Design the Perfect Writing Space (for You)
Sometimes summer gives me the chance for a redo. Especially to my creative spaces. Summer is languid—ideally—and that relaxed feeling allows perspective. I can step back, I can see what’s working and what’s not. When I’m not overscheduled, that is. And this summer, surprisingly, has been such a time.
Maybe it’s timing. I completed a life goal of getting my novels released and out in the world, and that push ended in June. Then we had a span of weeks of intense heat followed by hurricane-effect rains. The garden, which occupied me post-books, was a swamp. A perfect excuse to stay indoors and stay cool.
I decided to redesign both my writing room and my painting studio. Creating those two books this past year pushed my spaces to their limits. And I hadn’t been doing enough painting. So I wanted to look at why.
What was missing, what could each space support, and what systems needed an upgrade.
Systems geek
If you read any of my systems posts this past month (on writing spaces, storage systems, and practice versus perfect), you know I’m rather geeky about the organization of things that help me create. The big ah-ha! I had this past month of redo was this: my systems for writing and painting are completely different! And the spaces must be too.
I thought I could create a working system for my writing life and transpose it on my painting life. Since I’ve never been able to choose just one kind of art, I grew up doing both. I never felt that one dominated the other, but I have spent more time developing the “how” of a consistent writing life because the written word has been my profession for two plus decades. It’s what brings in the money, so it’s become the most important creative outlet.
But art matters to me. It works with a completely different part of my brain and spiritual health. I have to do art, play with color and texture, to stay happy.
And my art’s done OK, even as a sideline: I’ve exhibited my art in galleries and university collections and private homes; my paintings have sold pretty well over the years. As I’ve written about before, painting and writing toggle back and forth in my life—one feeding the other. When I am stuck on a story, I paint. When the painting feels flat, I come back to the keyboard.
But it was a mistake to try to impose the working writer’s system on the painter’s life. Or try to do both in the same space.
Do you toggle between different art forms? How do those spaces mix in your life?
The spaces where I write and where I paint are so different—or so I learned this month. Each has its unique needs.
What I tried first
When we first moved here fifteen years ago, we found a lofted studio to rent in a mill building in our small town. The building is a community of artist studios. Although the rented studio is barely a 10 minute drive away, I love being home. Covid only accentuated that. When I retired from full-time teaching those 18 months ago, I had the brilliant idea of using part of my writing space at home for painting.
Why not mix the two? I thought. Let go of the rented studio, do it all in my writing space.
My writing space at home is small but bright; it sits at the back of our house and was once a woodshed when the house was built in 1765. So I loaded the car with an extra easel, painting supplies, lights and paints, and set up in half the writing space.
My writing practice continued without a hitch. I write to hear myself. To know what I think. I live in my stories, my characters. I enter their minds and hearts. My books were revised, sent to my agent, sent to my new editor, produced, released into the world. I wrote and submitted short stories.
When we traveled, I took along paints and made art. In a travel sketchbook or collage, I could combine words and pictures. But I never touched the at-home art gear. Barely once or twice in 18 months.
I’d plan time, I’d enter the writing space, I’d stand in front of the easel. I would try to paint. I had plenty of starts (studies) to work on. Nothing. It grew intensely frustrating—what was wrong (with the pictures I couldn’t make)?
I blamed it at first on the nonstop attention my two launching novels demanded. But I had the time. And I wanted desperately to paint. It’s like a long slow walk, to me. It gives my brain and body a rest and rejuvenation I don’t get from word work. Images, colors, textures all relax my eye. I paint to stay sane, stay healthy.
Why couldn’t I paint where I did my writing? Why didn’t the mix of arts in a single space work?
I’m still bewildered by this, but after more than a year of not painting at all, even when I had time and opportunity, I accepted that I wasn’t going to paint in my writing space. Maybe the two art forms are unique in their needs, so the spaces need to be different as well. I could write in my writing room. I could journal and sketch in my journal. But I couldn’t paint. I needed dedicated space for each pursuit.
Have any of you faced this conundrum with your multiple art avenues?
Dedicated spaces for each art
I was almost ashamed to fail this brilliant idea. Especially since I had no idea why. But this month, I packed the car again with my painting gear and easel and drove it all back to the downtown space.
The mill building, like in many New England communities, was once the center of textile industry for the area. It sits along the river. Like I said, it’s about 10 minutes from my house, so very convenient; it’s just a fight to keep clean. You’d think the interior is either charming or disgusting, depending on your aesthetics, but despite the typical problems of an ancient building, the windows are huge and levered and let in the late afternoon sun in beautiful streams. A previous tenant painted the interior walls a creamy white, but only twelve feet up, as far as a ladder reached. Between our two studios is a brick archway; overhead is a storage loft.
As I unpacked my gear, I noticed the difference in the two spaces—my writing space at home and the art studio here at the mill.
The writing space is small and confined. It feels like a nest. A place to incubate ideas. I don’t need a view, although I have a nice one. I don’t need a lot of light, although I have that too. I don’t actually need a desk anymore, since I write on my laptop.
