I Can't Believe It's Not Shakespeare

Writers Room

Have you guys heard of the Writers Room? It’s on Astor Place, and is exactly what its name purports it to be: a room for writers. It is my dream of dreams to become a member.
The Writers Room offers New York writers two vital things: a quiet area to work, and a place to congregate with other freelance writers. This doesn’t mean that The Writers Room is a social clubhouse; from what I hear, many writers choose not to interact with the others. Still, their membership proves that for even the most surly, reclusive authors, sometimes it’s nice just to SEE other faces, even if you aren’t in the mood to chat.
Of course, if you do want to chat (I would!), there are places to do so, namely the kitchen, where you can complain about your agent while waiting for your coffee to brew (cheaper than Think Coffee, the defacto Writers Room for the newly graduated), or the meeting room, which you can rent out to work with collaborators, hold meetings, etc.
It’s always interesting to learn how writers write. I have a friend who works with two separate scripts open in Final draft. She’ll write a line or so in one, then switch over to the other, all while holding conversations on AIM and watching Bravo. It may sound like a precarious system, but this girl’s no slack: she’s able to write a play every two months.
From what I understand of Julia’s writing process, she burrows in her room or in the library with a concentration so fierce that mealtimes will go by unnoticed. (This would NEVER happen to me.) She’ll resurface after hours, forcing herself to take a break, but already itching to go back and write more.
I can’t write with the TV, and I can’t write alone. I concentrate for 20 minute bursts; after twenty minutes I need to text message someone and remind myself of the outside world. I can’t write without some sort of food or coffee or soda. Sometimes I need to take a break and just look around the room. In college, when it was time to study for finals or write essays, I would go to the library, and always sit at the same desk on the 8th floor, near the window which looked over the main atrium of the library. From there, I could look up from my paper, my mind clouded, and take solace in the view of hundreds of other students bent over their own work, taking breaks on the phone, sipping coffee from the vending machine, taking naps. It sounds weird, but it was that communal experience that I relished most about college.
The Writers Room is open 24/7, and in my naïve fantasies, I imagine arriving, harried, at 1 am, no longer able to concentrate in my lush SoHo pad, I make my way over to the writer’s room where I find four or five other kindred spirits, type type typing away with equal concentration and frustration. They maybe glance up from their screens when I slink in and give me a sympathetic smile…maybe at 3 one of us decides to order pizza. At five, when I pack up, a good 30 pages under my belt, I wave.

I’m a long way off from being able to afford a membership to The Writers Room, but the second I can, you can bet I’ll be at Astor Place most days of the week.