Katie da Cunha Lewin on the Joys of Quiet, Communal Writing

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I spent many years looking for a place where I could write. In the second year of my PhD, I wandered round London, unsure of where best to work. I had a desk in my tiny bedroom, transplanted from its former life in my parents’ house, but the desk didn’t do its job; I found that I was still regularly procrastinating, unable to concentrate, to find my flow. Looking back, perhaps the problem was the proximity to my bed, something about the angle of the light from the window. I still can’t say. But what I did know then was that I needed somewhere that was outside of my own four walls.

I began by trying places in east London, heading to Bethnal Green to see if it was still as ramshackle and lively as it had been when I was a teenager looking for vintage clothes. I found it very much changed, the shops now with polished signage and the uniform interiors speaking the visual language of gentrification. I chose a cake shop, selecting a large slice of red velvet to keep me running on sugar as I tried to focus on understanding the writing of J. M. Coetzee, something I probably never achieved.

It was after someone I met at a conference recommended the British Library that I realized there was a space in which I could work and not have to pay for the privilege. Though I knew about the building, I had discounted it as an option. I was intimidated by the infrastructure, the card that was needed to enter the reading rooms, and nervous about my credentials as a researcher, my ability to do the necessary concentrated work that the building suggested; I worried I wasn’t serious enough.

I always feel the magic as I enter, feeling how each day, the entrants agree to participate in the continuation of the space, asserting the importance of focused study and quiet writing.

At that point I lived a quick train journey away and so one day, I set off, looking for another kind of writing room, for privacy among other people. I don’t remember my first time in the building, nor what I did on those tentative trips, but I do know that I didn’t find my rhythm in the place quickly. I could see so many others around me who seemed to have better working habits and sturdier powers of concentration. I often found myself lost in the possibility of the space, in the multiplicity of the books I could order, the many different directions I could mine, but without a sense of where to begin.

Gradually, as I got used to the discipline of researching and writing, I began to see myself as a library-goer, bringing snacks, knowing where I could get cheap filter coffee, and finding a desk in a reading room—I preferred the vast space of Humanities 1 over the more intimate Humanities 2, and felt a fraud in Rare Books—at which I could sit for many hours.

I got into a routine with friends also doing PhDs, looking for a companionable 30 minutes (or more likely longer) in which we could shoot the breeze, muck around or worry about what we were doing—together. Other people, I began to realize, were crucial to my experience of the library, to my experience of writing: not just the balm they provided in socializing, but their very presence. The loud announcement of the opening hours of the building, and the wheels of the trolleys heaving books around provided one kind of backdrop, but the majority of the sounds I came to associate with the space were made by other people, throat-clearing and coughing, rustling of notebooks, the creaks of shoes on carpet.

Though on each trip I left my house alone with my intentions, every time I took a step into the reading room I entered into a completely unique community of other writers. Ten years later, I still feel the sense of relief that comes with seeing other faces, serious and determined, all around me. Sometimes, there are even monks or priests working alongside me, and I can’t help but imagine these men as modern St Jeromes. Being in this library, I can find my groove in the way I can’t at home. There are no chores to do here and less potential for distraction (though people-watching is, of course, a dangerous pastime). In the library, I can wear a costume of studiousness until it becomes who I am.

The reading rooms here can prompt a lot of strong feeling: some friends of mine cannot stand its quiet, the feeling of being observed, the rules one must follow. I find the various directions are almost second nature to me, but at first I always worried about doing the right thing, as if I would be found out as an interloper in a space for other people so much more suited to study and writing than me. Having now worked within this space for so long, I have come to rely on these rules as a way of understanding how to be in the space, and how to undertake the work of writing.

The reading room is based on shared participation in quiet; if anyone deviates from this, the precious mood of the room is shattered. Moments when the equilibrium is disturbed can feel jarring: I was once given the shock of my life when a man had fallen asleep and started producing honking snores; other times, mostly it has to be said when there are more undergraduates or A-levels students than normal, the room can be filled with excited whispers between people who I can tell aren’t really there to do any work. I can find myself looking on with great superciliousness at their lack of focus, before remembering that I too have used the room as an opportunity to scroll idly on my laptop, make whispered jokes or flirt.

Regardless of these deviations, I always feel the magic as I enter, feeling how each day, the entrants agree to participate in the continuation of the space, asserting the importance of focused study and quiet writing. Sometimes I can’t believe how many people are there, in light of the devaluing of the humanities and the collapse of many higher education institutions, it’s heartening that it is still so plentifully occupied. In this shared writer’s room, suddenly I become a writer among others.

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Excerpted from The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds That Shape the Books We Love. Copyright © 2025 by Katie da Cunha Lewin. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.