The painting studio has taller-than-tall ceiling, high windows, and five times the space. I can stand back ten feet from my easel and study a work from a distance. The floor is concrete with an old rug over it. The walls are white and speckled with marks from shows we’ve hung. I have a 3-foot-by-5-foot butcherblock table that wouldn’t even make it in the door of my writing space at home. All my paints and supplies are spread out, messy as I want.
There’s no containment, no coziness, no sense of incubation here. It’s all about flinging color and striding around to look at what I’ve made.
Organic purpose
What if each creative space in your life has an organic purpose? When you are writing in a work space, it serves both your work and your writing—and sometimes this is a good fit. But if one suffers a little, if your writing doesn’t completely get off the ground, perhaps the space is no longer serving its organic purpose. Perhaps that purpose has shifted.
As often happens when I ask the right questions, more ideas came. I decided to try to describe the organic purpose of each of the two spaces, as best I could. What did each space naturally offer? What changes did it need to offer that more clearly?
Once I saw this, I could deliberately pursue it. I could make conscious changes.
I had to assume, if you will, that each space was waiting to offer me something to enhance my creative life, if only I could figure it out.
The purpose lists exercise below was a lightbulb moment.
Changing my writing room
My writing space had been my work space, my office, for twelve years. I still had my desk, files, and large desktop computer there. But I rarely used those for my writing. So when I began my purpose list for my writing space, I was not entirely surprised at what came out.
I need to feel like I’m not at work. I want to feel like I’m able to play, explore, try new things.
I must feel private, contained, and reclusive with my own thoughts to do this.
Sound privacy is important. Not hearing other people. Or music, unless I want.
I want less visual distraction. A wall shelf of books, a character collage beside it, a small collection of favorite things. Not much else. Clutter free.
I really want to be able to take a nap when I feel like it.
I want my dogs to be with me and they need comfortable rugs or places to lie down.
I want to work on my laptop. I don’t want a desk or reminders of past work.
I need adequate lighting but soft and cozy.
Good temperature control. Fresh air. Not much of a view is fine.
The first thing I did was paint the space. Fifteen years refreshed by a gallon of cream paint. Then I moved out my desk and work files, stored my desktop iMac, and left only a comfortable armchair, a good rug, and two tables.
I asked a friend to hang wall shelves for me. All my writing books fit on them, my story files in baskets alongside.
I hung two paintings. Nothing else on the walls.
My best inspiration was to move an unused daybed from another room. It fit perfectly in the far corner of the writing space. I covered it with fabric I loved and piled on pillows. My dogs took to it immediately. Naps await!
Because the room is so distant from the rest of the house (as woodsheds usually are), I can write for hours without disturbance.
I got such inspiration from these changes that I drove down to the painting studio to see what I could do there.
Changing my art studio
The purpose list exercise was equally useful for my painting studio. And I was astonished at how different the space needs were. No wonder I couldn’t easily mix the two in one place.
Here’s my painting studio purpose list:
I need lots of room! Enough space to back up, view the easels from a distance. Ideally, I want both easels up and functional.
I want a huge tabletop to spread out my paints, see everything I have to work with.
Good lighting is a must. Lots of natural light, especially.
Not picky about sound privacy, though: I paint outside and I’m used to noise.
Another must is good ventilation and air filtration, since paints have toxicity. My soft pastels are dusty creatures.
I appreciate plenty of visual stimuli, objects that trigger ideas, color and textures can go wild.
I need plenty of wall space to hang my painting starts, to study between sessions.
Like a key turning in a lock, the changes I made in each space brought more ideas for improvement.
My gear was all there, waiting. First, I set up the two easels next to the huge windows. I hung sheer coppery rayon drapes on the windows, to give a little privacy but keep the strong light.
The butcherblock tabletop fit perfectly on a sturdy, unused workbench next to the easels. All of my paints can be spread out and I have room for more.
My friend hung shelves here too—for storage. The entry wall now has a variety of old bookshelves that display all the favorite items I’ve collected over the years, objects that inspire my eye with color, texture, and interesting shape. My friend also created a canopy (a grass beach mat framed by 2x4’s) that hangs over my pastels to keep debris from the high ceiling drifting down.
I placed an old oval dining table from my aunt in the center of the space for other projects. Or to spread out collage material. Or try watercolors or mixed media.
There’s a couch in the main room of the shared space; the dogs love it.
My artist air filtration system is hooked into my easel to catch the dust. I may set up a spare computer to watch art videos.
The difference the right space makes
Each space draws me in fully to its purpose, now that that purpose is clear. I spend a few hours each day at the art studio—and I’ve begun work on two paintings. I lose myself in the dreamy act of working with color, such a gift to my art-starved self.
When I’m home, I wander back to my writing space and climb up on the daybed. Soon the dogs join me. I open my laptop and begin to write.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
If you’d like to bring more purpose to your writing space—or any creative space—think about the purpose you imagine it bringing to your life. Try the purpose list described above. What is in place? What is missing?
Share your thoughts!