Writer
Isabel Allende - The House of the Spirits, Zorro, Paula - is also a shedworker, writing away in what she calls her 'casita' (trans: 'little house') at her home in California. Sadly, there don't seem to be any images of it, but her garden office is certainly a central part of her working life.
"I try not to work on Sundays," she told the
New York Times, "but if I am in my writing time (Jan. 8 to
around May), I may sneak to my casita to work if we have no guests. The
casita was meant to be the pool house, but it ended up being my studio... I have written several historical novels that required a lot of
research, and in that case I did most of the reading in my 'casita',
where I write."
Writing in the book Why We Write, a compilation of famous writers' writing habits, she explains that: "On January eighth I walk seventeen steps from the kitchen to
the little pool house that is my office. It’s like a journey to another
world. It’s winter, it’s raining usually. I go with my umbrella and the
dog following me. From those seventeen steps on, I am in another world
and I am another person. I go there scared. And excited. And
disappointed — because I have a sort of idea that isn’t really an idea.
The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of
the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse
shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows
up."
Interestingly, there is no phone, email or fax link in her shedlike atmosphere, and the only person allowed to disturb her while she is at work is her husband.
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