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singsational_playwright
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Posted: Sat Oct 27th, 2007 02:01 am |
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Hello all,
Iris here. I'm quite new to this forum. I have not posted much yet because I have been quite busy finishing up writing a new play, but now that is nearly done so I have a moment to spend with you all. In this moment, I would like to pose a question to you.
Where do you write?
Do you have a special room in your house where you write? Do you write in coffee shops or at the library, or somewhere else? I am reading a book right now called "To Be a Playwright" by Janet Neipris, and in the book she talks about different writers' natural habitats. I am curious to learn about some of yours.
Since I posed the question, I'll give you my answer first.
I am a playwright and a classically trained operatic singer, and I also collect dolls. My writing room is a triple purpose room. The room is decorated as a pretend nursery for the dolls to "live" in. There is child-size furniture all around with dolls sitting in the chairs, lying in basinettes and one "eating" in a high chair. Other dolls are seated "playing" with toys or "reading" children's books. It's a very lively room considering the dolls are completely motionless.
There are a huge cradenza and a large desk against one wall. My laptop computer sits on the desk. I like working on a laptop because when I want to write by hand I can simply move the computer to the floor and use the desk space to write on paper. On top of the cradenza is my stereo for playing my accompaniment cds when doing singing practice. The strereo is also used to play my many Mozart cds. If I listen to music while I write, it is to Mozart only that I listen. Inside the cradenza are two shelves. One is piled high with music books and Mozart cds. The other is piled higher with plays, books about playwriting, books about writing in general, many blank books to write in later, and all the plays I have written along with many beginnings of plays that have yet to be finished.
I like writing in this room. There is a window to let in natural light when I actually write by day, but not much of a view to distract me when I work. All around me while I write are a large "family" of dolls whose little smiling faces cheer me on when the going gets tough, either with playwriting or with singing. So there you go, that's my writing room. What's yours like?
Singcerely,
Iris
"If I write a new play, my point of view may be profoundly modified. I may be obliged to contradict myself and I may no longer know whether I still think what I think."
~Eugene Ionesco
"Sweetest the strain when in the song the singer has been lost."
~Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
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J Brian Long
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Posted: Sat Oct 27th, 2007 02:49 am |
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Iris,
When the weather is good, I write while seated on my porch swing. I am
surrounded there by wind chimes and elms and, in the summer evenings,
cicadas ; theirs is the only music that doesn't distract me. When it is
raining or cold, I sit on my bed. Sometimes there is a fire in the fireplace,
sometimes ghosts. Everything is written in pen. Notebook paper. College
ruled. Sometimes my pen is a lamp-post, the paper a sheet of ruled light
(that flickers, that hums), sometimes moths flutter in the bones of my wrist.
Give me pen and paper and the sway of the porch swing; none of the keys
I used to type this reply are ever able to unlock my creativity; I am useless
in the screen's light. The words bat and tatter; poems and the dust of them
litter the sills of Windows. False light. Seine.
Interesting post. I am curious to see everyone's replies.
--J Brian Long
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bkahn
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Posted: Sat Oct 27th, 2007 03:51 am |
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I only realized this year how dependent I had become on my writing environment. For the past 5-6 years I would go to the public access pier on the Hudson River almost daily during the summer to write. It got so that my imagination would kick in as soon as I started walking there. I used tablet and pen for the first draft, which I would finish in September, typing up what I wrote when I got home each evening. In October, I would have a table read with actors for an invited group of colleagues whose opinions I value. Then would come rewrites, the holidays and then into production. I am one of a very few fortunate playwrights who has a producer for my work. I get a slot every Spring for a 3 or 4-week Off-Off Broadway production. So I have been on this "loop" for a number of years.
