Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!
Where Writers Write is a weekly series that will feature a different author every Wednesday as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen.
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| Photo by Adauto Araujo |
This is Sofia Samatar.
Sofia is the author of the novel A Stranger in Olondria
(Small Beer Press, April 2013). She wrote the first draft of the novel in South
Sudan, but she did a lot of revision and rewriting in Madison, Wisconsin, where
she lives and writes now.
She is Nonfiction and Poetry Editor for Interfictions:
A Journal of Interstitial Arts, and blogs at sofiasamatar.blogspot.com.
There’s day writing, and there’s night writing.
During the day, I often write at Café Zoma, around the block
from my apartment.
I’m always there on weekend afternoons. I like the feeling
of being with people and alone at the same time, and I like the soup. Here’s my
favorite table:
I write in cafés because I read Ernest Hemingway in high
school and never got over it. I will always believe that it is dashing and
romantic to write in cafés, even though, unlike Hemingway, I live in a
well-heated apartment. You know in A Moveable Feast when he’s writing
and drinking rum and café au lait, and that girl comes in with a face like a
newly-minted coin, and he finishes the story and orders oysters and white wine
and thinks he’s written something really good? This is basically my ideal of
the writing life, and it’s what I have at Café Zoma, minus the booze and the
oysters and creeping on some girl and Hadley at home alone in the cold
apartment wearing all her sweaters.
At night, I write on this chair:
I curl up to write. I can curl up with my laptop, which is
very small. It’s terrible for my back. I have to figure out something else.
The mess all over the floor is because you never know what
you’re going to need. It’s best to keep everything where you can reach it.
Next week, check back to see where Bill Luvaas puts the pen to the paper.
Great post! The picture with the chair and all the books looks so comfy.
ReplyDeleteLoved the part about Hadley at home in the cold apartment wearing all her sweaters.
ReplyDeleteTry not to get arthritic vertabrae. Good note not to curl up.