The LA Times recenly carried Susan Straight's essay On Learning To Write Without A Room Of One's Own. In it, Straight explains that she's written on rocks while on vacation, at card tables in student housing, and in various vehicles while waiting for her children at one practice or another. Allison Williams picks up on the topic of where she writes in a short piece at Brevity. She makes the connection between "physical and temporal spaces." Temporal. Time.
Where we work is often related to when we work. For instance, writing in a car because you have to wait for your kid to finish soccer has far more to do to with when than where. You aren't working in your car because you like working in your car. You're working in your car because you have some time to use while you're in your car. The car is kind of beside the point. Working in doctors' waiting rooms (as I wish I had this morning--I ended up with forty minutes in one), in the evening in a vacation motel room, or on your sister's couch after you get her kids to sleep all happen because that's where we happen to be when we find ourselves with time for work. We didn't seek out those places. We were just in them.
Which leads me to wonder, which is more important? Place or time?
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