Welcome to ‘The Birdhouse’

(NB: It would never have occurred to me that anyone might be interested in this, but when, a few weeks back, I posted a wee Substack note that included a picture of the interior of my little writing space, the response from fellow writers who, like me, longed for a “room of one’s own” was so enthusiastic, that I decided to post a freebie blog about it, with a lot more pictures. Hence, the following…)

Virginia Woolf famously said, “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”1 Woolf may have been speaking to the traditionally limited opportunities of women in her own time—in particular the socially-imposed reliance of women on men in terms of livelihood, not to mention the limited respect given to female writers and scholars—but I’ve often wondered about the accuracy of the statement in general. Surely, men as well as women need a quiet space in which to write, not to mention, enough money to live on (whether earned or inherited) in order to have some time to write. Still, as a perusal of many biographies can testify, there have been plenty of writers (and other artists) throughout the centuries who have barely had enough to eat at many points in their lives, and suffered severa illness and deprivation, and yet still managed to produce masterpieces. (Dostoevsky springs to mind.)

But I suspect such folk are rarities, and of a peculiarly heroic breed. All I know for sure, after 72 years of personal experience, the better part of which included a frequently frustrated impulse to write in less than ideal circumstances, is that I am not of that breed; no, Hobbit that I am, I very much need creature comforts and extended periods of undisturbed quiet in my own little undisturbed space to get any creative work done, or even begun.

Over the busy years of raising a large family I, like most of us who call ourselves writers, have had to make do with less than ideal circumstances. I remember the days of setting up a desktop in a small spare room off of busy living areas, or in a corner of the bedroom, and retreating there to write (often with only half a brain remaining) when the older kids were in school and the younger were taking naps; or else at the end of the day when all were in bed. That’s just…life. And I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

But you can also imagine my joy, then, when, as I turned 65 and my husband and I officially retired, a modest inheritance (and a willing co-buyer in Rach) enabled us to put money down on an unusual two-family home in the otherwise out-of-reach real estate market of our southern Oregon community. And whadya know, we had just enough left over to have one of the two 8 x 10 garden sheds that came with the property converted into a bona fide writing room.

My initial dream was to put the two sheds together to make a 16 x10 retreat; that would have been wonderful, to be sure; but money was tight and the truth was, we needed a garden shed as well as a writer’s space.

So I put on my thinking/dreaming cap and sketched out my vision for the 8 x 10 space: a built-in tabletop/workdesk running the full length of one longer side, with a large window overlooking what I hoped eventually to turn into the “Mary Garden” between the two sheds; a through-the-wall mini-split AC/heater unit under the desk for climate control; built in bookshelves along two walls to house my most-used research materials, with the shelves no more than 8 inches deep, so as to not take up too much floor space; a skylight to brighten any potential gloom. Through the recommendation of our realtor we hired an experienced remodeler along with a carpenter/cabinetmaker to do the built-in desktop and bookshelves.2

Because ours was a relatively small job, which our builder fit here and there in between some of his larger jobs, the remodel took the better part of three months from beginning to end.

The initial stage involved a fair deal of structural prep: leveling the shed, which is set on concrete blocks with some air flow underneath to prevent rot; the addition of some extra supports inside to handle the entirely new roof and skylight; insulation, drywall, a new floor, pine paneling (on the walls not to be covered by bookshelves) and, finally, the 4 x 6 sliding window and a new door.

One of my favorite features of the finished space is the nearly ten-foot-long desktop. When discussing it with the carpenter, I had originally imagined something like a kitchen countertop at desk height, but the carpenter suggested butcher block for about the same price…and I’m so glad he did! It’s just lovely.

Perhaps the one thing I would change if I were doing it all over now would be switching out the cheap vinyl flooring—a little too cheap, to be frank—with some low-nap carpeting. The good news is that once the bookshelves were in, the floor space was almost perfectly covered by a 7 x 9 area rug of my own choosing, with a little easy-to-clean vinyl left exposed by the door, where one really doesn’t want to track in garden dirt anyway.

Finally, in the new year, after the weather turned, we called in a painter to paint the shed’s exterior in the colors we intend to use on the whole house in the next couple of years. Later that summer, when I was getting a little too much afternoon sun coming in from the west-facing window, we had an awning attached. The final bill came to about $12K.

And voilà! Time to move in. I have rarely been so chuffed as the day I began to haul my books into my new writer’s retreat.

Thus was born The Birdhouse, so named—I thought I was being terribly clever— because the structure’s “birdhouse” shape went nicely with my avian pen name, “Rail”.

The Birdhouse was completed about five years ago. I’ve filled it with precious books and favorite pictures, with notebooks and printer and supplies and lamps and all the usual paraphernalia of a reading/writing life. Even a corner “altar” space that keeps me spiritually grounded while I work. I practically live in here, to be honest, and it’s a rare day when I’m not at that lovely desktop for at least four or five hours. There’s no room, alas, for a comfy reading chair, but since our quiet living room provides that essential, and we also have a lovely sitting area in our garden when the weather cooperates, I have no excuse to complain.

Yes, it’s been a long time coming, perhaps, but as one of our readers commented on my Notes section when I first posted a picture of the Birdhouse, I’m living my dream.

2

While he was at it, the carpenter also built in similar bookshelves in several places in our 750 sq ft flat: