I have never been good at writing at home – I am too easily distracted by the sudden desire to clean all the cupboards, hoover all the rugs and fold all my clothes. Things I could easily put off. I find I write better in a library – a quiet space surrounded by fellow writers.
I wrote my entire PhD in the Rare Books reading room at the British Library and the day before my viva, I set myself up in a shiny blue booth in the Library’s terrace restaurant armed with coffee and an endless supply of cakes (desperate times call for cake!) and re-read 100,000 words!
During the pandemic, I discovered (I have no remembrance how) the London Library. Tucked away in the corner of St James Square, it is a writer’s dream. Founded in 1841, you can feel the presence of past members such as Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf and Daphne du Maurier to name but a few. It helps of course that their photos line the rather splendid oak staircase found at the heart of the building. The Library itself is a quirky old place with over a million books housed over six floors. Many of these books are housed in the ‘back stacks’ – a place of a thousand dreams. For a writer here are sources of information you never knew you needed! Desks are squirreled away in the stacks where I am sure you can be lost for years but you would never run out of books.
It always takes a little while to find one’s own niche but I have found mine in the Study – the room where once the trustees of the Library convened - and what a beauty of a room it is. Recently declared a laptop free zone, it is pure bliss for an old-fashioned writer like me who writes everything by hand. I can easily write 5,000 words in one sitting at my wooden desk with its unpredictable, stylish reading lamp. In summer the room is often too warm and by winter a chill can be felt so I now have a nice range of what I call my library shawls!
But I now find I can hardly bear to write anywhere else……….
(this however was written on a very rocky train to London)
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