On Making a Mess

NOTE:  the launch of the FREE PDF for writer’s groups in two days,

On saturday, October 29th - watch here for a link to the free download!

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Recently, a friend of mine was shopping for new furniture for her home office and brought a catalog with her to our coffee date.  As she thumbed through it while I perused the menu, she gasped and slid the catalog across the table to me, pointing to a picture in the catalog of an ‘ideal’ office with the banner “Make this YOURS!”  She tapped the picture, and I looked down.  

“Wow, that’s beautiful!” Gleaming surfaces, curved edges, handy nooks for papers and

supplies, beautiful hangings on the wall.

She grinned.  “Wouldn’t you just love to have that as your office?”

“No.”  I said, without thought, without hesitation.

She sat up, pulling the catalog back to her as though I’d offended.  “Why?’

“I couldn’t work there.  Too sterile.  I like funky.”  And went back to my menu.

Space - the space in which you write - is important to writer’s process.  While not the most important element, (perhaps), it is essential to mindset, to concentration, to the spirit of the writer herself. I’m not saying that a space such as that in the catalog photo is bad for writers - I’m saying it’s bad for me as a writer, and that each writer should be very careful about how they choose, structure, and respect their writing space. We’ve known about this for a long time.  Virginia Woolf wrote about the necessity for a woman writer having ‘a room of her own,’ (though I actually disagree with part of her argument), and the majority of the writers I know are jealous of and protective of their space for writing.

Students in my writing classes have often told me that having a good place to write is a major obstacle for them - noisy roommates, crowded housing, etc.   I’ve gone through with them an activity

which has them think about the last time they wrote something they liked …. Where were they?  What did they like about the place?  What did work?  What didn’t? ….until we narrow down the elements that work for them and find a way to recreate it.  Perhaps a dark booth in the corner of a coffee shop, or a bench in the park, or, remarkably, for one student, a table at McDonalds.

The point is, as with so many other elements in the creative act, to PAY ATTENTION.  For me, the moment came in watching a scene in the movie White Palace.  The main character ( a very young James Spader) pulls a dust-buster off the wall of his host’s house, and opens it, exclaiming “there’s no dust in the dust-buster!” -- a moment, which, in the film, is transformational for the character.  That moment stayed with me a long time.  I had spent a long time trying to be “neat” in my writing space, organizing and stacking, filing and sorting.  “Writing,” a teacher named Peter Elbow once said, “is a process of making a mess and cleaning it up.” Looking at my own process, I realized I was cleaning it up before I’d allowed myself to make the kind of mess that real lives and real humans create. Ever after, I did not worry about the organization or cleanliness of my writing space.  There were much more important things.

My space is filled with large old well-distressed oak table that once belonged to my late sister.   In the middle of a story, it will be stacked with books and pages, notes and pencils, computers and reference works, scraps with snatches of dialogue, sketches I’ve made of characters or their world,

and likely my soup-bowl stacked on top of my breakfast plate.  I recognized some time ago that funky old furniture fits my character, soothes my working-class spirit (which comes from my upbringing), and gives me a sense of history I find essential to developing my characters.

I like funky places.  I like funky people.  I like working-class people (in spite of objectionable images of them promoted in the media, tv shows, and by certain directors - one of my main objections to Scorsese).  I like the sense of history, of struggle, of the human spirit, embodied in the old, scrappy furniture that I surround myself with.

That works for me.  It may not work for everyone, but the point is to figure out what that environment is for YOU, and do everything in your power to create it.  Maybe you need clean clear open spaces to create that sense in your mind and open the door to creativity.  Maybe you need McDonalds, to surround yourself with the comings and goings of people and families to remind you of the wide variety of the human heart.  Maybe you need dark corners to help you peer into the other worlds you want to create.  Whatever it is, make it YOURS.