a place to think

(the feeling of writing a book)

In the sleepless hours before dawn, I become convinced that all is terrible. My book chapter, my Substack drafts, my notebooks…it was a mistake, I tell myself, to believe that I could write. In the darkness, fear looms large. I know by now the remedy for these restless, swirling thoughts — at first light, before I have even drunk a cup of coffee, I take myself up to the woods.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote about the importance of having a place in which to write — a room of one’s own — and I am lucky to have one. Although my loft room study is really little more than a glorified cupboard, it is mine, and I love it. By choice I will always write there, but I do know that I can write anywhere — I have had to. My first book was written during lockdown, when my study was shared with my husband, and the rest of the rooms with my three children. As much of it was typed at the kitchen table (or hidden away in my bed wearing noise-cancelling headphones) as was composed in still quiet at the top of the house. Now I write paragraphs in cafes, in libraries, in the car whilst waiting for a child’s piano lesson to end. There are many places in which I can write, but when I need to think, I know I must go to the woods.