A Room With(out) a View
I wrote six full-length manuscripts facing a wall.
I’ve lived in different apartments with different desks and different desk setups. But every time, my desk was head on into a wall or, when I had one of those corner desks, the corner of a room. Windowless and bare every time.
Come to think of it, when I was a kid, my sister and I had this nice big bedroom with two windows, and I opted to shove my white desk into the wallpapered alcove so I could work on my junior high essays and my high school lab papers in a dark cave of isolation, with only a small desk lamp when the sun went down.
It had always been my process to push my brain into a corner, into a wall, in order to force it to think. A daydreamer by nature, I was convinced that a window (worse, a window with any kind of interesting view) would only contribute to procrastination and slack. The only efficient way to focus, I assumed, was to create a kind of prison cell with nothing but my work to look at.
And, I mean, it worked. I wrote six books like that. I would emerge from each writing session, blinking at the light of day, vitamin D-deficient, thirsty for fresh air of any kind. Because I did get work done, I figured this was working.
But just because something is working, it’s not necessarily ideal. Or healthy. Or the only way that will work.
When I moved into my current home, we decided the larger bedroom would be the office space. I inherited the dark wood desk that was in my living room growing up. It’s an old but nice piece of furniture, and the best spot for it aesthetically was on the wall facing out two windows, with a third window on the left side of it.
Oh no, I thought, and I proceeded to write my seventh manuscript in other places: the living-room sofa, the basement, the public library. I sat at my desk a few times, but only at night when the shades were drawn. In those few times, I realized the desk was comfortable. It felt right. Good height, ergonomically sound. But these stupid windows…
When Covid happened, my schedule changed (for the far better, really) and I began to work on my eighth novel 6:30-8am in the mornings. I’m not a morning person. The first morning I tried it, I rolled out of bed, cursing, feeling exhausted. I trudged into the office and put the shades up. The morning sun felt so good. Good on my face, good on my eyes. I looked out at the quiet street. I looked at my Jeep in the driveway. I looked at the turkeys meandering on the lawn. I looked at a bird in the bush in front of the window closest to me, and I’m pretty sure it looked at me too.
Now I write with the quiet birdsong of early morning, and my focus is just as good—but my mood is far, far better. It’s not much of a view, and I’m not sure how I’d do if I could see an ocean, or a mountain. But looking at my street, from my home—this is now the right way for me.
