So, here’s the view from my writing room. I’m looking out of the window, immersed in a lot of non-writerly thoughts.

My computer, pen, assorted notebooks, lists, scrawled notes, highlighter, stickers… The sunflower and two struggling cactus plants on the windowsill .

Through the window not a ‘splendid view’* but a busy one: lovely old brick, a courtyard with plants sort of surviving, a mop in the corner and the washing line. A patch of clear blue sky above the irregular line of roofs.

So why am I blogging this? Only because my writer’s mind is a swirling sea of words and thoughts and feelings, none of which stay long enough to grasp. Blogging is easier because it’s so immediate. Also I do wonder about the relationship between the space in which you write and the act of writing.

I’ve just been reading an old book , Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her ( 2003) in parallel with Zadie Smith’s recent, The Fraud (2023)

The writer is central in both, and I have been thinking about the spaces in which they write. William in late Victorian England has a comfortable study in which he churns out a series of bad novels in later life. Iris moves from a comfortable study in her old home to a small ‘ poky back bedroom’ in’a miserable little house’ (p235).

Although, according to the rather nasty friend who is writing her life, she writes anywhere. Always has her pad with her. Even at her husband’s bedside.

Also interesting is the fraud that runs through both works. In different ways, the most complex is the intentional and unintentional fraud of the writer. But that’s another story.

Which returns me to the start: becoming a writer and surroundings.

So a room of one’s own. Like many women I have always pondered the image of that single, cosy, ordered room. Inside I sit, a writer. Men retreat to a study or to work. Women jot down bits in between the cooking and putting a child to the breast. I realise this idea is an old one, and shows my age, but I have held to the idea of my own space through children, study, work and stabs at being a writer. I have had a room briefly, usually only briefly, as someone else usually finds a use for it.

Now I have that room again and I have to remember to use it. I’m discovering once more that writing is tough wherever one is and whatever the stage of life. Whatever the view. Here I am in a room of my own so – start writing .

* Jolley, My Father’s Moon. Her father loves to point out a ‘ splendid view’.