Well, this past summer, the pier was gone! It is actually a barge, and it was evicted from its waterfront berth. The public access pier next to it was completely dismantled. What was I to do? I have to say, I was at a loss. I tried other locations on the water, but they were not the same. They were not in walking distance, they were too crowded, there were lots of kids, music blared, any number of problems. The park near my home has a market and vendors and no breezes from the water. Library schedules rarely coincide with my own. Basically, I have been in a snit over urban development encroaching on my space. Bad enough they are tearing down theatres and other landmarks, but this really hit home for me. Consequently, it is almost November, and I am barely into Act One! And my play is scheduled for March.
I am waiting for this regression into childhood sulking to pass so I can finish writing my play. It had better happen soon or I will be in serious adult trouble.
Barbara
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Proboscisbunny
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Posted: Sat Oct 27th, 2007 12:29 pm |
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I do most of my writing on about 1/8th of my dining room table - the rest being covered by my husband's baseball card selling venture. I use the long white legal pad and those liquid ink flowing pens.
I tried writing on my porch one day this summer - about 3 words into it a car pulled up on my neighbors lawn, a pile of kids got out and they started beating the crap out of another kid! Not wanting to get killed (someone had been killed right down the street earlier that week) or be a witness, I ran inside the house...that was the end of that.
I've tried writing in public...it's not for me. BUT - I'm always writing in my head ;)
Vanessa
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Edd
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Posted: Sat Oct 27th, 2007 03:11 pm |
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Where do I write? What an interesting question. Let me begin by telling you my fondest memories of where I’ve written.
In 1986 I found myself spirit-broken, penniless and bitter, in a motel kitchenette in Albuquerque, NM. I had owned a photography studio in southern New Mexico that went south along with my house after being arrested for a crime I had not committed. After a couple terrifying weeks in the county jail, the long seven months of isolation waiting to go to trial, the midnight death threats on the telephone and the drive-by rock-throwings and more death threats hurled my way, the trial that made front page headlines and ironically the “not guilty” verdict that was buried deep within that same paper on the entertainment page, my friend and I packed only what we could haul in an old Ford station wagon and left that small New Mexico town on the West Texas border to diminish in our rearview window—it had long since diminished in my mind.
Amid the cockroaches and the foul odor of a tumble-down motel on Route 66 in Albuquerque, I sat in a motel kitchenette and began to write my first full-length play on a Corona portable typewriter while seated at a chrome kitchen table in a tiny corner of the room. A month later I had completed WEST TEXAS MASSACRE. Then I found a temporary job at a graduate school for the Arts run by nuns in Old Town directing an outdoor production of SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY.
It was during that production I met a young husband and wife who offered to rent us their garage for one hundred dollars a month. The single car garage was not attached to their rented house and had room for a couple pallets upon which we slept, a swamp cooler that only made the stinging heat of New Mexico thick and humid, and a place where I sat crossed-legged on the oil-stained cement floor and typed out FLOWERS OUT OF SEASON, my second full-length before tackling the story of how I was accused, arrested and beaten by prejudice in a small New Mexican town—THE MOON AWAY, my third full-length. At summer’s end I found employment acting in an Equity dinner theatre and became very close friends with the man and wife who owned it. Sadly, they shortly went bankrupt and moved to Denver where we followed them and have lived ever since. They are now our best friends.
Now, I live in a not-so-nice neighborhood off the notorious Colfax Avenue. I have a very small bedroom filled to the brim with bookcases with bowed shelves from books piled three deep, a single bed where I keep my easel, canvases, oil and acrylic paints beneath, a chest of drawers, a steel work table piled with office supplies and junk for which I could not find a home, a night stand and a computer desk all within arm’s distance from one another. This is where I write, in silence—sometimes imagining I am Marcel Proust.
I find that I do not create well in comfort.
Those aforementioned plays, rewritten countless times in these last twenty years, can be found in their entirety on my website and can be purchased at The Internet Theatre Bookshop..
