A Room of Their Own

The website Where I Write has photos of Science Fiction writers in their secondary environment - their writing rooms. (The primary hunting grounds for SF writers is of course the Science Fiction Convention, particularly the bar.) It's a project by Kyle Cassidy to photograph their 'creative spaces'.

I was struck by how middle class they all are, though I suppose some of this is selection bias - the ones I'm likely to have heard of - and Kyle Cassidy is likely to have heard of - must have sold tens of thousands of books, and having sold lots of books, they have some money. Still, I'd have liked to have seen a few from some young women or men writing on a POS PC surrounded by eight brothers, a dog and a TV that's not under their control. First, because that's reality, and second, because looking at an environment that a writer built after thirty years of writing is not nearly as informative as looking at the environment where the inspiration and the determination first collided.



Thumbnail of Joe Haldeman pic from Kyle Cassidy's site

I liked Joe Haldeman's picture the best, although I wonder if he's not hamming it up for the camera. Second, Harry Harrison, who seems to like to write without distractions.