A (hotel) room of one's own. Validating and celebrating creative practice.
Writing Journal: When She Was Gone #2
Hotels have become a vital component for me getting work done, and I’ve just come back from three nights away editing my new book. These escapes allow me an intensity of focus that I can’t find in a busy family home (which is small, open-plan, and where the office is right next to the kitchen and lounge). We’ve often thought of trying to build a little writer’s hut in the back garden, but it hasn’t been possible yet, so instead, for a couple of days every two to three weeks, I escape to whichever hotel is cheapest on Agoda and bed down to write. When I get to the hotel, I often barely look up until it’s time to leave. The phone stays on silent. I stop only for food, stretches and the occasional walk. It is an incredible, luxurious thing to be able to focus like this. A privilege, but also vital in my line of work.
I have often struggled with my need to go away to work. It has felt like failure that I can’t make space for myself at home. It seems extravagant. It’s expensive. It means regularly leaving my kids and missing out on their weekend activities, as well as losing time with my husband, who works long hours during the week. I have spent a lot of time trying to avoid hotels and manage without going away. What invariably happens is the pressure and frustration builds at home, with the constant demands of life and children, until my husband and I agree that hotels are once again the way forward.
I have an incredibly supportive husband who always validates my work and need for mental space – if I feel guilty he’s the first to remind me why I shouldn’t. But why do I find it so hard to give myself permission to do this? And not just to give myself permission, but to rejoice in it? Why do I so easily recall every judgmental comment made about this over the years, over and above the fact that this decision has helped me get as far as writing novel number nine? I’ve spent my entire professional writing career juggling work and motherhood, and engaged parenting involves dealing with continual physical, practical and emotional demands that can severely impede creative space and deep thought. Without those, you can’t write a good book. So the hotels are essentially my office space, with unusual hours.
However, let’s revisit the privilege for just a moment, because every time I go to a hotel I think of all those people bursting with untold stories who can’t afford to do this. I think of all those who struggle with time, money and circumstance so much that they can’t escape, and those who are full-time carers for others, young and old. I wonder what their stories might be, the ones we’ll never hear. Because while hotel time is a necessity, it’s also a luxury made possible by the fact I have support at home. My husband has a steady income, my children are older and becoming more independent and supportive. It’s awful to think that there will be so many people who don’t have the means to allow themselves creative space. And even more who might have the opportunity but who have devalued their creativity, or who have internalised messaging that puts their creative practice way down the list of personal priorities.
In our modern society, creativity and creative space is denigrated and devalued. Arts degrees are increasingly seen as luxurious and superfluous. Arts funding is continuously under threat. We have a reprieve right now in Australia, with ministers who are seeking to turn some of this around, but we don’t know how long that will last. Therefore, to validate and fight for individual creative space is both a personal and political act. Sinking into periods of single-minded creativity is a perspective-shifting, life-affirming practice that leads to growth and change, and occasionally a finished novel!
My hotel trips are an essential part of my ability to maintain a professional creative practice. A fellow author recently told me he’d been inspired by my own hotel visits to do something similar himself, and he’d loved it. I felt great about that. So this is my message to all creatives: please give yourself permission to do what you need to in order to make your art happen. Please remind yourself that your art is essential. And let’s work to move beyond permission, to celebrate creativity and creative practice as a vital, connective activity that leads to new voices, ideas and stories being shared.