Writing Nook

Readers are often curious about where writers they love make their magic. So no surprise that I found this series of pictures of writers who've won the Booker Prize write. There is something vulnerable and intimate about allowing the world to see these spaces. They vary from warm, cozy, spartan, to busy and everything in between. I haven't read these writers but it would be interesting to see if their styles mirror the spaces where they work from. Seeing these pictures reminded me of a lovely essay I'd read some time back about a foundational book from childhood that shapes how a writer sees the world and what they end up caring about. The connection between the nooks and the is essay is not obvious but it made sense.

There seem to be dozens of extra chairs. It’s striking that the volume of the rooms was a problem for the very rich. The furniture available didn’t scale to the size of the rooms, so you just had to put more of it in them. My mother, I remember, was walking to my right, the first time I entered that red room, and thought about the problem of the furniture. I must have remembered the room so clearly because it’s the room where I had an idea I’ve taken with me—a thought I have re-thought, a thought that has remained mine. 

I think this is important: memories and ideas happen in a place. An essay is a place for ideas; it has to feel like a place. It has to give one the feeling of entering a room. 

The writing nook is a place for ideas and feels like one. Even when things might be out of order or not how you imagine symmetry and balance would look like, it works because it is where ideas are churned and made into things that you read, love and remember. That is what draws the viewer into the photos.