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<\/p>\n
I developed this ability during my first job after college, as reporter for the Millbrook Round Table<\/em>. The Round Table<\/em> was one of several newspapers under the umbrella of Taconic Press, and I wrote in a newsroom among 5\u20136 other reporters and 3\u20134 editors. There was always a lot of noise and activity going on in the newsroom\u2014the police and fire scanner blaring, reporters talking, printers printing, etc.\u2014and I had to learn to shut out my surroundings and simply write. This ability proved even more important a couple years later when I wrote for the Poughkeepsie Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n My first published novel, Nick Chase\u2019s Great Escape<\/em>, I wrote between 1996 and 1998 in all manner of places: my tiny, Portland, Maine apartment; my Freeport High School classroom, during 7th<\/sup> period study hall; a Portland Chinese restaurant and the Portland Diner; on a nonstop flight to San Francisco to meet my fiance\u2019s parents for the first time; in my future father-in-law\u2019s dining room, seated at a high-backed, Mission-style chair; on a cruise ship, during an overnight Portland\u2013New Brunswick cruise; on a ferry between Rockland, Maine and Vinalhaven Island; and in the passenger seat of my car, while my wife drove, because a character in the novel\u2014a British novelist named Winston\u2014could only write in a moving vehicle, and, being in a \u201cmethod-writing\u201d phase at that time, I wanted to see what that was like.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve written in library basements. I\u2019ve written in apartment building laundry rooms. I\u2019ve written in my apartment kitchens at the dining table.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve written in five-star hotels and a few fleabags. I\u2019ve written in restaurant pantries and walk-in refrigerators. I\u2019ve written in a newspaper darkroom. I\u2019ve written in bars in Manhattan, Boston, Washington D.C., Orlando, Scottsdale, New Orleans, and Missoula, Montana.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve written in an old woman\u2019s attic and a child\u2019s treehouse. I\u2019ve written in a remote cabin in the Rockies and in the exercise yard of Alcatraz.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve written in dentists\u2019 offices and doctors\u2019 offices. I\u2019ve written in two apartments across the street from fire stations. I\u2019ve written above a pawn shop that was raided by the FBI. I\u2019ve written in classrooms full of students, ranging in age from kindergartners to college seniors. I\u2019ve written on buses. I\u2019ve written in a helicopter while flying over the Grand Canyon (only to take notes on the view).<\/p>\n I\u2019ve written poolside in a cabana, and backstage on a folding chair. I\u2019ve written in pubs and poolrooms in England and Scotland, and cafes in Paris and Normandy. I\u2019ve written on a bench at Versailles and atop a log in the California Redwoods.<\/p>\n Finally\u2014one of my favorite settings\u2014I\u2019ve written in front of hotel lobby fireplaces in Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone National Park; Lake Placid, NY; a ski resort in Quebec, where Ian Fleming wrote one of his James Bond novels; and an inn in Highland Scotland.<\/p>\n For veteran novelists what I have to say probably comes too late. But to young or aspiring novelists I say this: Write everywhere. Become<\/em> writing, so that it\u2019s simply a natural extension of you and isn\u2019t tied to a specific location, desk, noise and activity level, etc. And if you always write using a computer, start using a pen or, even better, a pencil, so you aren\u2019t handcuffed to technology. If you can develop this ability while you\u2019re young, it will serve you well your entire writing career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Compared to other novelists I know or have read about, I\u2019m something of an anomaly: I\u2019m a novelist who can write just about anywhere. While I enjoy having a dedicated space for my writing, an actual home office, \u201ca room of one\u2019s own\u201d as Virginia Woolf put it, I\u2019m not one of those precious novelists … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,3,18,19,20,75,364,36,337,77,365,7,76,176,24,270,13,14,233,15],"tags":[475,133,474,349,156,401,361,222,473,472,271,93,355,352,470,144,471],"class_list":["post-8132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chris-orcutt-books","category-craft","category-dramaticwriting","category-fiction","category-journalism","category-memoir","category-memoirs","category-mystery-writing","category-novel-writing","category-novels","category-perpetuating-trouble","category-personal","category-process","category-screenwriting","category-speechwriting","category-workspace","category-writers","category-writingexperiences","category-writing-life","category-writingtools","tag-feng-shui","tag-mysteries","tag-new-york","tag-pencils","tag-process","tag-selectric","tag-typewriter","tag-vermont","tag-virginia-woolf","tag-woolf","tag-workspace","tag-writing","tag-writing-life","tag-writing-memoir","tag-writing-space","tag-writing-tools","tag-wrrters-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8132"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8134,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132\/revisions\/8134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/9557335566_5a688e403a_b.jpg\")
At 24, I wrote my first, complete, unpublished novel in a janitor\u2019s closet in my principal father\u2019s high school in Oxford, New York. I typed it on an IBM Selectric in that closet, on a table wedged between a slop sink and a bookshelf that held 20 years of old school yearbooks. There was a filing cabinet in the room, and on top of the filing cabinet sat a decades-old can of Hawaiian Punch. I was substitute teaching for an English teacher out on sick leave for several months, and between classes, and after school, I holed up in that closet and wrote the novel. However, rather than go into great detail about the experience, I\u2019ll let you read the short story I wrote about it (which I also wrote in that janitor\u2019s closet, during downtime from the novel), and which was published online in 2002. This is a PDF of that story<\/a>, \u201cThe Novelist.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/312bbc09852f74eac6ed666a00cd2394.jpg\")
Since then, I\u2019ve written stories and sections of novels in every conceivable location, which is why, whenever a so-called writer tells me he would like to<\/em> write, but he can\u2019t because he isn\u2019t \u201cinspired\u201d by his surroundings, I chuckle and walk away. \u201cInspiration\u201d and the perfect environment are fantasies; real, working, do-it-every-day-no-matter-what writers know better.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/alcatraz_yard.jpg\")
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I\u2019ve written in IKEA, on one of the kitchen display tables while my wife continued shopping. I\u2019ve written in many cafeterias, including ones at IKEA, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, Vassar College, Middlebury College, Harvard College, the University of Maine, the Smithsonian, the Museum of Natural History, the Louvre, Sharon Hospital, Mass General, the Chatsworth Estate and the New School. I\u2019ve written in a lot of restaurants, now that I think about it, my favorite writing haunts over the years being Ann\u2019s Restaurant (cafeteria style; now closed) in Boston, the Millbrook Diner, and Momiji (Rhinebeck, NY).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ear-plugs.jpg\")
I started writing this piece this morning because it occurred to me just how fortunate I am to have developed the ability to write anywhere. Of course I prefer my surroundings to be quiet, and after I discovered their existence in 2000 or so, I made sure I always had a cache of noise-cancelling earplugs in my writing bag. I like the places where I write to be quiet, but I\u2019ve learned not to make my productivity as a writer dependent on the outside conditions being ideal, because they never are.<\/p>\n