Living In A Box, Or Working In A Self Storage Unit
As a writer, I need peace and quiet to work, especially when I'm working on a novel or script. Not necessarily silence, I usually have music on, but it's always got to be my own noise, not the noise of other people, which can be a bit of a problem with two flatmates who work differing shifts and are around far more often than I'd like them to be when I'm trying to write.
While working on my latest novel, I decided to try a new approach to working, rather than the usual short bursts I get before one of them makes some noise and knocks me out of my groove - I decided to hire somewhere to work. An office was out of my budget and there was no way my publishers would pay for it, so I decided to look into a self storage unit. If nothing else, it would be an interesting experiment - could I spend a few hours every day in one of these windowless rooms with nothing but my laptop and my iPod for company without going mad? I was virtually guaranteed solitude, which is exactly what I needed for the book I was working on.
After a brief visit to a search engine, I found a nearby provider and looked through the range of self storage unit sizes they had on offer and their prices. A small room, big enough for me, a desk and a small fridge which I could fill with Coke Zero and use to keep my sandwiches cool would be more than within my budget and if it turned out that I couldn't work very well in there, it wouldn't be much of an issue - the rental period was as short or as long as I needed it to be. I decided to give it a try.
Although I got some strange looks from the staff at the company for the first couple of days, I actually found working in the self storage unit very comfortable. There are no windows, so there's not much in the way of airflow and there's no natural light, but it turned out to be exactly what I needed to get cracking on this book. I wouldn't want to live in one, but spending four hours or so a day in one caused perhaps the most productive period I've ever had as a writer. It was just me, my keyboard and my music; there was no internet and I had no mobile phone signal in there, meaning that I had no distractions. In the space of two weeks, and just four hours a day, I had written my book, and I was really pleased with it. I hadn't gone mad either, which was the prediction from my flatmates.
Though I definitely couldn't live in one, spending a short amount of time in a self storage unit just sealed off from everything really helped me focus on my work and I would almost certainly hire another one when the time comes to write my next novel.
About the Author:
Anna Stenning is a novelist and scriptwriter who found the ideal way to get the peace and quiet she needed to write. Find out more about self storage at http://www.safestore.co.uk/
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