Sacred Studio

“I began to hear, in what kept coming from across the street into the room
where I typed, the recurring dreams of youth, inescapable, never to be
renounced, naming themselves over and over again.”

Eudora Welty, Collected Essays, referring to writing near the Belhaven College music building

You would think a highly successful novelist like Eudora Welty, author of thirteen books and the winner of almost every literary prize there is including the Pulitzer, had a 20^th Century state of the art study lined with cherry bookshelves and a bank of windows overlooking a row of ancient oaks. 

In actuality, she lived her entire life (except for time away at college and her travels across Mississippi writing for the WPA in the 1930’s), in the same 19^th century home her father built in Jackson.  She called it “an unruly home.” Books everywhere, stacked in corners, on tables, even on the chairs. What wasn’t covered with volumes held piles of correspondence she couldn’t keep up with. 

She typed away in an upstairs room that faced the music building of Belhaven College, where she could hear the sounds of piano floating from the practice rooms. She wrote in her autobiography,  “It kept me company through the long and solitary hours at the old Royal.”  

It wasn’t just a place to write. It mattered to the stories themselves. 

“It is by the nature of itself that fiction is all bound up in the local. The internal reason for that is surely that feelings are bound up in place. … Surely place induces poetry.”

What can that mean for us?

Whether we have that glass-encased cabinet filled with vintage fountain pens and first editions of Louisa May Alcott, or we’re just lucky have a three-foot wide space we don’t have to clear off for dinner, or, like Christian author Barbara Haley we have a regular table at IHop, where we dream and percolate ideas and write is important.

It is sacred. 

Seriously, do any of us think we alone are responsible for what comes into our creative minds and spills out into words and stories? Who among us has not sat in awe of some of the things that simply arise and find themselves on the page?

We can’t force that to happen. But we can create the ambience that supports our intention to allow God, Spirit, the Universe to whisper to us, saying, “This. Write this.” Even if we have to pull it all out of a backpack when we’re camped out on the bleachers at our kids’ soccer practice, we are, well, creative. We can make spaces that open us up to the mystical world that is writing.

What do we need?

Whether the spare room in your apartment is your writing studio, or, like author Diana Sharples, you’ve turned a metal building into a She Shed, or, like author and web designer Jenai May you’re setting up a desk in the corner of the dining room as a microcosm for the castle you really want in your backyard,  (for more about Jenai and her space, check out Episode 5 of the Scribbling Woman podcast) —  if you use that marvelous right side of your brain, playing nicely with the left, you can set up a sacred space for yourself that:

• Separates you from distractions, even for an hour at a time
• Holds your must-haves
• Inspires you with something visual
• Says to your world: I am working, and it is important. 

Why dream what isn’t possible … now, or maybe ever?

My first writing space was a desk in the corner of our bedroom in the upstairs apartment at my in-laws’ house. I parked my 15-month-old in the middle of the queen size bed with a can of buttons to amuse her and went to work for an hour at a shot. (How many buttons she swallowed I have no clue, but she loves buttons to this day) 

I dreamed of what I have now — a large room looking out on a marvelous view, with room to organize and spread out and display the beautiful things that inspire me.  Fifteen years elapsed between that dream and today on Old Hickory Lake. In each of the five studios I’ve carved out for myself since, I’ve managed to add a piece of that dream. A roll-top desk purchased on sale. A recliner that belonged to my father, dug out of my sister’s garage. A Bombay and Company file cabinet, much assembly required. The perfect rug for practicing yoga, essential to my creativity. A wide closet with shelves for a basket for each project. 

Someday I’ll have a card catalogue cabinet like we used to see in libraries. Do I need that before I can continue? No, because my experience writing in my car, doctors’ waiting rooms, and in a hammock has shown me that as long as I have those four things listed above, I can open up and let the rest of God’s dreams land.

If you want to ponder … What is one small thing you could do to bring about each of those four things in your current writing “studio” or lack of one? Even the perfect pen can make all the difference.