Last edited on Thu Nov 1st, 2007 04:31 pm by Edd
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Shanahan
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Posted: Sat Oct 27th, 2007 04:02 pm |
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Well now that my dear Fuzzy has brought me nearly to tears, I'll add my comparatively pallid answer: I have a small office room, half of which is taken over by boxes of my wife's clothes and things. The computer is crunched over into one corner next to the ever-burbling Buddha fountain on a TV tray. iTunes provides a constant stream of ambient and electronic musc, the only music I can write to. I mostly write here, though I always take inspiration when it comes--scribbling things in a journal if I've remembered to bring it, or on any random paper or on the work computer. (Then I e-mail it to myself.)
If I go back, like Edd did, however, I wrote my first few plays sitting on a loveseat in a 20x20 room in a shared household. I had just left my first wife and took the place to stay as close as possible to my son. I brought almost nothing with me outside of clothes and the computer. The monitor balanced on a footstool. Lived and wrote that way for three years, and it was probably my most productive time. I was also largely unemployed then, so writing time was ample!
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muncy
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Posted: Sat Oct 27th, 2007 05:25 pm |
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Who would have thought that such a simple question would inspire such fascinating answers? My own is not so interesting. I write on my laptop sat in my recliner in my living room. The TV is rarely on in my house and I wouldn't be writing if it was, though I may play some music, usually instrumental so that I don't get distracted by the words.
I like writing short pieces, the type that can be completed within a couple of hours. When I do write a longer piece I tend to spend all my spare time working on it. I'll save it to a usb stick so that I can do some during my lunch hour at work or on a train if I have to make a journey. I know that some people take a year or longer to complete a piece, I could never do that. I need to get it done.
Another question is where do I think. I often go blank sat in my recliner. I usually find that going for a walk or doing some manual chore gets the imagination going. I entered Edd's October competition yesterday; the play was composed in my head whilst mowing the grass. I think I managed to avoid the danger of throwing the best lines away with the grass cuttings!
Thanks for the question Iris.
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singsational_playwright
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Posted: Sat Oct 27th, 2007 06:32 pm |
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You're welcome! I am finding everyone's answers very fascinating as well!
I used to write at the dining room table with all my playwriting books and my incomplete plays scattered all over the table, but I found that not having a door to the room bothered me. My husband has friends over frequently to play lively games upstairs in our media room, and the noise from their gaming was a terrible distraction while I was writing. So now I have my writing/singing/doll room that has a door that I can keep closed and it is so much better!
Thanks everyone for your replies! I am eager to read more replies from everyone else!
Singcerely,
Iris
"When I write a new play, my point of view may be profoundly modified. I may be obliged to contradict myself and I may no longer know whether I still think what I think." ~ Eugene Ionesco
"Sweetest the strain when in the song the singer has been lost." ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
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mac
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Posted: Sat Oct 27th, 2007 08:56 pm |
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oddly, the 'where' has not mattered much to me for years now. i've written in the back of a bouncing bus across the deserts of turkey, in smoky pubs in cambridge, and in my grandfather's pre-lazy-boy recliner in my library room at home. what does matter for me is that i have one of my two 'writing pens' (fountain pens), a board wide enough to lean upon, and a large mug of tea (preferably pg tips).
good things often happen when that combination exists.
of course, there are exceptions. one of paddy's challenges many moons ago got me to write straight on the computer. it was one of my better pieces. i'm still proud of it and have since seen it staged.
but i still prefer the pen and tea method ...
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in media res
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Posted: Mon Oct 29th, 2007 11:18 pm |
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What a terrific question, singsational!
Below is a link to the best single article I have ever read about becoming a writer and WHERE one writes: It is always “The Room.”
It is written by Michael Ventura. It was published in LA Weekly in 1993 in which he had a weekly column at the time. I would go to LA kind of regularly for six or seven years for stretches at a time. I could not wait till the next issue came out to read his article of the week, no matter what it was on. He followed up with two other wonderful articles about writing over the next several weeks. This was the first. And the most important. It is called "The Talent of the Room." One of the other articles was about keeping promises to yourself.
