Where To Write

Does writing in a coffee shop scare you?

W.H. Auden used to write in a room with the curtains closed.

Vladimir Nabakov wrote in his car on the driveway. Kurt Vonnegut and John Updike too. (Though in their own cars, not Nabakov's.)

Roald Dahl wrote in an armchair in his shed.

Thomas Hardy wrote *Far from the Madding Crowd* in this tiny cottage where he was born on a table barely bigger than a sheet of paper.

Sooner or later, all writing comes down to finding somewhere to write.

What Virginia Woolf called *A Room of One’s Own*.

For me, a coffee shop is too distracting. I'm not fully engaged. Even with headphones in.

I’ve learned that I write best in familiar places:
• In my home office in a room full of books in suburban London
• At this big glass desk overlooking the Welsh hills
• At the dining table of our villa in Portugal

I’ve written in hotels, in friends’ homes, and in clients’ offices. The results have been … okay. I've worked on trains and planes, in airport lounges and coffee shops. The results have been … not okay. Too much distraction.

So now I don't even try until I'm in places I know I can work.