Where Do We Write?
I’ve been away on a book tour for my new collection, Away, for just over a week. Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal. Living in hotels and out of suitcases. Writing on planes, trains and small round tables overlooking busy streets or parking lots. And this got me thinking about the places we write, how they inform us as artists, how they might inspire or challenge us. At home, I have a large, glass-topped desk in a room with large windows, but now – here, in Toronto – I’m making due with a ‘desk’ that also houses a coffee maker, bottles of water and a half a lemon. Writers are chameleons of sorts; if the mood strikes, if the muse appears and demands to be heard, we can write anywhere. Desk. Lap. Park bench. Sometimes, even, on the back of a napkin or hand.
The Guardian runs a series on writers’ spaces, and the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival has started something similar as well. When I looked through these, it became apparent that where a writer chooses to write can be illuminating about who they are as a writer. What does my white desk and collection of old photos say? Old soul? Consistently preoccupied with the past? Or perhaps that I find it hard to let things go – the past, the photos, all the stories that come with them.