Room.

This post is #6 in a series of 50 dedicated to the art and life of writing, in support of the 50 for 50 Project to benefit WriteGirl. If you like it, or if you think it could have been improved by a better writing education for its author, please give generously. And pass it on.

For most of my youth, I enjoyed the unbelievable luxury of having not only my own room, but my own bathroom.

On top of all that physical space, for the first five and a half years of my life, I was an only child, adding an extra buffer of psychic and emotional space around me.

I understand that a writer writes, period, sitting or standing, in peace or amidst chaos, by brilliant natural light or candlelight. Whatever it takes.

I also know that were it not for the unbelievable luxury of all that room, I would probably not have grown up to become a writer. Writers need room of some kind, either the kind they are given or the kind they stake out for themselves, and preferably both, and plenty of it. (And yes, I'm all for the actual, delineated-by-a-door-that-closes kind of room, too; after much futzing and fudging that line in various partnerships during my adult life, I've finally added it, in ink, to the list of non-negotiables.)

Yes, stimulation and input are important. Of course, it's important to read anything you can get your hands on, and to be taught to know the good from the bad. Please, accept that you're a person, fellow introverts, and learn to co-exist in space with others. Preferably sometime before I got the hang of it, in my 40s.

But nothing grows without room. Not ideas, not flowers, not love, and definitely not writing.

xxx c