A blog of one's own

Having just wrapped up a course on Spanish Women Writers, and begun my Summer of the Book, it seemed like a good time to read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, in which she stipulates that with a nice room and 500 bucks, a woman can really get down to business and put quill to paper. Well, I have the 21st-century equivalent: a nice house all to myself (ok, I share it with the dog, but her occasional outbursts at the cat next door are only sporadically distracting), a generous stipend, and a willingness to put fingers to laptop.

Woolf's ethos about writing seems almost prescient:

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

How Woolf could have anticipated blogging, I cannot say, but she reminds me that sometimes the creative energy comes a'knocking when I don't sit down to write the great academic mindbender but rather when I fiddle around with a blog post, or an email, or an Evite. Writing is writing, after all.

But the matter at hand here is a book, and here's what Virginia tells me to do about that:

Thus when I ask you to write more books I am urging you to do what will be for your good and for the good of the world at large.

A high calling, indeed, when you're talking about post-Franco Spanish literature, but I get the drift. The process and the end result will most certainly be beneficial to me... and my long-term career prospects.

A recent visit to the Emily Dickinson Museum makes it clear that women can write amazing things when they have the freedom and space in which to do it. But, unlike Emily, I intend to leave the house once in awhile, and I don't have a white dress.