Upon seeing singsational’s question on this thread I wondered if maybe...just maybe...it might now be on the internet. And it was on Ventura's website which is http://www.michaelventura.org
I am so glad it is, because I am most happy to share it with you and glad Mr. Ventura shares it with us on his website. This is the direct link to the article:
http://www.michaelventura.org/writings/LA4.pdf
I made a copy of it and the other two articles in 1993 because copies last longer and don't yellow as newspapers do, and I knew Ventura was writing the Truth.
As I would move, I have always kept them in a special revered, safe place ever since. I take it out and read it at least once a year. Just as I read The Declaration of Independence every July 4. As a reminder. Two great books about becoming a writer are “Life Work” by the great American writer and poet, Donald Hall; and “On Becoming Novelist” by John Gardner. And I am currently reading “The Eleventh Draft: Craft and the Writing Life from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.” About 20 writers of all ages who had studied at the workshop over the last fifty years have individual essays about writing and the writing life. But none of the above is put so succinctly and directly and truthful as Michael Ventura’s article.
Where I write:
Well you sent me on good mind journey that one. I wrote it but will keep it mostly to myself in a file, but it was fun to chronicle. Thanks again for the great question. Brought up a lot of memories.
Put it this way: I have made the trek from No. 2 pencil with a manual sharpener on notebook, and then the manual Underwood with a typewrter grey pencil eraser with blue brush on the top, and the electric Smith-Corona with black and red ribbons with liquid paper for corrections, and IBM "Selectric" typewriters with a cassette disposable ribbon with automatic correct tape feature and a couple of desktop Macs and now to a Mac laptop in the various places I have resided on all three coasts: NYC (Atlantic) LA (Pacific) and Chicago (Lake Michigan.)
In Chicago, though I write in my home office, usually messy, but I know where everything is, I also write in the other various rooms of a wonderful 3 bedroom floor-through condominium in a traditional 1920 Arts & Crafts style brick Chicago Three Flat - light and windows 360 degrees, little front and back yard patio and a parking space - in a lovely North side neighborhood just a few blocks from Lake Michigan and have some wonderful neighbors. However, still hear the echoes of gun shots on occasion – they always fire in threes: BLAM BLAM BLAM. Why, I will never know.
Thanks for a great question.
If anyone has some thoughts on Ventura's article, I'd love to hear your comments.
best,
in media res
P. S. I finally disposed of the IBM Selectric several weeks ago at a garage sale. You know how much I got for it?
I had to give it away to a guy.Last edited on Tue Oct 30th, 2007 01:01 pm by in media res
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Swann1719
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Posted: Thu Nov 1st, 2007 12:38 pm |
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Hi IMR - I just read Ventura's article. Interesting and worth reading. But I am reminded of a crucial moment in Mark Helprin's novel Memoirs from an Antproof Case where the protagonist sits staring at the airplane that will take him away from America and his family forever (he has just robbed fort knox). He thinks deeply about the nature of existence, of loss and identity. Then he gets up, dusts off the seat of his pants, and says, "Sometime you just have to say what the f**k."
The burden of self-consciousness is an easy one to get mired in and one ends up watching yourself watching yourself watching yourself, like mirrors into mirrors . . . but we are free to set it aside and be in the moment. Ventura seems awfully burdened by our relationship to our work, and I just like to think of the fort knox thief, moving forward in space and time without perpetual consciousness of his acts, having shrugged them off like snake skins.
For those of you still with me (my rants have gotten increasingly philosophical lately) I write in our study which is the repository many many books and has a view of an unremarkable Cambridge street. I have not settled in yet. Which I think means i am struggling with balancing the elements of my life - marriage, motherhood, work and writing. I seem to always be getting up because some overpaid person I don't trust has come to check the boiler or dig a hole or something - there is an assumption that this is the reason I exist at the house, to be a housewife. But the truth is I really couldn't care less about the boiler . . .
