Recreating the Places We Dreamt of Writing

“At the desk where I didn’t write, in the room where I didn’t paint” was the title of a story I once wrote about living in a chaotic lesbian collective house. One day, my girlfriend’s other girlfriend came into my room and announced that the paintbrushes I’d placed in a glass jar on my desk were upside down. The bristles were smashed against the bottom of the jar, but I thought the paintbrushes looked arty that way. This other girlfriend was an artist, while I was a truck driver who wanted to be a writer. Without asking, she walked over to my desk and, in one swift move, flipped the brushes the other way.

After she left the room I was sure of one thing: If you wanted to be a writer you needed a room where you were undisturbed, beyond the reach of intruders. Where jealous girlfriends of your girlfriend couldn’t come in unannounced and flip your brushes. Metaphorically speaking.

I also knew you needed a desk, be that an imaginary desk, an old table in a crab fishery, or a flat surface in a garden shed.

A room under the field

I had a ritual to put myself to sleep when I was a child. After I climbed underneath the covers, I closed my eyes and imagined walking out to a small square of grass in the middle of our elementary school’s playing field. When I found it I tapped on the edge of the square. Silently it slid open to reveal a ladder leading straight down to a secret room under the field. In that room was everything I needed: a large desk of blond wood with a water fountain built into the desk top, at the ready for when I was thirsty. Bookcases that lined the walls. A daybed for the occasional nap, a fridge stocked with tasty snacks, and a small bathroom behind a partition. In the back wall was a porthole; if I looked through that round window I could see my best friend over there, waiting. After I rested by sitting at my desk, I could press a button on the wall, a section would slide down, and the friend could come visit.

Soft, golden light filled the space. The room glowed. What would I do there, at that desk, in that room of golden light? I’d sit there. Think my thoughts. Maybe I’d write them down.

It was the first room I wanted to write in, even if I didn’t know what I’d write. Whatever chaos I was escaping in the world above, whether the dramas of school or home, this subterranean room below a field felt like heaven. It was down below, where people said hell was.

A room above the sea

A few years back, I returned from a writers’ residency where the cottage I’d occupied looked out onto an open field of green grass. Back home, I wanted to find a new place to write in, somewhere near the sea, where whatever I wrote would be steeped in the smells and sounds of a fishing dock. The child of a fisherman, I longed to be close to those dark net sheds and bigger-than-life, foul-mouthed characters. I wanted to be near that world again so I could write about that world again.

I drove to a nearby coastal town that had a working fishing fleet and a cannery at the end of a long pier. There I walked up to the open cannery door and was hit with the smell of crab guts and fish and brine—perfume, to me, perfume! I asked the owner, a man named Dave, if there was a place I could write. “Well, I got a room upstairs where I store the crab boxes and crap. You’re welcome to it.” I paid him a small monthly rental fee, found an old wonky table, and placed it right under the window that looked out on the harbor. In that room, I watched boats unload their daily catch and wrote the first story in my forthcoming book, Spell Heaven. The place wasn’t clean, wasn’t sanitized, and felt like heaven. I remember overhearing one of Dave’s workers say to another guy, “What the fuck is she putting down? What kind of subversive, womany shit?”

A room without a view

When my wife and I first moved into our neighborhood, it was a pretty active place. From my desk in our bedroom I looked out of the window into the street. In the first months, I witnessed a SWAT team bust a hot car ring two houses down and the arrest of a young guy who lived kitty-corner from us, for murdering a service station attendant. Gangs made deals on the corner right outside, our neighborhood’s new Drug Barn.

I needed to get away from that window so I could write about that street.

Someone told us about a company that made inexpensive garden sheds; the perfect solution. We had one made and placed at the bottom of our sloping backyard, down among the weeds and dirt and overgrown bushes. I bought a flat drafting table of blond wood, found an old straight back chair and a slim daybed. In a junk store, I found a white chamber pot for when duty called. To complete the room, I nailed up a bulletin board and old photographs of fishing boats.

I’m sitting here now, writing this, looking out the window. Over the years, the bushes and weeds have grown so high that green, leafy light fills the room.

It’s like being under a field. A field like a green sea of grass.

If I stare at the photographs of the fishing boats long enough, I swear I can hear the fishermen bullshitting, can hear the gulls, smell the sea.

Which has me wondering: Do we sometimes recreate the places—real or imagined—where we once dreamt of writing, of being a writer? Are we looking to recreate the original impulse?

Maybe more importantly, do we need to find a place away from the world to write about the worlds we find ourselves in? A place to watch the world go by. From a distance.

Someone’s rustling about outside. I stand up, go over to the small window. That’s when I see her, my neighbor, in her yard, deadheading her dahlias.

I’m done writing for the day, I think. I’ll give a shout out to my neighbor, see if she wants to come on over.

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