Twice a week now – on Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings – I take up a seat in the reference section of Ripon library and settle down to write for ninety minutes. It is, in a way, my job.
Thus far I have been untroubled by library patrons or fellow-writers heading for where I sit perched behind my laptop and a laminated ‘writer-in-residence’ sign; as yet there have been no queries, no requests for advice, no “would you like to read this?”… But these are early days.
The upshot of this is that I have gifted myself – or been gifted – two significant weekly slots of time where I am compelled to write (or, at worst, read). Take today for example. An hour-and-a-quarter in and I have spent some time working on the draft for my sonnet collection (now about two-thirds of the way through), as well as taken the first tentative steps in roughing out part of the opening of a prose piece which I hope will make it to something rather ‘full-length’ later in the year. And now this post.
Not too bad. And a suitable reward for being removed from rather more ‘domestic’ distractions.
I anticipate the pattern will change over time. There will be the occasional workshop or reading to fill the sessions, and people will begin to drift over to engage in ‘writerly’ things. But until then, head down, fingers on the keyboard…
Ian Gouge - Writer 