I was excited when I saw the words “Creative Spaces” in the title of the book review. As I read on, I realized the reviewer Katherine Roth was describing a book on designing spaces that would help inspire the creative process.
The book, “Creative Spaces: People, Homes and Studios to Inspire” by Td Vadakan and Angie Myung, sounded interesting and I might try to track it down sometime, but it was not exactly what I was hoping for. I was hoping for something like the 1998 calendar I was remembering.
From the beginning of my teaching career, I would make sure to save calendars with photos and illustrations I might use in the classroom. I would store them away until an opportunity to use them to connect with a lesson arose. Being the packrat I am, I wound up with many colorful calendars over the years. When I retired I reluctantly got rid of just about all of them, but a few I just couldn’t let go. “The Writer’s Desk 1998,” Photographs Jill Krementz is one such calendar. Each month shows a black and white photo of a well-known writer at work in his or her workspace.
One of my favorite pictures is of E.B. White, essayist and author of Charlotte’s Web. He is sitting straight on a hard wooden bench pecking away on an old manual typewriter which sits on a simple table also of rough wood. He is in what appears to be a small wooden shack with a large window overlooking a body of water with a far shore. The scene is quiet, sparse and ascetic. In the accompanying quote, White says he can work anywhere, but if the distractions become too great, “I have a place I can go.” I assume this rustic building is that place.
In contrast, October’s photo of horror master Stephen King shows him leaning back in a swivel chair, feet on the desk, writing with pen in a notebook on his lap. The desk and shelves around the small room (an attic?) are cluttered to overflowing with stacks of papers and books, computer screens and electronics while the walls and bulletin board are papered with overlapping items.
The page for March show Indiana native Kurt Vonnegut at a desk in a room in a similar state of disarray. Vonnegut was married to photographer Krementz when these photos were made, so he might have been making something of a joke since he is not shown writing but working on a crossword puzzle. On the other hand, he might be making the point that lots of time writing is spent not writing.
On the June page, Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison sits on a comfortable couch in what might be her living room writing with an ink pen in a spiral notebook while December pictures another Nobel Prize winner, Isaac Bashevis Singer, smiling as he types a story at a fine writing desk near a marble fireplace in what could be an exclusive New York City apartment.
These photos were and still are inspiring to me, and I hoped they were to my students. They show that there is no one way to write. Or to do any sort of creative thing, really. Creative space is a personal preference. The crucial thing is to sit down and get to it.
When I read the book review and thought about the Writer’s Desk calendar, I wondered if I still had it or if I had thrown it out in one of my periodic anti-hoarding binges. After a somewhat obsessive search, I found it. It was with some other items from the past. Hey, you never know. This stuff might come in handy someday.
