David Hahn, A Helpful Writing Enviroment.

5/1/08


From Annie Dillard’s Three by Annie Dillard: The Writing Life, an American Childhood, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark. When I furnished this study, I pushed the long desk against a blank wall, so I could not see from either window.” (Dillard, 564)

The very first time I read over through the book this quote came from I thought that this is exactly how I prefer my writing environment. She talks about how one needs a room with no view of the outside world, dark, and empty, which to me is a very helpful environment to write from, due to the most minimization of distractions from the outside world, or objects in the room. After getting into writing for some paper once you get into that zone of writing, the words seem to flow out onto paper to form perfect sentences, but once you get distracted by something, you immediately lose that tempo and it slows down your writing and creative thinking drastically.