A New Office On Logan Street: The Demons in a Room of One's Own

The writer recounts constructing a 'perfect' new studio in Denver where she intends to begin a 'sixties memoir. To her surprise she discovers she can't write and blames the space. She describes the perilous journey that led her to discover that she does her best work in a Room of her Own, consecrated by Virginia Woolf. Did the great writer imagine that her iconic Room, a symbol of resistance to male oppression, could engender a block? No, and almost a century later, that Room remains an altar in American women writers' collective consciousness, often cited and discussed. Yet when the author examines those writers' narratives about their creative process, she discovers that many become Victorian 'Madwomen in the Attic' in their sanctified Rooms. The Room figures as a problematic space to avoid or transform in works by May Sarton, Bonnie Friedman, Maya Angelou, Dorothy Allison and others. Ultimately the writer resolves her paralysis by escaping to a coffee shop, and questions the real reasons why her block occurred. She concludes that the significance of Woolf's Room has changed from a politicised space to a personal psychological space, like Gaston Bachelard's abode for the soul.