I’m going a bit nutty, the tail end of something that’s been hard for me for two years. I’ve had so little space for myself, and very little for my writing. I write in a corner. No door. A teeny tiny window. If I stand where I’m writing, I can touch the ceiling.

So it was with rapid (or maybe better said: rabid) heart that I read these words from Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature:

“Now, so many years later, I know that this discontent is the basic trait that turns a person into a writer. To become a writer, patience and toil are not enough: we must first feel compelled to escape crowds, company, the stuff of ordinary, everyday life, and shut ourselves up in a room. We wish for patience and hope so that we can create a deep world in our writing. But the desire to shut oneself up in a room is what pushes us into action.”

He understands! He understands me! Though I fancy myself an extrovert, to create word pictures I must be alone and quiet, a door closed in peaceful solitude.

So as we travel back to the States on Wednesday, a wee desire of mine is this: a room of my own to write in.