Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

This chapter begins with the author's description of the studio in which she currently works - a small shed in the woods, set away from her house. She describes her ideal of the perfect workspace (see "Quotes," p. 26), and then writes at length of such a space in which she worked when she was in her twenties - a corner of a university library where she worked at night on a difficult book, feeling her way to her desk through the dark.

She writes of several specific experiences during that period in her (creative?) life. One is her realization that a book she felt every night was by Helen Keller (see "Important People" and "Objects/Places"). Another is her narrative of sketching the view from her nearby window, closing the blinds and then taping the sketch onto the blinds so she...