In the 16th in a series of posts on 2017 books entered for The Story Prize, Caitlin Hamilton Summie, author of To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts (Fomite), embraces disorder.
I do my best work amid chaos. Or perhaps it’s best to say that I have no choice but to work amid chaos.
I am the mother of two young people. My office has no door. Let me repeat that. No door. It has a window from which I glimpse our beautiful maple tree in the front yard, and off to the left is the front door. Straight ahead of me is my children’s desk, which is their second place choice for homework after the kitchen table. But on occasion, a small person sits at this desk, mastering multiplication or writing essays about books or reviewing the life cycle of plants. My husband has an office space across the hall, and I hear his radio. I hear trucks outside on the road wheezing (sometimes thundering) up the steepish hill upon which our house sits. Sometimes children come over to see my kids and play. Phones ring. Emails ping. Even at night, as I type away, I hear the same rush of cars and often also dialogue or music from TV shows. Water in the pipes. Pounding upstairs if my son is playing basketball in his room, shooting a teeny basketball into the net he has hanging off his door. Dogs barking.
This is where I write.
I write at night, on weekends, on a lunch hour, before work. My desk is an old melamine board laid across two file cabinets. Around me are manila files for work, bookcases, supply cases, the kids’ desk, and walls covered with their artwork, a few photographs, and imposing torn-out calendar pictures of various large cats, one a lion, the other a tiger? A lynx? Behind me, a beautiful gift from a client-author-friend: feathers meant for a free spirit, offering me good luck and special wisdom. I’ll take both. I don’t know now if I could write in quiet again. For the last many years, since 2002, my spaces for writing and work have all been similar: open, shared, slightly cluttered, colorful. In the past, I have been reduced to sleeplessness when things are too quiet. Would I be reduced to silence if there wasn’t always a hum and a roar?
All of my work is driven by emotion, by character rather than plot. I write it all amid the chaos of a busy family life: the bus going by, neighbors knocking on the door, testy football radio commentators, birdsong. All of it. And rather than distracting me, it keeps me grounded in my subjects, reminds me of what compels me most: connection, family, history, togetherness.
I don’t want a private office. I don’t need a door. Quiet would unnerve me. Keep it open, I say to myself. This is your truth.
I do my best work amid chaos. Or perhaps it’s best to say that I have no choice but to work amid chaos.
I am the mother of two young people. My office has no door. Let me repeat that. No door. It has a window from which I glimpse our beautiful maple tree in the front yard, and off to the left is the front door. Straight ahead of me is my children’s desk, which is their second place choice for homework after the kitchen table. But on occasion, a small person sits at this desk, mastering multiplication or writing essays about books or reviewing the life cycle of plants. My husband has an office space across the hall, and I hear his radio. I hear trucks outside on the road wheezing (sometimes thundering) up the steepish hill upon which our house sits. Sometimes children come over to see my kids and play. Phones ring. Emails ping. Even at night, as I type away, I hear the same rush of cars and often also dialogue or music from TV shows. Water in the pipes. Pounding upstairs if my son is playing basketball in his room, shooting a teeny basketball into the net he has hanging off his door. Dogs barking.
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| Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" |
I write at night, on weekends, on a lunch hour, before work. My desk is an old melamine board laid across two file cabinets. Around me are manila files for work, bookcases, supply cases, the kids’ desk, and walls covered with their artwork, a few photographs, and imposing torn-out calendar pictures of various large cats, one a lion, the other a tiger? A lynx? Behind me, a beautiful gift from a client-author-friend: feathers meant for a free spirit, offering me good luck and special wisdom. I’ll take both. I don’t know now if I could write in quiet again. For the last many years, since 2002, my spaces for writing and work have all been similar: open, shared, slightly cluttered, colorful. In the past, I have been reduced to sleeplessness when things are too quiet. Would I be reduced to silence if there wasn’t always a hum and a roar?
All of my work is driven by emotion, by character rather than plot. I write it all amid the chaos of a busy family life: the bus going by, neighbors knocking on the door, testy football radio commentators, birdsong. All of it. And rather than distracting me, it keeps me grounded in my subjects, reminds me of what compels me most: connection, family, history, togetherness.
I don’t want a private office. I don’t need a door. Quiet would unnerve me. Keep it open, I say to myself. This is your truth.