Anthony discovers~ where Famous Writers’ worked
I have found myself recently being curious about where a writer proceeds to create their masterpieces? What places authors have found help them be creative, inspiring, or in some cases, not distract them? What they did so they could fill the blank page with their brilliance of prose, character, and imagination?
In Cafe
J.K. Rowling wrote her first Harry Potter book in a café in Edinburgh called The Elephant House while her daughter, Jessica was asleep. It was on a 4-hour journey from Edinburgh to Manchester that she thought of the idea for the boy wizard and the school of magic. The Elephant House Café has a sign saying the birthplace of Harry Potter. Similarly, Ernest Hemmingway wrote all day in Parisian Cafes during his time in Paris.
Hotel Room
Maya Angelou, the American author, best known for her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made literary history as the first non-fiction bestseller by an African American woman. She would rent a hotel room in her hometown for a month and would have everything removed from the room except a bed, a table and the bath. She would bring with her a Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary, and the Bible; along with a deck of cards and some crossword puzzles. All the painting and decorations would be taken away and staff were banned from entering in case she had thrown a piece of paper on the floor which she didn’t want it discarded. Thomas Wolfe, Arthur Miller and Dylan Thomas spent time writing in the infamous Chelsea Hotel, New York.
The Hut
Roald Dahl wrote in his hut in the garden at his home in Buckinghamshire. He had a quote from Edgar Degas pinned to the wall of his shed, “Art is a lie to which one gives the accent of truth.” Dahl’s shed was inspired by Dylan Thomas, the welsh poet’s hut when Dahl visited it on holiday. Thomas filled his hut’s walls with pictures of Bryon, Walt Whitman, Louis MacNeice and W.H Auden as well as lists of alliterative words. Bernard Shaw built a writing hut in the garden of his home in Hertfordshire. It was built on a revolving mechanism so that he could follow the sun all day while he wrote. ‘People bother me,’ Shaw confessed, ‘I come here to hide from them.’ He named the hut, London so that his staff wouldn’t be lying when they said that he’d ‘gone to London’.
Different Positions
Virginia Woolf wrote in a hut too but she wrote standing up. This way of writing is thought to have been chosen in an attempt not to be outdone by her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell, who always painted standing. Ernest Hemmingway also wrote standing up on a cluttered bookshelf a few feet away from his bed. Truman Capote wrote lying down, “I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy.”
The Alternative Places
Benjamin Franklin started the day writing in a bath for an hour. Agatha Christie wrote her plots for her novels in the bath while she ate apples. Vladimir Nabokov said that he preferred to read and write in the privacy of his car. Walter Scott wrote his epic poem Marmion on horseback, riding in the countryside near Edinburgh.
It is fascinating to learn charming snippets of the lives of these extraordinary and creative people and the quirks they had to help with their success.