A place for writing

My colleague Ian, whose wife is a ferocious reader, thought she might know of people looking for a place to write. So I sat down and put together an offer:

Riddells Creek Studio offers a space to give attention to what has been tugging at your sleeve, waiting patiently for you to find the time. A new idea waiting to be broken open, a piece half done that needs to be finished, a project to flesh out, a new direction to be hunted down or called in - the Studio is a place to write.

It sits in a green valley, full of birdsong, close to Melbourne. It’s southern Victoria, so the weather is by turns breathtakingly cold and blustery, then breathtakingly still and sunny, but always right there, around you. A comfortable bed, a wood fire, a table to work at.  A good kitchen.

The place itself holds you.

It works for writing and thinking because it’s quiet, and beautiful, and there aren’t distractions. There’s a kind of spaciousness that lets you face the empty page and do the work. I live next door, but I’ll keep out of your way.

Most writing gets done in at the desk at home, still maybe sometimes in the office, especially if the office is only half full. But some writing needs solitude. Making time is the hard part, but let’s say you have. What’s good about writing here at the Studio?

It’s quiet

On the dirt road outside, the morning rush last 20 minutes, as people go down the hill to school or the train. There’s James driving to the far paddock next door, ute clanking. We’re 30 kms from Tullamarine, and there’s a flight path that can send a bevy of flights over, high, heading for Dubai, but it isn’t used that much. In late Spring, the weekends hum with the whirring of lawn mowers and whipper snippers from down the valley.

Basically, it is very quiet. There isn’t that background drone of human activity that you get living in a city. You have space to write.

The breaks are good

Writing is a self-inflicted freefall into not knowing. You try on words for whatever it is you have been foolish enough to attempt, and if you’re lucky, some of it works on the page, at least you think it does. As often, you have mush. Self-indulgent mush, or sentences that are alright in themselves, but don’t hang together well. Why anyone would make time to write for days on end is beyond me. It’s time to start over, but why not take a break first?

The big white clouds rolling off Mt Macedon are moving against a brilliant blue sky, heading southwards. The wind has picked up, and the air is still warm, late into autumn.

Or the rains have come, soft and constant overnight, and through the day there’s a steady rain falling, heavier and lighter in a slow rhythm.

Every place is alive, but this is a place where the more-than-human tucks itself around you. It would be foolish to think of it as all wild, with the urban just down the road, but it would be foolish too, to not let the wildness touch you.

The edge of Sandy Creek, Spring 2021

Birdsong

At your desk, with the door open …. there’s that bird again, somewhere in the trees along the creek. Then the answering call, the companion saying ‘oh yeah, I hear you.’

The sharp edge of the black cockatoos’ cry, as they wheel toward the pines. The resident magpie family marking the passage of the day. The swoop of a currawong, diving across the valley, calling; parrots shooting in volleys of noise. In the late afternoon, packs of white cockatoos heading up the valley, raucous calls floating high above.

The valley shifts and turns by the hour, and it is full of birdsong. The valley is alive, and miracle of miracles, it is holding you, even if you didn’t ask it to.

When you want to get some writing done, that’s a very good thing to have around you.

Easter Sunday, 2022.