I frequently wonder about where people make their creative work. The desks, studios, bedrooms, libraries. Some years back, I ran a blog called Musical Rooms, where I interviewed musicians about this very thing. The answers were as broad as they were interesting, mainly because not everyone had the means or money to use studios or rehearsal rooms.
I do not have a writing room of my own, which I am fine with. I have learned to navigate the interruptions, while reminding myself every day of the privilege of having somewhere to live. I thought again of the line early on in Deborah Levy’s The Cost of Living where, after major personal and housing upheaval she glumly declares: “But I had nowhere to write:” Enter Celia, an 80-something actor/bookseller, and widow of the poet Adrian Mitchell. This woman, who Levy calls her “guardian angel”, agrees to rent Levy the shed in her garden once used by her late husband. It is cold, dusty…
