Every writer I have asked about it says the same thing first: it does not matter where you write. And then, almost always, they describe the room in loving detail. The angle of the desk to the window. The chair that is slightly too low. The particular mug.
I think both things are true. The room does not matter, in the sense that the work can be done anywhere, on a train, on a phone, on the back of a ticket. And the room matters enormously, in the sense that a good room makes the work more likely to happen, which over a year is the only difference that counts.
A short inventory
Mine is not much. A table that was once a kitchen table, pushed against a wall rather than a window, because a window is a story that is always more interesting than mine. A lamp with a warm bulb. A shelf within reach of the chair, holding the dozen books I am actually using rather than the hundred I mean to. A door that closes.
The door is the important part. Not because anyone comes in, but because closing it is a small ceremony, a way of telling yourself that the next hour belongs to something.
A journey round my room
In 1790 a young officer called Xavier de Maistre was confined to his room in Turin for forty-two days after a duel. He spent them travelling: from the desk to the armchair, from the armchair to the bed, from the bed to the pictures on the wall. Then he wrote it all up as a travel book, in the manner of the great voyages of his day, and called it A Journey Round My Room.
It is a joke, and a very good one, but it is also the truest thing I have read about writing rooms. De Maistre’s point is that a familiar room is not used up. Look at it properly and it is as strange as anywhere. Every object has a history; every chair has a view.
That is all a room to write in needs to be, I think. Not beautiful, not quiet, not even comfortable. Looked at.