“It’s crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen. If you don’t have a setup, there are many times when you get the inspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put it together. And the idea just sits there and festers. Over time, it will go away. You didn’t fulfill it—and that’s just a heartache.”
– David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish
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“The second condition: a fairly private space. In a house, a room, even a small one, where you can be with your book, where you can have that dialogue without anyone else in the room.”
– George Steiner, A Long Saturday
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Freedom.
Privacy.
Creativity.
A whole world in the small patch of desk on which I sit.
No more, no less.
I have such fantasies about having my own study: a desk with books and papers. A place in which to leave everything in specific disarray.
This is not realistic. It’s better to nurturer the dream through practice in this mobile creating space.
A small grab bag with everything I need. More often than not my writing equipment is simply my iPhone.
There is a crucial advantage I have found with writing on my iPhone: editing.
It’s low stakes. No formal pressure.
Editing on the fly. Dipping in and out.
Not a big pressure to get everything figured out all at once.
Using snatches of time I can write.
No muses need be summoned.
None of this is created in declared writing time.
There’s no agenda and no external expectations.
It’s not precious time. In fact it is, but there is no need to broadcast that fact to the outside world.
Privacy is created within the space between the eye and the page or screen.
A superpower of attention, if you will.
A modest ability to create on the fly.
Conversations With Quotations 