My Writing Room by Caitlin Raynes

This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.

I think of Virginia Woolf, of course: A Room of One’s Own. A desk facing a clean, uncurtained window, a ream of white paper, a fountain pen. I picture a small vase of flowers,  suitably wilted, and a cup of tea with a saucer. The Great Virginia would have  had an ashtray for her cigarette butts, and a little match holder nearby. A writer’s room suggests all that to me, but what I’ve got is the local coffeehouse  pictured here. This is my favourite table where the beady, unchanging gaze of the electrical outlet frowns if I look up from the laptop and start to daydream.  

If I had a room like the Great Virginia’s, I’d constantly be popping up to check the mailbox. I would hear the laundry crying out to be folded and the dishes crying out to be washed. But here, I am a woman without household obligations. I am unfettered amid the hiss of espresso machines, the clink of cups and a quilt of melded voices. Instead of the Great Virginia’s clean room, I like to work as Ernest Hemingway described in that opening chapter of A Moveable Feast, in a café, his back to a window, his pen at hand, but glancing up now and then to see if any of the locals sparked his imagination. As a confirmed Francophile, this place is as close as I can get to a Paris café. Sometimes I put on headphones and complete the illusion  with an Edith Piaf playlist.  

Occasionally I laugh out loud at my own lively prose, but then, glancing at the glaring outlet, I go back to being a serious writer.

What Would Ginger Rogers Do? by Caitlin Raynes is out now.