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Laura Marland on
Headroom of One’s Own
December 9, 2005
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My name is Laura
Marland. I’m a free-lance writer and artist, newly
settled in Broadlands, Illinois.
My friend Carol and I have, once or twice, gotten into a
minor tiff about what it takes to be a writer. Carol was
my high-school history teacher many years ago, and she
does, bless her heart, tend toward a certain all-knowing
maternalism, which, at times, drives me nuts.
The tiff develops when she points out to me that to be a
writer, one has
to write every day, for a significant length of time.
“Get real,” I say. “If that were true, no one except the
wealthy would ever get out a book. People who do dishes,
change diapers, work as firefighters, clerks,
bartenders, bankers, they write.”
I get impatient with talk about What It Takes to Be a
Writer because I think it’s based on Romantic notions
that place more importance on artists than on art and
argues for an irrelevant perfectionism that dwells
uneasily with creativity.
But there is, famously, an argument about another
“requirement” of the writing life that has influenced
me—Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. She points out
that a writer must have what few women of her day had--a
place to engage in that most unfeminine
activity—thought.
In the spring I married the man of my dreams; last
summer we moved to a house in the southeastern edge of
Champaign County, Illinois. The floor’s bare; nothing
matches; it’s crowded; it’s home. But there’s a problem.
It’s just one big room.
We’ve got plans. My husband has begun designing the
attic, says it’s got plenty of room for a separate study
for me. A Room of My Own, where I can retire and write.
But for now, I write at an old farmhouse kitchen table,
inches from the big table at which we spend most of our
time. Beyond the window in front of me there’s a
crabapple tree, swarming with robins. They make quite a
picture: the birds, the berries, the clear blue sky of
early autumn.
Of course, I haven’t written anything when anyone’s
around—neither my husband nor my two stepchildren, who
come to stay every few weekends, and are, like their
father, bearers of light and laughter and joy.
They are a great gift to me, the only children I will
every have.
But I get tense when I hear they’re planning to come.
My husband knows why. He says it’s because I act like
their arrival is the Second Coming. I cook; I clean; I
treat them like honored guests. He says I need to learn
to treat them like children, who understand that
grown-ups have things to do. And really just want to be
around.
So last weekend, while they were here, I popped
Beethoven into my Walkman, sat down at my little blue
table, inches from where my new family gathered, and
wrote.
The Pastoral filled my head; the birds perched; the keys
of my laptop clicked. I had achieved something that
wasn’t available to Virginia Woolf: an electronic space.
Headroom of My Own.
Between my last marriage and this one, I had plenty of
time to be alone. I had an apartment overlooking Lake
Michigan where waves crashed on the beach across the
street. I had, my friends said, Taken Control of My Life
and My Space.
I didn’t write a word.
It will be spring before the attic space is finished,
spring before I can
climb to my perfect little writer’s retreat, sit among
my books, be alone, and create.
I’m going to get lonely and go downstairs to work. |
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