Happy New Year!
Yes, we’re serious. January 1st claims star billing on the calendar, but in real life the truer New Year comes these last days of hot weather, when we pack away summer and launch into Fall. Whether you’re knee-deep in new school binders and backpacks for yourself or your children, or twitching to old back-to-school rituals from an earlier life, Fall urges us to clear the decks and get back to business.
Jenna Lyons at J.Crew, New York. Photo by Heather Clawson, “Creativity at Work”
There’s nothing like a compelling work space to open our minds and spark good work, whatever our work might be. Consider Diana Vreeland’s lair at Vogue:
And John Updike’s study in Ipswich, Massachusetts:
Photo by Jill Krementz
Likewise, the Wills Company built serene magic into these nooks for two Nashville creatives.
What’s more, you don’t need a lot of space to carve out your own inspiring office. You just need the books, pictures, clippings, swatches, or totems that ignite your creativity. Picture Jacqueline Kennedy writing at her Georgetown home:
Photo by Jacques Lowe, 1959
Or Coco Chanel working at the Ritz Hotel, Paris:
Photos by Mark Shaw for Life Magazine, 1957
After all, look where Jane Austen wrote during the last eight years of her life:
Photo courtesy of the Jane Austen House Museum, Chawton, Hampshire, England
The Wills Company Design-Build team transforms even small spaces into home-office jewels.
Like this bright perch on a sunny Nashville landing:
What matters is that your own space trigger the kind of focus and clarity – the kind of happy mental distance from more mundane daily tasks – that lets you think, plan, write, and create your best work. It should reflect and refresh your most spontaneous (and even outlandish) self. Just imagine the creative sparks flying in Roald Dahl’s writing shed, in Great Missenden, England.
Dedicated corner, spare room, or shed at the end of the garden: resolve to claim space for your best work this Fall.
New Year’s renewal? Yes, we do that.
Photo by Mark Shaw