The Quiet Place

She made them strip the walls.

No paintings. No flowers. Nothing.

In every city she lived in, she kept a rented hotel room where she could write. She tried to arrive by six-thirty in the morning, lay across the bed, and wrote on yellow legal pads until the elbow she leaned on grew callused.

On the bed with her: a dictionary, a Roget’s Thesaurus, an ashtray, a bottle of sherry, and a Bible she read aloud to hear the rhythm.

She wrote until early afternoon. Then she went home, leaving the pages alone until later in the day.

Maya Angelou became one of the most commanding voices in American writing. She did her work in a room she wouldn't sleep in. A room she returned to for one reason.

Most of us try to create in spaces that are fighting us.

We blame the interruptions. We blame the kids, the calendar, the open floor plan.

But even when nobody interrupts, there's plenty to pull us away. A room where you eat, pay bills, take calls, and also try to write keeps reminding you of everything else you could be doing.

Writing is often the quietest thing asking for your attention.

You can put it off without disappointing anyone but yourself.

Find your version of a blank hotel room.

A library desk you return to when you write. A dark corner of the house. A parked car in a quiet lot with a legal pad on the steering wheel.

It doesn't have to be a place where nothing else ever happens. It just has to be a place where for the next hour nothing else will.

The obligations will still be there. Some will be more urgent. Some will be easier to do than a paragraph you haven't started yet.

But you've done the hardest part before you've written a word.

It happens in the moment between sitting down and starting where every other obligation in your life screams that it's more urgent.