I have always done my best writing and thinking on planes and trains. When I was studying for the NY bar, I would take the train from Boston to Washington just to study - the romance of rail, fine view, diet pepsi and marlboro reds and I was working like crazy. I wish I could get it back.
Good question!
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Luana Krause
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Posted: Thu Nov 1st, 2007 04:10 pm |
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Great question, Iris! Reading the various responses is fascinating.
As for me, I write in my home office on a computer (not laptop). My desk is near a window and I rarely listen to music when I write. But when I do, it's classical or jazz...instrumental only.
I'm an actor and puppeteer, so my office also serves as a drama closet with costumes, wigs, props etc. I have a bulletin board where I've tacked pictures from magazines, greeting cards, posters or anything else I come across that inspires me or make me laugh. In addition to playwriting, I also write short stories and humor. I also have a large bookcase full of books on numerous topics (I'm a Renaissance Soul).
I'm also a calendar nut. I have a wall calendar (this year it's Classic Broadway Shows), a desk calendar (Far Side) and a small magnetic calendar on my file cabinet that you rip off a page day (Peanuts).
Luana
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timmy
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Posted: Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 02:02 am |
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...for the longest time I wrote everything long hand. The paper had to be legal sized & yellow. I still prefer to write poetry this way. I keep a legal pad in my truck and two or three in my desk drawers at school (I teach).
Lately, however, my life has been corrupted by my trusty laptop, an old hand-me-down "ibook." I have two kids and a tech wife who dominate our "home" computer. My wife installed wireless and I can carry my laptop anywhere within about two or three hundred feet of its source. That being said, in the summer I often write on our outside patio, by a fire, the Minnesota Twins on the radio (I especially like it when they take a West Coast trip b/c the games are on later).
The kitchen island bar top is my next favorite place, as is my class room at school. I often go there on Sunday evenings (I tell my wife I need to go correct papers, but I really go there to write...I know, me bad).
Wonderful comments from everyone.
Another fine book of "how-to" write is "The Files of Raymond Chandler"...it's great and I would recommend it to any kind of writer.
timmy
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Swann1719
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Posted: Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 01:38 pm |
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| Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott is my favorite.
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Luana Krause
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Posted: Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 02:01 pm |
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Don't forget Stephen King's "On Writing"...I read that book at least once a year.
And for the humor writer, you can't beat Steve Martin's "Pure Drivel" for inspiration.
Luana
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Paddy
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Posted: Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 03:39 pm |
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God I'm so predictable and boring. This room is large. Old upright grand piano, dining room table, couch, stereo, fireplace. My desk is at a bank of five windows. Mottled light through the cranberry lace. I like that. No tv. No music. No people. That's if I'm writing. Interesting that you can shift all that when you are editing.
I miss the scratching of a pen. I rarely make notes or scribble out bad love poems on napkins. But I mull. I have that weird kind of memory. And so everywhere I go, everyone I see, things I hear...all churning...but inveriably, end up being plunked out on this keyboard, in the corner. Sometimes with a fire burning warmly in the hearth.
I love that so many of you can listen to music, but none with lyrics. I really get that. Sometimes, I think the more you love music, the less likely you are to be able to write with it in the background.
Neat question.
paddy
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Nate88
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Posted: Mon Dec 3rd, 2007 06:58 pm |
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some of these are really good...before i moved into my student halls in Manchester I spent most of my time writing in my room at home that is coverd in notes i have made too and from college on the train which usually comprise of dialouge between characters i name A and B or 1 and 2.
Now its in an even smaller room, filled with books on acting by Brook, Artaud, Grotowski, and Stan the man. Plays from Kane to Marlow, Pinter to Beckett, Berkoff to Etherage...with papers all over the place in what i like to call a controlled mess.
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my favorate memory though is writing about 8 pages back to back of dialouge just on the train home from college one day because it broke down for an hour.
nice answers everyone else.
