Writing in the woods
🌲🏚️🌲 Writing in the woods
A place to write...and perhaps to be eaten
Hello!
Today I'm thinking a lot about the places that writers write. Some write in a newsroom, surrounded by other writers, all writing and noisily thinking about writing. Some write in coffee shops, amidst the whooshing steam of espresso machines and rambling conversations of other customers. But some need a little more quiet than that.
There's a whole history of writers escaping from the world into their own small bubbles: The writing shed. Or cottage, or hut. Some variety of structure that's intended strictly for writing.
George Bernard Shaw wrote in this garden shed he called "London":
Virginia Woolf wrote in this one:
T.E. Lawrence wrote here:
Neil Gaiman wrote in this gazebo:
Roald Dahl's writing hut came about because he envied the one Dylan Thomas had:
Mark Twain wrote in a hut on a farm in Elmira, New York:
The list of writers who do their work in tiny little buildings goes on and on: Russell Banks writes in a former sugar shack. Henry David Thoreau wrote in his cabin near Walden Pond. John Steinbeck wrote in a hexagonal hut on his property in Sag Harbor, New York. Michael Pollan built his own writing hut, then wrote a book about building it. Chuck Wendig wrote (still writes?) in a shed built by Amish carpenters.
I do not have a writing shed. I daydream about having one, if for no other reason than linking my work to daylight, to the outdoors. I'm enormously fortunate. After renting places to live for years, I sold a novel to a publisher, and that made it possible for Felicia and me to buy our first home. I claimed the room no one else knew what to do with, in the basement. I more or less live in this room during the week: My software design job happens here, at a desk on one wall; I write at the desk on the other wall.
"Basement" conjures up images of cobwebs and dirt floors, but ours is what I think they call a daylight basement. That isn't to say I have any daylight; my study uses bulbs that simulate daylight, but there are no windows in there.
Daylight has become so precious to me, in fact, that I have found myself shifting my writing schedule in order to bask in it. So lately I'll wake a little earlier than usual, and try to get a few hundred words in at the dining table. A thousand, if I find a good groove. (A subject for another time: 1,000 words per day is a novel draft in 2-3 months. I don't write every day, though!)
The dining table is an awful place to write, frankly. It's not ergonomic at all: My arms rest too high, and my elbows and wrists ache if I work there too long. The chairs aren't all that comfortable for someone of my height (a perfectly unremarkable six feet), and the longer I sit in them, the more my legs ache. But it's ideal in at least one way: There's a nice big window just to the right of where I sit, through which I have a wonderful amount of daylight. (And, on a clear day, a long view to a horizon that includes a few mountains.)
Ironically, at least before the pandemic, having a study didn't mean I did most of my writing here. I still ventured out a couple of nights a week and at least a full day every weekend, and wrote in diners, coffee shops, library study rooms.
Pre-pandemic, I took a writing trip each year. Usually a week and the two weekends on either side. Those trips represented an enormous amount of productivity on whatever project I had going; for nine days every year, I'd have no other obligations but the words I needed to push around, or the ones I needed to cut, or the structures I needed to plan. These little trips were my figurative writing shed.
When those trips ended, I'd come back to the real world, always feeling recharged. I never lamented having to return; the truth is, it's often a relief to return to my design career. I've been a designer for nearly as long as I've been writing, or attempting to write, and that career has taken care of my family. Writing, however much I wanted it to, has only ever sporadically brought in money. It's unreliable, unpredictable, and the kind of money that can better a person's life is sadly quite rare. The longer I write, the more this doesn't change. Writing—any creative pursuit—is an enormously difficult way to earn a consistent living.
Above, I mentioned that Russell Banks writes in an old sugar shack. In 2009, the Wall Street Journal ran a story called "How to Write a Great Novel." In it, this is what Alexandra Alter wrote about Banks:
Russell Banks, a novelist who lives in upstate New York, writes nonfiction essays and reviews on his computer, but "gets blocked" if he tries to write fiction that way. He scribbles out his first drafts in longhand, working from 8 in the morning until 1:30 in the afternoon in a small writing studio. His studio, a converted sugar shack that was once used for boiling maple syrup, sits in a wooded area about 1,000 yards from his house.
(I found a photograph of Banks's writing studio once, though for the life of me I haven't been able to locate it again. A shame, too; I remember it looking like a fairly wonderful place to write stories.)
The hill we live on is long and steep. Hills on hills. We've got a few acres near the top, most of which are thickly wooded. I still dream now and then of building a little writing cabin somewhere in those woods. (Well, I dream of someone else building it, because I am not in the least handy. And I'd have to sell more books than I do to afford such a thing.) I imagine hiking out to the cabin as the sun's coming up, a Thermos of hot chocolate in one hand, where I'll spend a few daylight hours working on a project. No internet access out there, just a desk, some bookshelves, maybe a cot or a comfortable chair for the odd inspirational nap. A window or two, maybe a skylight, to bring in some sun, and let me watch the deer mosey by, chewing our trees to shreds.
The only flaw in my plan are the mountain lions. Since we've lived here, there's been a sighting or two. That's not very many, but really, how many do you need to justify a steady level of constant panic? If you're me? Not even one. Just the thought of them is enough.
In my imagination, the cats are perched in every tree in these woods, just waiting for a writer to whistle his way across the forest floor. The dream of a writing cabin seems hopeless, irresponsible, like building one's dream house inside a dragon's open mouth.
It doesn't help that I came across a video recently that further fueled my nightmares. Perhaps you saw this, too? In it, a man and his wife are leaving their very suburban house in their very suburban neighborhood. Lawns and fences and houses as far as the eye can see in every direction. The man says hello to a neighbor who is jogging by. The wife is about to get into her car when she spots something curious, and gives it a closer look. The curious thing leaps on her, snarling and hissing. Husband runs to her aid and grabs the thing and holds it up in the air and then shouts in the thing's face, "OH SHIT IT'S A BOBCAT!" and hurls the bobcat across the lawn. The cat takes off running, and the husband pursues it, fumbling a gun from his shorts, shouting, "I'M GONNA SHOOT THAT FUCKER!"
That happened in some ordinary neighborhood. Not on a hill surrounded by Mountain Lion Woods. I'm scared of the unseen throngs of wildcats just waiting in the trees. To be perfectly honest, I'm equally scared of Neighbor Who Carries Secret Handguns in His Shorts and Thinks He Can Shoot a Bobcat. Actually, more scared.
We do have bobcats around here. These I've seen twice, a couple of years ago: The first, frantically darting across a hillside road as I approached in my Jeep. The second, surreally, engaged in a fistfight with a deer. I'm not even kidding! The bobcat was beneath a tree, swatting, while the deer kicked at it with its forelegs. And there's me, driving home from work to my house a quarter mile up the hill, realizing we're all going to die.
Bobcat fights.
On my street.
A short walk from my house.
So...maybe no writing shed in the woods. I wonder if I could build a squat little tower study on top of our house instead...? Well, not me, but someone.
✏️ Until next time,
Jg
P.S. A reminder that every other week I'll be sending out special "The Dark Age" letters to paid subscribers. The first one went out last week! You can still come along for the ride, if you like. Details are here.