What We Really Want is That Room

Hi friends,

Greetings from a ferry from Dublin to London. I have been dreaming of this part of my journey for a while. I’ll write more about it later. But hello from the middle of the water. I saw the sun rise over it and it warmed my face and heart.

My new novel has been out for a week. I am hoping some of you have had a chance to read it. It’s really nice to be read at last. Thanks to all who bought it, and supported this general project of my existence. It should be sitting on the shelves at your local indie, and if not, they would be happy to order it for you. Also I wanted to send out big love to the librarians who have supported this book. You all freaking rule.

When I was in Ireland I taught a 1000 Words workshop, and it was wonderful. I love doing them, meeting so many nice people, talking about the project, the theories behind it, and reading from the 1000 Words book itself, which, months later, still feels like a banger to me. I have just one more workshop this year in Gainesville before my event in a few weeks at Lauren Groff’s bookstore, The Lynx, and if you’re in the area I hope you’ll come. But anyway it has been a fun ride developing them and seeing them grow into something cool this year. I certainly hope to do more in the future.

One of those things I like most about these workshops is that they’re focused on identifying distractions, with the idea that it will hopefully lead to coming up with solutions for them—if it’s possible. I like it when we are all sort of taking a moment together, in the same room, to think about what those distractions are. It’s something I certainly talk about a lot here, but there’s something about talking about it in real life that feels different.

I mean that’s just the way real life works. Thank god for real life, right?

Anyway at this workshop last weekend, I got to witness in real time a woman identifying and solving one of her distractions that was preventing her from writing. I think it will stay with me for a while.

She said that she had always written in a room on the top floor of her house. Just a few hours a night after work, but regularly; she was committed to her writing. And that during the pandemic her husband had started working from home and so it had become his office space. And he had stayed working at home, so she was never able to reclaim that space as her own. All of his stuff was in there. The computer, the papers. His stuff, not her stuff. It had become his space out of necessity but, I thought, also out of her generosity. We all tried a lot of new things for those few years.

I queried her a bit. She said that she had tried different areas in her house but none of them had felt right, and she had tried different spaces in her community, cafes and such, but they were too noisy or distracting.  What she really wanted was that room, with its door she could close. That she couldn’t have that room was her distraction.

And then we all watched as she figured it out: that she needed to reclaim that space somehow. Even if it was just a few hours a day. Because she needed a place to write. Because her writing was important to her. Because—and this is me saying this, not her—she wasn’t going to be her whole self without it.

I hope you have the space you need to write. I hope you can recognize how important it is to be able to express yourself. I hope you can claim what you need today to make your art.

Sending love,

Jami