a “read-off” — reading the thing out to an audience. Three judges decided the overall winner, and there was a “peoples’ choice” award, too.
(The winner, deservedly, was playwright Dianna Fuemana. The People’s Choice award went to David Geary. All the stories can be found here)
It was, as you’ll have gathered, a strange day — all the more so since I tend to be a solitary creature. I’m reasonably accommodated to appearing on stage and on camera: although I find it stressful, it’s part of the job. But I’ve never written a story in public, and I’ve never read a story aloud to an audience.
The story I wrote is just okay — I like how it telescopes time-scales and in 1,300 words, how it keeps shifting from solemn to comical, from the domestic to the apocalyptic. But I’m no short story writer, so I’m not judging myself too brutally. I’m happy with just okay.
What made the day entirely worthwhile was sitting in that cage, then in the thick of those shifty adolescent boys — my first visit to a classroom for twenty-five years. At each venue, I experienced a few minutes’ acute discomfort and self-consciousness. After that, I was just writing. My body was at a cheese counter, but my mind was in the writing place.
It came to me late in the day: that’s essentially the story of my life. If you really want to be a writer, it doesn’t matter where you are or who’s around you.
Sometimes it’s embarrassing — often, you’re an object of derision, certainly mistrust and scepticism. Plus, you look pretty stupid, all hunched up and gurning, typing away while people go about their lives — wheeling luggage to check-in, buying cheese, wandering the halls of a museum. What a way to spend your time. You’re a freak.
You do it anyway.
