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Today we’re writing at the British Library, and I’m thinking about our writing space. First of all, I’m thinking about the word space. It means:
a continuous area or expanse which is free, available, or unoccupied.
an area of land which is not occupied by buildings.
a blank between printed, typed, or written words, characters, numbers, etc.
each of the four gaps between the five lines of a stave.
Space makes room for something. It is the area in-between stuff. Our writing space is where we have room to create something new.
I’m thinking about my relationship to my writing space, how it feels to write there, and how it feels to write not there. I love my office. I’ve set it up myself, so, obviously, I set it up in a way that makes it easy for me to sit and write. But sometimes, I wonder whether having this perfect set-up creates a bit of a crutch and makes me unable to write in other spaces.
A specific space can mean different things to different people. For instance, Joyce's Stephen Dedalus found that he couldn’t write in the library because he felt all those dead writers staring at him from the shelves. Sometimes a space can stifle our creativity. I love writing in the library. The books remind me of my goal.
Today I invite you to look at your writing space, wherever you are writing right now. Start by describing it. What do you see, hear, smell? How does your body feel? Think about how the space makes you feel. Are you comfortable here? Is it conducive to your creativity? Now, I invite you to describe your ideal writing space. What does it look like? How does it feel? And finally, what is one small thing you can do to your current writing space to make it a little more similar to your ideal space?
Hey there! I would love to hear whatever you're willing to share that came from the prompt. Please comment below or click on the chat window, even if it's only to tell me that you've found this prompt useful.
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