“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”
E.B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web
E.B. White would have admired the young Stephen King’s ability to write despite less-than-ideal surroundings. Before King became recognized as one of the best horror writers of all time, he was a struggling English teacher living out of a trailer with his wife and couldn’t even afford his own typewriter. He used his wife’s as he worked at a makeshift desk that was sandwiched between the washing machine and the dryer. He would literally lock himself in the laundry room to do his writing. It was there that he created his first hit novel Carrie.
Literature Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner wrote his epic novel As I Lay Dying during the night shift as he worked at a power plant.
Though some famous authors wrote under challenging conditions, some wrote in what were ideal places for them.
Spy novelist John le Carré wrote mostly on trains and a four-hour delay aboard a crowded train gave J.K. Rowling the idea for the Harry Potter series. Others wrote on the move as well. Sir Walter Scott is considered to be the inventor of the historical novel, but he was also a poet. Marmion, one of his most famous poems, was written as he rode a horse. Wallace Stevens wrote his poetry on slips of paper while walking. Gertrude Stein liked to write in the driver’s seat of “Lady Godiva” her Model T Ford while her partner Alice B. Toklas ran errands. Vladimir Nabokov preferred reading and writing in the privacy of a parked car, always writing on index cards, a portable strategy that allowed him to compose on the move while his wife drove him around on butterfly expeditions. Riding of a different kind inspired Joseph Heller, who famously stated that the closing line of Catch-22 came to him on a bus. Tom Wolfe not only wrote about traveling but wrote his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test while traveling across America in the LSD-fueled bus with the “Merry Pranksters” Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady.
Many of the writers of the so-called Lost Generation like Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, and F. Scott Fitzgerald hung out at Parisian cafes to connect with other writers and spend time writing, but they often wrote major works elsewhere. Camus finished the. first draft of The Stranger in the dreary Hôtel Poirier in Montmartre. Fitzgerald wanted tranquility and wrote The Great Gatsby in Valescure near the French Riviera seaside resort of St. Raphael.
As a journalist, Hemingway managed to send out stories from battlefields during wartime, but his novels were another matter. Though he and his first wife lived in an apartment on the rue Cardinale Lemoine in Paris, he rented another space, at 39 rue Descartes, where he did his writing. In Madrid, Spain, he sometimes wrote at a table in Restaurante Sobrino de Botin. The library in his house in Havana, Cuba, Finca Vigía, is where he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, and 5 other novels. He also wrote several iconic works, including To Have and Have Not, in a studio on top of a carriage house at his home in Key West, Florida. He wrote on his Underwood typewriter while standing up.
Other writers also wrote while standing, including Lewis Carroll and sometimes Virginia Woolf who also wrote in a basement storage room in a cozy old armchair and later in a garden shed where she wrote “A Room With A View.”
On the other extreme, Truman Capote wrote lying down. Capote went so far as to declare himself “a completely horizontal writer.” As James Joyce’s eyesight deteriorated he too began to write in bed. Lying on his stomach at night in a bright white coat that gave off a kind of white light, Joyce wrote with blue crayons that made large lettering easy to read. Edith Wharton also wrote in bed, her dog under one arm, the other arm occupied with pushing the pages to the ground for her maid to pick up and for her secretary to type. Marcel Proust wrote in bed at night, sleeping during the day and blocking out the noise of the bustling Parisian street by lining the walls with cork. Dame Edith Sitwell wrote brilliant poetry and insightful critiques only after taking a short nap in – not a bed or on the sofa – but in a coffin.
Garden sheds were popular with some writers. Roald Dahl’s shed was a writing sanctuary filled with an odd collection of personal paraphernalia. He pinned a quote from Edgar Degas to the wall: “Art is a lie to which one gives the accent of truth.” George Bernard Shaw’s writing hut was built on a revolving mechanism, allowing Shaw to follow the sun throughout the day as he wrote. He named the hut ‘London’ so his staff wouldn’t be lying when they said he’d ‘gone to London’. Dylan Thomas wrote in a bike shed that sat precariously on stilts on the cliff above his boathouse in Laugharne, Wales. He filled it with pictures of Byron, Walt Whitman, Louis MacNeice, and W.H. Auden as well as lists of alliterative words. Mark Twain (nee Samuel Clemens) wrote some of his greatest works, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in a small, wooden, octagonal hut with a brick fireplace. It was built by his in-laws in Elmira, New York where he often summered. It has since been relocated to the middle of Elmira College’s campus.
Agatha Christie created her plots in a large Victorian bathtub whilst munching on apples. Poet Rod McKuen wrote song lyrics in his bathtub. Dalton Trumbo too wrote in the bath at night, although not alone. He liked the company of a parrot, a gift from the actor Kirk Douglas.
Hotels are popular places for authors to work. Thomas Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, Arthur Miller, and William Burroughs all spent some time writing in the infamous Chelsea Hotel in New York City.
Many famous writers have stayed at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, but one of the most notable was Agatha Christie, who frequented Room 411. Legend has it she wrote her bestseller Murder on the Orient Express there. Maya Angelou wrote only in rented hotel rooms and liked to rent one in her hometown and pay for it by the month. She required only a bed, a table, a bath, Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary, the Bible, and usually a deck of cards and some crossword puzzles. She had all the paintings and decorations removed and allowed no member of staff or management to enter. “Just in case I’ve thrown a piece of paper on the floor, I don’t want it discarded”.
Bars and cafes are often places that attract writers. The first story of the boy wizard, Harry Potter, was mostly written in an Edinburg, Scotland pub called The Red Elephant and at Nicholson’s Café owned by J.K. Rowling’s brother-in-law in the same city. Heinold’s dive bar in Oakland, California was the writing place of novelist Jack London. It was where he spent many hours drinking and writing notes for Call of the Wild. Jack Kerouac was known for pumping out his tales at Vesuvio Café across the street from City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, California. Allen Ginsberg also did some of his best work there. In Dublin, Ireland, you can channel the likes of James Joyce and Brendan Behan while having a tipple at the Brazen Head tavern. They are among the many writers, starting in the 12th century, who drank a pint or two there. However, Joyce wrote Ulysses in Zurich, Trieste, and in Paris where it was published by Sylvia Beach who owned the first Shakespeare and Company bookstore.
