The phrase “writers at work” often conjures a vision of solitude, the writer alone at a desk with, perhaps, a cup of coffee or tea, typing, tapping, scrawling away. Virginia Woolf gave us the beloved essay, “
A Room of One’s Own,” in which she discusses the importance of both financial independence and work space in relation to a woman’s ability to produce prose. But Woolf also says in her essay, “When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant.” I think this is important to note because Woolf, never one to readily boil down a point to a single answer, is saying that she will give the short, quippy response requested of her — that women need money and a room — but that she has to complicate the answer...