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muncy
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Posted: Mon Dec 3rd, 2007 10:30 pm |
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As someone who has a day job working for Network Rail, I am proud to be associated with such a creative opportunity!
Nate88 wrote: my favorate memory though is writing about 8 pages back to back of dialouge just on the train home from college one day because it broke down for an hour.
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Nate88
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Posted: Mon Dec 3rd, 2007 11:30 pm |
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| haha...and I'm proud of the fact I'm trying to be a writer...and cant spell for toffee...damn
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singsational_playwright
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Posted: Mon Dec 10th, 2007 01:38 am |
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My "where I write" has changed since I began this thread, so I thought I'd give you an update.
My trusty laptop computer where I used to put my hand-written first drafts into has died. The fan doesn't work any more so the computer overheats nearly immediately upon booting up. I managed to email myself all my writing before the computer shut itself off for good, but not having the laptop any more has been the cause of a change of scenery for certain aspects of my writing life.
As I said in the first post in this thread when the laptop was working I wrote in my doll room/singing room, either on the desk on paper with the laptop on the floor, or on the laptop on the same desk. I had all my writing books and plays stored in a large credenza next to the desk.
Now however I am forced to use our oldest computer (we have 3 computers including the dead laptop) and it is in our second guest room/office. This computer is an old desktop model with a monitor that takes up more than half the desk space available. So, I now write my daily journal entries (every morning with a feather quill pen and jar of ink) and my first drafts (of each scene of each play) in the doll/singing room at the desk where the laptop once resided. Then, once I have something to work with out on paper, I bring it into the office/second guest room and bang away on this dinosaur of a computer. I have moved all my plays and books on playwriting to the bookcase here in the office where I find they are far better organized than they were thrown haphazarly into the credenza in the other room. I think this change is a good one in the end.
Mainly, I am just thankful I was able to save all my plays, and beginnings of unfinished plays, in emails to myself so that I could retrieve them and save them onto this computer in the office/guest room! I don't know what I would have done if all my writing had been lost!
Anyway, that's my "where I write" update!
Singcerely,
Iris
"If I write a new play my point of view may be profoundly modified. I may be obliged to contradict myself and I may no longer know whether I still think what I think." ~Eugene Ionesco
"Writing has...been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier and freer." ~Tennessee Williams
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Basso
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Posted: Mon May 19th, 2008 02:03 pm |
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A bit of an old thread, and an interesting one too, which I came upon while searching for something else.
Edd wrote:
I find that I do not create well in comfort.
I don't like where I work very much. I am in a corner of the family room with no door, the windows face north, and I am subject to whomever decides to walk by and make whatever noise they may choose. I work well enough some days, while others I am beside myself with garrulousness and then succumb to distraction. I have been thinking that perhaps a small trailer placed in the yard might do as a writer's shack, but perhaps that is fanciful. Nevertheless, this lack of ambient comfort is one thing, but I suppose physical and mental discomfiture is quite another. I'm not sure I would like, or be productive if I were physically uncomfortable, but I find some of my best work comes forth when I am mentally so. One might say, at the risk of sounding dramatic, the more tortured I am, the better the work produced. It creates energy, a momentum that tarries not. It disallows complacency of any sort and drives me toward completion of my work. It is a conundrum, because I hate the unresolved feelings of this predator that stomps around my brain, yet it is undeniable that without it I would scarce do anything worthwhile. So, at long last, I have accepted that this restless spirit in necessary, and though it may even change my character into one less acceptable as societal mores go, it is productive. I don't think I am quite a bastard yet, but I'm sure gentleman would not be close to anyone's lips. In fact, I have found that this unsettled feeling might be cultivated, and it gives me hope that I might indeed write. In the words of Keats..."When I have fears that I may cease to be, before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain" A teeming brain is an uncomfortable brain, and I think that is where I must throw my lot.
Basso
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