A Writing Inspiration Twofer: George Saunders's Writing Practice AND his Writing House

 I was recently scrolling through Shedworking (https://www.shedworking.co.uk/), a UK* site for hopes and dreams about writing houses, when I saw this two-parter about the novelist, short-story writer, and critic George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo is his award-winning novel).

Here, from Shedworking, is a picture of his writing house in California. 

(Insert pause here while you sigh with delight.)

And here, from the New York Times* via Shedworking, is a bit about his writing practice:

"Saunders writes in a shed across the driveway from his house, where we sat for a couple hours one morning while his two yellow labs nosed around outside the door. There’s the desk and a sofa and a table stacked with books that he has been researching for his next project."

And this from The Guardian: 

"His first newsletter includes a photograph of his solitary writing shed in the woods behind the house in Corralitos. His wife, Paula, bought it for him a few years ago, and it’s a writer’s dream. No fences or distant rooftops. Just the shed surrounded by trees and the shadows of trees. Writers’ rooms are usually reclusive. But Saunders is using his to host a writing community. Why does he care? “I suppose one of the things that a person worries about along the way is, ‘Does this really matter?’”

  “To go up in that shed every day was so helpful.” It was, he says, a way of saying: “‘I can’t control the world.’"

And finally, from his new substack at https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/welcome-to-story-club, which sounds very much worth the $6 a month:  

"I’d come flying/stumbling down at the end of the day from a little writing shed I have up on the hillside in Corralitos, California, feeling, not that I’d “taken a break from” the current difficulties, but that I’d, well, girded up my loins for a deeper, less fearful engagement with the world."  

I am tempted to join the Story Club substack, not only for the pleasure of learning about writing short stories from a contemporary master at the top of his game but also in hopes that we will see interiors of the writing house.

Digression 1:  The Brits take their garden sheds/writing houses very seriously and even have an award for them.

Digression 2: From the New York Times piece, I learned that Saunders has the same guilty pleasure that I do--reading Vanity Fair on a plane. Famous genius writers and obscure bloggers--they're so alike!

 

 

 

More pictures

I have a syllabus to do (don't we all right now?), but here are a few more pictures from the little house. As you can see, the furniture gets moved around quite a bit, except for the bookcases. 

 

What looks like a blue studio couch 

is actually the chair, which folds out like a Transformer.

Here's the chair in chair form. The unit on the wall is an Amana heat pump for heat & AC.

 

You can see the bookcases against the wall. The windows on that side are small, like the one over the desk, just enough to give a cross breeze.

Writing house fantasies: a picture

Over at the New York Times, "Plot Thickens as 900 Writers Battle Amazon" informs us about the Hachette Publishing/Amazon struggle.

I know that this is an important controversy, but what the NY Times published and what I read were two different things.

What it says:

ROUND POND, Me. — Out here in the woods, at the end of not one but two dirt roads, in a shack equipped with a picture of the Dalai Lama, a high-speed data line and a copy of Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” Amazon’s dream of dominating the publishing world has run into some trouble.

Douglas Preston, who summers in this coastal hamlet, is a best-selling writer — or was, until Amazon decided to discourage readers from buying books from his publisher, Hachette, as a way of pressuring it into giving Amazon a better deal on e-books. So he wrote an open letter to his readers asking them to contact Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, demanding that Amazon stop using writers as hostages in its negotiations.

 What I read:

Blah blah blah blah WRITING HOUSE PICTURE.

Writing houses again

Our family used to have a dog that did this: If she didn't want to acknowledge the presence of something she was afraid of, like a cat or something she'd chewed up and knew she'd get in trouble for, she wouldn't look directly at whatever it was but would turn away and look at it out of the corner of her eye.

I am that dog, looking slantendicular when I think about (1) the upcoming semester, which is coming up at the speed of light; (2) an upcoming research trip that I would normally look forward to but am not prepared for; (3) serious academic controversies as reported by diligent bloggers; and (4) a ton of writing that is not going well at all. You would think it impossible to avoid looking at everything on your desk directly, including the computer monitor, but you would be wrong, although I can safely report that a day spent trying and failing to write is much more exhausting than actually getting the thing written.

Fortunately, The New Yorker's article "The Rise of the Tiny House" let me escape into my writing house fantasy again for a little while. I'm pretty sure that will help. That and getting the writing done.

(I will write a real post soon.)