Notable Boudoirs

Apartment Therapy website has 15 bedrooms of famous writers (although I must confess that I actually became aware of this blog from the Poetry Foundation's Harriet Blog).

I love Hemingway's bedroom for the floor-to-ceiling arched windows and the white paint. Thoreau had good windows too, an essential to a successful bedroom in my opinion. Not sure what Flannery O'Connor was thinking though (or how she could think with that print; or why she covered up all the windows, though maybe she didn't and that's just for preservation).

These days, as a spring break project, my boys and I have been going through closets and boxes and shelves and throwing stuff away madly, trying to make more space, to find more light. It's a constant challenge living in Japan not to be overcome with stuff, and I salivate looking at some of these bedrooms with their empty spaces.

I write in the bedroom sometimes too. I peel back the covers and get down to the fitted sheet, and then spread my work around me. This is especially helpful when I need to organize a manuscript or when I have multiple poems going on and I want to figure out how they are working together. Or when I'm consulting many books while I write. I just like writing on the bed. It frees me up to be in a more creative space than sitting at my desk. (And I hate our couch, so I always prefer to go in and sit on the bed when I can.)

(Oh, and here's a secret. When the light is coming into the boys' bedroom in the early afternoon and the view over the bay is magnificent, I sometimes climb up on the top bunk, pull the covers onto the floor down to the fitted sheet, and write on my son's bed. Don't tell him though; it's all nicely put back before he comes home from school. Not having a lot of space and not having their own rooms, I've taught the boys to consider their beds their own private spaces--it wouldn't do that I secretly use one to write.)