By Lindsey Mead
Where Writers Write
My life is exceptionally busy these days, and I basically write whenever—and wherever—inspiration strikes. I tap frantically into my iPhone Notes application at red lights; I prop myself up on my elbows in the middle of the night and scrawl, in the dark, on my hand or on the pad I keep next to my bed; I repeat the same sentence to myself over and over as I run, desperate not to forget the fine filament of words that has come to me miles from home.
When I get the chance to actually sit down, I write in my little office on our third floor. I love this room, half of which is taken up by the old kitchen table I have repurposed as a desk. The changing leaves on the tree outside my one window are my surest barometer of the changing seasons. The corkboard in front of me displays quotes and poetry and pictures of my children, godchildren, and closest friends.
This room is right next to our family room, where my children spend a lot of their time. I generally need quiet to write, but the truth is that there isn’t a lot of quiet these days. The noise of my life with two small children carries through my closed door.
Tonight I can hear my children playing Go Fish, my son evincing a definite lack of understanding of the basic rules, my daughter’s voice rising gradually with her exasperation. I can hear them, at other times, playing nicely together, the vague contours of an imaginary game or fragments of her coaching him into yoga poses floating into my consciousness.
Despite my predilection for quiet, I’m trying to embrace the ways in which my writing can be enriched by the chaos of small children. I imagine that the threads of their voices are weaving themselves into my work, the way a snatch of conversation from the day might show up in my dreams at night.
Although my preference is to write in silence, I know a lot of writers who feel absolutely the opposite way. They choose to write in a place that is busy—in a Starbucks, for example. They need the chaos and noise of people coming and going, the clanking of the coffee machine, the perfect easy-listening-but-hip music piped into the air. For these people, something about that engagement in the current of life energizes them, wakes them up, connects them to their creativity.
My friend Kathryn Murphy, a literary agent and writer, told me recently, “It makes me feel purposeful to pack up my bag, get in my car, and go to Starbucks. It’s like ‘OK, here I go to write!’” She also says that she finds ideas in the busyness of real life, that sometimes snippets of overheard conversation can seed an essay or article, and, most importantly, “When I’m at Starbucks writing, I feel like I’m part of a community.”
I decided I needed to give it a try, this writing-among-the-chaos. After all, I reasoned to myself, wouldn’t it just be another, more exaggerated version of writing with my children on the other side of the door?
I arrived at my local Starbucks and sat down, delighted to find an outlet under my table, wondering, Why haven’t I done this before? My venti skim latte, right here, with my computer? This is heaven.
I opened my manuscript, took a sip of my latte, and began. I began …to listen to the conversation next to me. Two women were talking, one describing a career switch she was about to make, asking advice about how to tell her current workplace that she was leaving. I had several opinions about how to best communicate her decision to her employer. I noticed the little girl in the yellow raincoat in line with her mother and remembered my own daughter at that age, in a similar raincoat. My thoughts drifted into reverie, skittering into a familiar skein of wonder and panic at the passage of time. A man in a tweed blazer strode past me, and I smelled a waft of pipe smoke in his wake. Instantly I was a child, sitting on the floor beside my father in his red leather chair, pipe smoke twisting toward the ceiling, both of us reading in the pool of light from the floor lamp.
I kept returning to the screen, telling myself: Begin again. This could be a form of meditation, couldn’t it? No, it couldn’t. After a full hour that yielded dozens of intense memories and two written sentences, I flipped down the screen of my laptop and stood up. It was time to go back to my quiet garret in the sky.
I wonder what the space in which we draw our inspiration says about us, what clues may be found in whether our creativity depends on being engaged in the noisy flow of humanity or being alone in a quiet place. I suspect that my inability to concentrate in an environment like Starbucks is linked to my profoundly porous nature. I’ve always been permeable in an unusual way, and this makes me easily overwhelmed by surrounding activity.
I have returned to writing in my small office, gazing out the window, tapping at my keyboard, hearing the rise and fall of my children’s voices faintly through the door.
Art Information
- "My Children" and "The World in a Soap Bubble" © Lindsey Mead; used by permission
- "The Writer, the Reader, the Bird" © Aurelio Asiain; Creative Commons license
Lindsey Mead is a writer, wife, and mother. She works as an executive search consultant in the area of finance, writes daily, and tries to pay close attention to the everyday life so vividly embodied in her daughter and son.
Read more of her thoughts on writing and life at her blog, A Design So Vast.
