Do you need a room of your own?

15 Aug, 2024

Virginia Woolf said that a woman needed money and a room of her own to be a writer.¹ I certainly don’t have the money nor the luxury of a room of my own to write. But I do have a little corner of my bedroom that I see as my writing nook.

This is a way of honouring this calling I’ve tried to talk myself out of for so long. Cultivating a sacred place for your craft is a way of conferring gravity and worth to the work you have committed yourself to.

I’ve been away from this blog, this little corner of the internet for a while. Partly because I believed I needed to devote time to other “practical things” to make money. I’ve also not taken this calling seriously.

In continuing to show up to write here despite all odds, I am carving out a room of my own, a tiny piece of space and time, in which to form the habit of freedom and muster the courage to write exactly what I think.

“Because I am the heir of all the Black Sisters before me, who carved out rooms of their own, tiny pieces of space and time, in which they formed the habit of freedom and mustered the courage to write exactly what they thought. I took up their legacy with breathless gratitude and compelling need, and I created a room of my own, built of 1s and 0s, where I try to honor them, as best I can.”²

We also need to continue to honour the black intellectual tradition, for where would we be without the intellectual generosity of our ancestors?

By sharing our ideas and stories in public, we honor the people who came before us and serve the people who will follow us.

There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead